Some quick housekeeping before we get into the post: This is the final Friday edition of the Listen Up, Nerds newsletter that will be available publicly or to free subscribers. If you’re into the playlist or what I have to say about music, please consider throwing me a few bones a month and keeping this machine running.
This playlist is a lot of southern rap that I associate with good times. It’s all older but I don’t think any of it has aged poorly. I think there’s a lot of pressure that comes with the new year and while I find introspection to be invaluable, it’s best to take the night off. I’m sober now but I absolutely intend on being in places where I can shut my frontal lobe down and rap along to “Larry Bird.”
I will call attention to one quirky song on here, “Bite Down,” by Boyz N Da Hood. The song itself is a woozy ode to pills. It’s a thumping and claustrophobic track that sounds like you’re getting waterboarded to Pastor Troy songs in an Atlantan version of Gitmo. This is the kind of song that you need to hear while a little too drunk in a club to get the full effect. It should be nothing but red lighting inside and you should lose track of your friends in a sea of strangers as soon as the chorus hits.
This song is lyrically unpleasant but it rocks. Pure lizard brain music. Turn off all of your critical thinking skills while listening. Everyone is rapping about substance abuse issues and worrying experiences while high. The song opens with the chorus, which is weird for songs of this era that were not helmed by Soulja Boy, and that chorus opens with Gorilla Zoe saying, “Me neither, I can’t lie.” You do not start a conversation with, “Me neither.” That is a response. It makes no sense, but again, this song is about being fucked up beyond comprehension.
Even crazier, this song is the lead single off of the new Boyz N Da Hood album in 2007. It is not a rational act, and neither was Boyz N Da Hood. It’s a weird project when you look at it almost two decades later. I’m trying to write this whole scenario in a way that makes sense and I’m still asking myself why Diddy thought this would work: Diddy put together a gangsta rap version of a boy band. He took four guys who were relatively unknown (Jody Breeze, Big Gee, Big Duke, and Young Jeezy), put them together on an album for Bad Boy Records, then had them collaborate on several songs with Yung Joc, who Diddy felt was destined for stardom over any of the other four.
This bet did not pay off. “Dem Boyz,” the debut Boyz N Da Hood song, came out shortly before Young Jeezy’s first solo single, “And Then What.” As much as I liked, “Dem Boyz,” when I was 14, that song is no match for a call-and-response hook with Mannie Fresh. Jeezy’s debut album for Def Jam, Thug Motivation 101: Let’s Get It, released right after the Boyz N Da Hood record. TM101 is considered a classic debut record. That album sounds like everything that came after it for almost three years, but it’s impossible to replicate. For one, nobody sounds like Jeezy. He’s got this raspy drawl that is entirely his own. Joc was the closest but he does not have the trap Tom Waits thing going on that Jeezy does. His voice cuts through anything delicate on the melodic end of the record. Every song features loud-as-shit, almost industrial snares that were the blueprint for attention-grabbing beats.
It’s not like Diddy didn’t see coke rap blowing up, but he bet on the wrong guys. Yung Joc excelled as a ringtone rapper but Joc isn’t Jeezy. Nitti isn’t Shawty Redd. After Jeezy left Boyz N Da Hood, Diddy recruited Gorilla Zoe to take his place and that’s where we find ourselves on “Bite Down.” There’s what sounds like an uncredited Jeezy appearance on this track in the chorus ad-libs, but I’m unable to confirm that anywhere. Maybe I’m just blowed. It’s a confusing and strange and unforgettable song but I keep coming back to it and throwing it on playlists. Every verse has lines that stuck to the walls of my brain for years, including a particularly crude line about the hole of a tuba.
All of that is to say this: This is a song about getting blitzed to the point of incomprehension and it benefits from a lack of critical analysis, much like every year does. You’re already here. What good is looking back going to do? Turn on, tune in, drop out, get drunk, get high, pop a bean, bite down.
Happy New Year!