Noz breaks down XXL Freshman 2014 (bodies troy ave, isaiah r

[King Lance]

http://www.cocaineblunts.com/blunts/?p=7870


The latest XXL Freshman List was announced earlier this week and by now I don’t have to tell you that this is most important thing that can happen in hip hop. It’s more important than Jay-Z selling you something and more important than Nas fondly reminiscing on the days when he could still sell you something. It might even more important than Kanye West going on a field trip or two rappers you’ve only ever heard of via Twitter bickering on Twitter. And most certainly this announcement is more important than all of the rap music ever released including both “Top Billin’” and “True Fuschnick.”

The last time I wrote about this very important list was in 2012. I drank a whole twelve pack of Mountain Dew as research or the project and was struck by how so many of the rappers chosen were even worse than the aftertaste. But over the time since I’ve grown to appreciate that 2012 Freshman selection, not because those rappers are any good – anyone even a little bit implicit in Iggy Azalea’s recent ascension deserves to be fed alive to angry koala bears – but because XXL was at least trying to stitch together an accurate representation of what rap’s mutating audience had been or was about to be listening to.

Following the success of the great rapper Kendrick Lamar, whose entire body has since been encased in gold, the XXL staff put those goals aside last year and just tightened their backpack straps one some Rasheed Wallace I DON’T FOOL WITH THE YOUNGE THUGS AND I ESPECIALLY DON’T FOOL WITH THEM EYE EM SUEZ shyt. Instead they propped up a bunch of dudes who would’ve been locked away in the S.O.B.’s walk in freezer if they had been born fifteen years earlier but who today have the right management or page views or whatever to get themselves on the cover of a once prominent rap magazine. I was going to write one of these things around that cover but I literally fell asleep while trying to do so. (Literally literally.) This year is a lot of the same, more of the boring, but because I love you all and hate myself I decided to peel my eyelids back with one of those Clockwork Orange gadgets just long enough to kick a few dumb jokes about my droog my droog Rich Homie Quan.



Chance The Rapper
Bio: He’s sensitive, Hank Hill voice.
Age: 21
Hometown: Chicago, IL
Label: Unsigned (Is any man truly unsigned?)
Past Freshman Predecessor: Best case scenario Kendrick Lamar, worst case Charles Hamilton.
Twitter Followers: 579k
Highest Charting Single: N/A
Skills: 9/10 The best technical rapper to make this list in at least three years.
Creativity: 8/10 “Paranoia” was well executed and smart enough to shut down a million concerned think pieces about Chicago but he’s also creative in the way that might inspire someone to, say, wear overalls with no shirt underneath to the highest profile photo shoot of their career. This also means Woody Woodpecker adlibs, Mos Def yodels and mad adventurous Soundcloud beats. He could prove to be the most brilliant rap experimentalist of his time or he might tip all the way towards Clefdom and wake up on a new Ducati singing “Kumbaya.”
Marketability: 6/10 His success has been pre-ordained by tastemakers in much the same way that Odd Future’s was. This is to say that a bunch of white critics and and armchair A&Rs and Reddit users who all discovered rap in 2006 and never listen to the radio are certain that he’s going to be bigger than Drake and U2.
Sustainability: 8/10 Chance the Rapper is close friends with Childish the Gambino.


Rich Homie Quan
Bio: A young man from Atlanta.
Age: 24
Hometown: Atlanta, GA
Label: Probably Def Jam, but nobody has told him yet.
Predecessor: Roscoe Dash
Twitter Followers: 257k
Highest Charting Single: Type Of Way (Hot #50 / HH #12)
Skills: 5/10 I feel no type of way about his rapping ability.
Creativity: 6/10 Initially it took me a long time to embrace Quan because of the obvious debt he owes to Future but as he’s doubled down on that approach – and Future has started to move elsewhere – he’s managed to carve out some interesting shyt in that space with regards to both style and emotions.
Marketability: 9/10 This is XXL’s token established radio hitmaker safety net choice (putting him the same space as luminaries like Kirko Bangz and Rich Boy) and he feels especially out of place as the only rapper on this entire list with a charting hit single. And that’s not even accounting for his dominant presence on what might be the last pure rap crossover hit ever – YG’s “My H-Word.”
Sustainability: 5/10 Maybe he’ll manage to make it over Future hill or maybe he’ll be shipped off to the Island of Forgotten ATLiens by next summer. (The island is located in the middle of a fountain at the Lenox Square Mall. There J Money and OJ The Juiceman share a bunk bed and an Iphone charger.)


Isaiah Rashad
Bio: Alternate timeline Kendrick Lamar in which he is shipped to the south as an orphan and adopted by David Banner.
Age: 22
Hometown: Chattanooga, TN
Label: TDE
Predecessor : Big Krit
Twitter Followers: 67.1k
Highest Charting Single: N/A
Skills: 6/10 Potentially a very good rapper and an attentive enough writer but he’s currently trapped inside a self made prison of Kendrickisms and wordy cipher rat gibberish like “as the verbal appears its reflecting my perspective.” Who could’ve guessed that Canibus would be a more influential rapper than Jay-Z in 2014?
Creativity: 5/10 Full disclosure I am going to harbor some heavy biases against any artist who names his songs after Scarface and Webbie but records and mixes them with all the energy and thump of a Little Brother record.
Marketability: 4/10 Multiply Kendrick Lamar’s commercial appeal by Big Krit’s commercial appeal. (So what is eighty four times zero?)
Sustainability: 6/10 TDE is not going anywhere.



Lil Durk
Bio: The kid next to Chief Keef in that one video. No, not him. The other kid.
Age: 21
Hometown: Chicago, IL
Label: Def Jam
Predecessor: Future
Twitter Followers: 483k
Highest Charting Single: N/A
Skills: 6/10 He can rap I guess. I don’t even care anymore though. A lot of motherfukkers can rap. Skills mean next to nothing to nobody with half a brain today and this is why we no longer do the word the honor of spelling it with a “z” or of listening to his year end Rap Up songs.
Creativity: 7/10 Durk always seemed like the most capable and accessible hook writer out of the Drill Movement, even before the Drill Movement was a movement. He’s a true master of the sadotune anthem but hasn’t been able to translate that talent to much commercial success. “L’s Anthem” alone seems like it could’ve should’ve would’ve been as big as any of those Quan records had it been given the right push.
Marketability: 4/10 He doesn’t have much of a personality to work with beyond the tragic rebel/knucklehead narrative that both haunts and propels all of his contemporaries. But maybe the songs will be enough.
Sustainability: 6/10 Chicago is not going anywhere.


Troy Ave
Bio: New York City is the original birthplace of hip hop and rap music.
Age: 28
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY
Label: Anyone who needs to make a Youtube video about how they aren’t signed to Def Jam is probably signed to Def Jam.
Predecessor: Lord Jamar
Twitter Followers: 40.5k
Highest Charting Single: N/A
Skills: 6/10 He can rap I guess.
Creativity: 3/10 Dude is riding in that Freddie Gibbs lane of token boom bap conservative neanderthal talking head, and with that comes both a narrowness of creative vision and a general sour grapes attitude that will only continue to seep into his middling music. Admittedly i was pretty funny that time he said “Kendrick wears his shorts above his knees” but only until you remember that Kendrick is arguably the greatest rapper of his generation and Troy is a guy who needed to buy a Tony Yayo verse to get radio spins in his own city.
Marketability: 2/10 ed-lover-cmon-son.gif
Sustainability: 6/10 He has a long career ahead of him, one full of desperate Hot 97 bids by way of Jeremih collabs and/or infinite Vlad TV interviews about how all of the young people are fakkits.


Vic Mensa
Bio: Like Chance The Rapper but with fewer chances and more rapping.
Age: 20
Hometown: Chicago, IL
Label: The Internet (which is now a subsidiary of Def Jam Recordings)
Predecessor: Chance The Rapper
Twitter Followers: 47.1
Highest Charting Single: N/A
Skills: 8/10
Creativity: 7/10 Vic is every bit the technical rapper that his Save Money rhyme partner Chance is but he lacks both the spiritual depth and necessary eccentricity to fully connect with the blogo indie rap mafia. It’s strange that he’s on this list at all really, given their similarity and allegiances, but hey Chance is shimmering so brightly in what is otherwise a dark age for emerging rap talent that even his little brother is landing cover stories in the refraction.
Marketability: 5/10 It seems likely that Vic and Chance developed their very similar rap styles mutually. In fact I’ve heard some suggest that Vic was rocking with it first but I’m certainly not going to spend any more time with the horrible Rootsy rap jam band that launched his career to see if they’re right. Either way you can only own a rhyme style until someone more famous than you embraces it. (Ask Young Chris.). And since Chance came first and will always be two steps ahead career wise it’s going to be difficult to assert Vic as a rightful peer and just not a biter or weed carrier. The one thing he does have going for him is that he seems more grounded, his santiy could come in handy if Chance does end up at the bottom of whatever rabbit hole he’s been peeking into.
Sustainability: 5/10 Let’s see if I make it to the end of this sentence.


Lil Bibby
Bio: Hell Rell’s great-grandson.
Age: 20
Hometown: Chicago, IL
Label: We spell unsigned with a question mark around these parts.
Predecessor: Meek Mill
Twitter Followers: 95k
Highest Charting Single: N/A
Skills: 6/10 Bibby is still figuring it out and sometimes it seems like his stylistic aspirations sometimes outpace technical capabilities but he’s gradually becoming a good rapper. And at the risk of sounding old as shyt it is nice to have a new class of kids injecting some rapping ass rapping into a street rap scene that has so often favored other things.
Creativity: 5/10 Good flows, relative paucity of ideas. The elephant on this cover is the presence of Bibby in the absence of his clearly superior rhyme partner Lil Herb. This feels a little like putting Phife instead of Tip on the 1989 Freshman cover and calls into question either the reach or the scope of the Freshman franchise. Is it possible that Herb turned the cover down? And if not did anyone at XXL get fired when “Chiraq” dropped?
Marketability: 3/10 He could probably sell some mixtapes in a barbershop if it were still 2002.
Sustainability: 5/10 Chicago is not going anywhere.


Jon Connor
Bio: The internet has long suggest that XXL is and always has been nothing more than a promotional front for the Aftermath/Interscope empire and I’ve often tried to dispute that tin foil hat shyt but damn they really aren’t helping my case with this selection.
Age: 29
Hometown: Flint, MI
Label: Aftermath/Interscope
Predecessor: Jay Rock
Twitter Followers: 32.5k
Highest Charting Single: N/A
Skills: 6/10 He sounds like Game on Kendrick juice. Are these those “bars” I’ve been hearing so much about?
Creativity: 2/10 His name is almost the same as the kid from Terminator 2 but he probably doesn’t even own a Public Enemy t-shirt.
Marketability: 5/10 I’ve been doing this long enough now to know that you can’t underestimate the commercial potentiality of a mediocre rapper with a strong promotional push. Assuming this kid doesn’t get Cashised out of the Interscope offices he might could sell a few copies.
Sustainability: 2/10 I’ve already forgotten his name.

[Elision]

Skills: 9/10 The best technical rapper to make this list in at least three years.

edit: and i love how twitter followers is part of the criteria. because being a social extrovert corresponds with musical talent.

[Trimss]

The hate on Connor lol yet he's the best out of all of them

[12characters]

Noz lost

[Steelez]

Noz is one of few guys I can trust when it comes to review or interviews.


he mentioned kendrick too many times though, guess it's pretty clear that he loves him


"3/10 Dude is riding in that Freddie Gibbs lane of token boom bap conservative neanderthal talking head, and with that comes both a narrowness of creative vision and a general sour grapes attitude that will only continue to seep into his middling music. Admittedly i was pretty funny that time he said “Kendrick wears his shorts above his knees” but only until you remember that Kendrick is arguably the greatest rapper of his generation and Troy is a guy who needed to buy a Tony Yayo verse to get radio spins in his own city."

[CanadaPure]

Cashised

Cashis won.

Noz remembers. Ca$his takeover 2015.

[Snakebeast]

Isaiah Rashad
Bio: Alternate timeline Kendrick Lamar in which he is shipped to the south as an orphan and adopted by David Banner.

Jesus fucking christ