I’ll admit, I kinda forgot this dude existed. I’ve never been a fan of anyone but Yams from that set, but I do respect Twelvyy as a pure technician of the artform, another NYC cat in the cypher with 100 bars of that brolic bricolage ready to go. His delivery is laid back and his bars are packed tight. They are also highly forgettable, mostly filler by volume, but littered with enough gems to keep him compelling. As ever, “Bronx Zoo” finds him coasting on a stream of consciousness, spitting a kaleidoscope of references, memories & life advice.
Conspicuously, he’s also using a lot of fucking punch-ins for a man of his age & stature. Poor form. By current industry standards, of course, he’s hardly the worst offender I’ll hear this year, but anyone trying to present themselves as A Rapper’s Rapper™ type elite artist should be doing better in the booth. When I first heard a NBA YoungBoy single back in 2020, I was braying big ugly retard laughs for three minutes straight, my blood pressure approaching terminal as I gasped for air. Is this fucking real? It was too much like a parody track, squarely in that uncanny valley where you wonder if the human punchline is in on their own joke or not. They generally ain’t.
“Bronx Zoo” is a million miles away from all that noise. This is a very New York slice of rapping-ass rapping, just a long verse and a half-assed autotune outro. In a business that runs on constant content, cranking out first draft bars is a smart strategy. Whether or not these bars are actually first draft material is between A$AP Twelvyy and God, but if they’re not? That’s only more depressing.
But these are complaints from backstage; nothing I will ever write here matters very much, I just want to see artists aiming higher. To the A$AP faithful, Twelvyy remains a lyrical genius, one of the most under-rated rappers alive right now. It takes all kinds.
Maybe I’m wrong. It’s possible that I am just innately prejudiced against him because of who he is: an adult man who constantly looks startled for no damn reason at all. There are no existing photographs of A$AP Twelvyy looking comfortable. The music business is all about perception, and it’s hard to take apex predator boasting seriously from someone who has the aura of a gazelle, perpetually re-evaluating whether or not to start running away from every new stimulus. If he could just close his eyes 15%, I would feel 85% more comfortable looking at him.
Aesthetics aside, this shit is simply sloppy work. A$AP Twelvyy has a lot of potential but from the beat to the verse to the video, this meal is undercooked. Two Dickies.
