On Authenticity Among Up-and-Coming Hip Hop Artists

XV - “Batteries” feat. Trae the Truth (via Keep on Repeat)

Here’s the hook:

Say I ain’t grinding, say I ain’t focused
I say “Okay! I’m reloaded”
I see the top, that’s where I’m going
I’m like “Okay! I’m reloaded”

This song bums me out! I don’t know much about Trae, but XV seems really promising. Neither of them are particularly established yet, but they’re propagating a trend I see a lot among middle-tier emcees¹: they’re doing the Big Star thing, standing on a roof or sitting in the back of a rented Maybach, acting like they’ve made it, but rapping about how they’re on their way to the top. There is a shred of humility in the content but absolutely none in the presentation.

And yes, the dissonance is worse than committing one way or another, because it’s utterly fake. Jay-Z raps about hanging world-class works of art in his bathroom, and the assertion is so ludicrous that rather than bothering, it entertains. I’m tickled, rather than irritated, by his excess, because it’s novel.

It sounds unfair to compare someone like XV to someone like Jay-Z but it’s not about money or power or fame or even talent, really; it’s about imagination.

Here’s the first verse from A$AP Rocky’s “Grown Up:”

Bachelor with no tux, still got my shirt cuffed
Still got my sleeves rolled up and my shirt tucked
Grown up? Sure enough
Sipping on that syrup
Purple Label shit, yeah I wear what I sip
Scarface vision, see my visions on a blimp
And a quarter key will turn a G into a gent
All-purpose flow, we are the great
I’m so Kurtis Blow, and these are the breaks
My Christian Louboutins got nails, give me hammer toes
Niggas get shy when that camera rolls
Drop crotch pants will remind you of them Hammer clothes
All-yellow Phantom, I’m like Yeezy in that amber Rolls
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha,” but who am I kidding?
No way I could afford it so for now I’m just pretending
How these gold diggers digging without a single pot to piss in?
Cause my pockets full of lint and my heart is full of vision
I’m grown

Say what you will about Rocky, but this song is clever. He goes on and on with the super-tired name-a-bunch-of-luxury-brands-to-sound-rich² thing but then subverts the cliché by admitting that he’s not even close to being there yet. He’s daydreaming, but he delivers this idea in an interesting way. It’s good.

I don’t mean to single out XV, by the way, because most not-yet-established rappers seems to be all about this idea³. In fact, XV said this pretty eloquently himself:

Home is where the heart is so I never have to search
But now that everybody’s fly, nobody’s down to earth
And everybody twitters and everybody blogs
But nobody saying shit, they just copy-paste it all
That’s how one person’s opinion becomes everybody’s thoughts
When the blind leads the blind then everyone gets lost
Rappers think they the big cheese, ain’t even made a single
That’s why when I go out, I don’t ever stay to mingle

Did he forget? These guys seems to be struggling to prove that they are worth a listen but I don’t like hip hop when it’s full of money. I like hip hop when it’s interesting.