Whenever Copywrite pops back up, it’s always interesting. Pete Nelson has been having one wild-ass ride through adulthood over the past…well, it’s been a long time. As we lurch into the flames & bloodshed of Summer 2024, he’s out running a promo camapign for The Last Supper, his new album on Man Bites Dog Records. He’s been rolling with MBDR for a long time now; it’s crazy to think that God Save The King dropped over a decade ago. It’s even crazier to think that Copywrite, of all the motherfuckers from Ohio, got Roc Marciano and Casual on a song together. (No, really.)
Twenty years is a long time to be fighting for food in the indie rap ecosystem. During that span, Copy has been battling, primarily with himself. The punchline king of Columbus managed to avoid being reduced to someone else’s punchline after his iconic knockout loss to Icon the Mic King at that one Scribble Jam way back when. (Made all the more hilarious by the fact Michael King is an extremely nice, polite dude.)
Copywrite has also been wrestling with his own legacy. While the man is justly renowned for his brutal one-liners and world class shit-talking, what really cemented his rep was “June,” an RJD2-produced tribute to his dead father. The man is never more electric than when he turns his weapons on himself, and for this single, he’s channeling exactly that kind of raw live-wire confessional. The content is nothing new, but the delivery is: his stutter-stop flow patterns are an undeniably impressive technical workout. It’s also a 10 pound blivet bursting under the strain of 20 pounds of product.
Still, credit is due for an artist still pushing himself & exploring new facets of the artform, especially considering how many emcees from that heady Def Jux era expect to be treated as legends today for what they did in 2005. Copywrite has been out here in the fucking trenches. And to think, he could have retired like Yak Ballz to some cushy nothingburger VP sinecure at the House of Bronfman!
Speaking of retirement, we’ve got another phoned-in feature from Slug, whose past decade has been a living experiment in monetized dad rap. He decided to cut his part for the video dressed up like Terry Richardson, which is resonant. Like Nas or Big Boi, Sean Daley is one of the few rappers who can sell out big rooms packed full of 2-3 generations worth of stage eyes. He’s a happily married dad now, but the reality-distorting effects of Atmosphere’s whitebread success story will continue to be felt for years to come. (Just consider the fact that “Slug is my favourite rapper of all time after Tupac” is an actual, existing sentence.)
Atmosphere tours on performing The Hits, but their actual album output over the past decade has been something else entirely, more experimental than ever. It’s often boring as fuck, too. Few rappers have the economy of power to sustain the kind of exacting minimalism that makes Ka or Mach-Hommy work. It’s not just the flat delivery, though: Slug’s pen game has notably suffered every damn time I’ve heard him in the past five years. He was always a “first draft bars” kind of rapper, wandering through broken metaphors, sounding like a great drunken freestyle in some kitchen at 3 am. He also built that into a brand that’s still moving merch to this day.
It’s good to see Pete Nelson doing good. For all his justified angst & rap-hands mania, the man has a life, a dog, and some semblance of peace. He has surely earned it all. This here music video, though? It’s just awkward, bud. It would have been a stronger song without the feature. Two Dickies.
