A seven minute music video is stupid excessive, but this was also stupid fun. Mashing a short film into your new single is highly permissible when you’re official as fuck. Signed to Priority in high school, snatched up by Roc-A-Fella at 19, Juelz Santana has been in the movie business since State Property 2. He is a natural, in the booth & on camera, born to be a charming bastard with a great gift for talking shit.
Saying that this hook is both lazy & terrible is a lot like saying Juelz Santana is back. His catalog has always been a goldmine of low-effort genius, the work of a man smart enough to know he should keep that to himself. He’s such an entertaining goofball precisely because he’s only playing dumb. (There is far less daylight between Diplomats and Def Jux than you think.)
Then again, this is the same guy who brought a pistol and some oxy to the airport, then decided the best response to getting caught was sprinting out of the building and into traffic. Perhaps it’s not entirely an act. It’s an increasingly small fraternity of American men healthy enough to out-run law enforcement, though, so props due on some good hustle.
The video is genuinely funny, and the product is exactly what it needs to be. The beat is credited to a Danny Blair but the vibe is vintage Heatmakerz. For the record, I’m officially wrong about that: the PR copy assures me this is a “New York drill” beat, but these labels mean little & my ears are not fooled. Isn’t it supposed to be Brooklyn Drill anyway? Did Bobby Schmurda go to jail for nothing? Fun Fact: music journalists can’t keep their own narratives straight because they don’t care about their own bullshit, either.
Juelz Santana, on the other hand, is serious as hell about balling. This is far more than a mandatory wordplay exercise, this is the work of a fan who still gets geeked out in his 40’s, just pure love of the game. I understand that relations between the NBA and the Diplomats have been frosty ever since those Sports, Drugs & Entertainment posters went up, but with Jerry West gone, maybe “SCORE” could get some love from the league next season.
Then again, almost definitely not. Nosferatu imitator and current commissioner Adam Silver has continued the David Stern tradition of keeping black culture safely at arm’s length, and the arm in question belongs to Manute Bol.
But that’s a tale as old as time. Harlem has been creating vital American culture ever since the Great Migration, and seldom gotten much credit for it along the way. That disrespect has never put a visible dent in their stride. Big ups to Ninja Monkey for one of the best music videos I’ve seen this year. Four Dickies.
