Hip Hop’s Extremely Official 50th Anniversary was a crude, awkward scene, yet it also brought us a ton of welcome comebacks. There has been a whole wildfire worth of old school legends re-appearing with some serious heat, far hungrier than they have to be. For my crisply folded money, Redman’s 2024 joint Muddy Waters Too stands as one of the best album sequel cash-grab hot messes in recent memory.
Part of that is simply because he’s an all-time emcee: he has been clever, funny and dope with total consistency for decades now, a catalog on par with Black Thought, Scarface, Method Man or even Ghostface himself. Well, almost.
On “Dynomite,” as with most of the album, Redman explodes out the gate, a martial artist with a trademark flow. No matter the subject, a verse from The Doc is an attempted party as much as a rap performance. He is fundamentally a loud-mouth first, a class clown. He just happens to have brilliant flow schemes and genuinely funny punchlines, too.
I was expecting to rate this lower, back before I realized Sheek Louch was going to floss quite so hard. Aside from a couple futuristic references, this verse could have been unearthed from a lost D-Block mixtape joint. Runs like this were why I could never write him off, even though he was so often overshadowed on wax by the rest of his crew. His sixteen here is perfect rooftop rap, the gleefully creative menace that made NYC albums so much voyeuristic fun in the 90’s.
About that. As much as this song comes off like an upbeat celebration of the old school, it’s also a deeply sad slice of nostalgia. For all their boasts about ending the careers of less capable competitors, those days are long gone. As Redman acknowledges here, he still can’t get radio play, even with an album full of catchy bangers & a packed cast of guest features.
Perhaps it’s for the best that the rap gods themselves cannot pass judgment on the artists that follow them, or least not outside of poorly produced VladTV spots, or drunk rants on Instagram. It would be a very different world if the guild of Old Head Rappers had a kiri-sute gomen style blank check to actually murder young artists for aesthetic offenses, but I’m not sure it would be a better one.
“Dynomite” is a strong single over an average beat, and it’s great to see both of these artists still shining on the mic in 2026. But let’s be real: by their own standards, this is light work, a summer single afterthought in any era. Four Dickies. That’s a nod to their actual performances here, not their stature in the game. Simply having fun with it goes a long way in this line of work.
