When Lou Mackey sent me this video, I assumed that was a recommendation. As it turns out, he was actually asking me to stop for a moment so that he could use my boots & pantslegs to scrape some dogshit off his shoes.
Prior to pressing play, I thought that NF might have evolved into something interesting & new. The kid has been an anomaly for a long time, a high-charting “Christian” rapper whose faith has always been curiously absent from his actual albums. Nonetheless, the boy moves units in an era where most major artists are faking streams. He has mustered a successful, touring career with almost zero mention from Our Extremely Online Rap Discourse.
Every Christian worships in their own way, but allow me to throw some stones. Brothers & Sisters: If you spend some time listening to NF, you’ll find his relationship with the almighty provides him with no purpose, no answers, no comfort, and no validation. For this, he turns to the same crass materialism as his secular competition, song after song. Pride goeth before a hit single, and greed will never go out of style here in America.
“I just want to sign a record deal,” he half-sings in the same studied poses G-Eazy and Post Malone trained in, “maybe buy a house up in the hills.” That’s off “When I Grow Up,” another flawlessly done music video that spotlights NF’s major assets. He is a hyperactive freak, a class clown goofball & a natural actor. He’s also got so much social anxiety you have to wonder if the kid buried bodies somewhere shallow.
He is a perfect pop product, an everyman who always wants to win, but never feels like all his winning is enough. That’s why he’s so relentlessly relatable: an affluent adult child, more free than most human beings in history could imagine, yet haunted by voices in his own head, paralyzed by nothing remotely real. He’s just like us!
Any reasonable person would expect a turn, a twist, some sign of self-awareness that every single second of this song & video are a Disney Channel awkward rendition of Marshall Mathers karaoke. Nothing like that happens, but I must credit the man with being a better dancer than his idol. NF makes the most of his OCD mania on camera, throwing himself into his takes, doing his goofy little stunts. That charm is killed dead by how depressing it all is, though: the sets, the extras, the time, the money, all of it so this boring dude could make his dream version of “The Real Slim Shady.” That shit was stupid the first time, too.
NF is at the height of his long, cynical career, and this is really all he’s got. Real Yeti Rap is not buying. I consider “MOTTO” to be closer to “Do The Bartman” grade novelty songs than any kind of actual white rap music on par with Haystak or Vanilla Ice. Zero Dickies.
