Young Dro & Yung LA – “Excuse Me“

from Black Boy Swag White Boy Tags (Mixtape, 2009)

Worst mixtape with the best name? Fueled by the (relative) success of “Ain’t I“, Black Boy White Boy teams the mighty Dro with the weakest rapper on Grand Hustle – Yung LA. For those not keeping score, LA is the label’s recent fruity pebble punk rock signee. He raps like a more effeminate Shawty Lo, and, as we are frequently reminded on the tapes interludes, wears “spikes on his arms.” Right.

As a label limbo’d great rapper who is basically doomed to be a one hit wonder, Dro is exactly the type who should be making some sort of grand We Got It For Cheap type artistic tape. Imagine him rapping about tilapia and hexadecimal whips and tokyo diamonds and Jumanji over old RZA or Organized or Don Cannon instrumentals. Instead he’s riding here with LA on some uninspired thundercat rap bull, both way too proud to be acting like white people. It’s like 80 minutes of “Party Like A Rockstar” except with less compelling or relevant production.

Which wouldn’t be a huge problem if the dominant half of the duo was actually rapping to his potential. Best Thang Smokin’ wasn’t exactly a conceptual or production triumph, but Dro was rhyming so damn well that you didn’t notice. Now dude doesn’t even sound like he wants to be there. His lust for language has deteriorated some and his mumbled energy is just mumbled mumbly now. When his once inspired chromatic metaphors and bizarre cultural references do pop up they seem almost predictable. His rhyme placement is less frequently internalized. Only on “Excuse Me” (pronounced “Excurz Me”?) does he come anywhere close to his former glories – talking about hammerhead sharks and riding with Punky Brewster.

But don’t take my word for it. Download the entire tape, if you insist.

Tags: Grand Hustle, Young Dro, Yung LA

This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 12:17 pm and is filed under Atlanta. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.