New York City has never needed champions. Mecca is the sun around which all other scenes & cities spin; nobody has to advocate for Ground Zero.
That’s never stopped anyone from crushing themselves under the weight of putting all five boroughs on their slender shoulders. (Word to Troy Ave!) The latest contestant, once again: PRO ERA headliner Joey Bada$$, who is clearly aiming for a big, splashy and controversial return to The Rap Game. The actual product falls far short of that target.
Conductor Williams had an uneven track record when he first starting getting Griselda placements, but in recent years the man hasn’t missed once. (He also has one of the best Youtube channels in the business.) This beat is another beautiful broken soul canvas with the low end cranked so hard it becomes a completely different animal. This should have been an anthemic heat-rock of a single. That failed to happen, but it’s in the booth where the problems really start.
“The Ruler’s Back” is a short, forgettable song full of questionable claims. Especially when Nas is not only still alive, but releasing more music lately than … well, Joey Bada$$. Nasir has dropped three albums since Joey’s last effort, the sprawling & undercooked 2000. When you’re getting lapped by legends in public, any claims about being “king of NY” are dead on arrival.
Armchair managers in rap journalism are a cancer upon the culture, verily, but it’s hard to avoid asking questions here. Who signed off on this half-baked video? Shouldn’t the King of New York be shooting his opening shots in Brooklyn instead of some nondescript upstate rent-a-mansion? 2 Chainz has a bigger lawn and he lives in fucking Atlanta.
These are “local rapper” optics and it’s awkward. Inexplicably so. (Waqas Ghani has definitely shot better videos for the PRO ERA team before, too.)
Joey’s appeal has always been mostly energy so it’s unfair to critique his bar game too much. Keeping it real often leads to safe, stale product, but all this over-reaching only emphasizes how lightweight his pen game can be. “I rap like I draw pentagrams and kill chickens” is simply corny, but rhyming that with “dick lickin’” is unforgivable. Still, when your competition is guys like Dave East and Lil Tjay, I can’t fault Joey for taking it easy.
I can fault him for taking his place in the Universe for granted, though. Anyone aiming this big should sound far hungrier than this lukewarm hot dog of a single. There are a thousand rappers in NYC who could demolish these sixteens without breaking a sweat. Light work. Either he’s really this delusional or this is really the best he’s got. Either way, it’s an underwhelming-ass comeback so far. Two Dickies.
