This beat is fucking terrible. That assessment is not performative obscenity, but a necessary adjective. Whoever DJ Profluent is, they have serious connections and questionable taste. Getting a lineup like this over such a corny, distracting piano fragment is perhaps the most baffling move I have seen this year.
This is the sound of a sample being chopped by someone with no sense of harmony, rhythm or feel. I cannot over-emphasize how offended I am by the amateur laziness here.
That said, the drums absolutely slam. The contrast between the two elements is total. To the point where I have to assume that this guy is either 1) a recording engineer who knows how to make shit sound great but is still learning how to make great shit, or 2) just doing the drag and drop shuffle from some Griselda-approved Beat Butcha sample pack. Either way, props due. You could have simply muted the piano and improved this beat by a factor of ten, though. Lessons for next time!
That same core fault is reflected in the lineup itself: imagine thinking that a joint with Conway and Spesh needed an assist from Dave East, one of the most boring East Coast rappers alive. I know I’m objectively wrong about this, since East is co-signed by both Nas and Meth, but he’s never once impressed me. A perfectly competent rapper with a great voice, his actual lyrics always feel like second-hand goods, similar to how The Game builds entire verses out of quoting other rappers. It’s reverent, sure, but there’s almost nothing there past the references.
As Real Yeti Rap has noted before, there are two versions of Conway the Machine: the hungry as hell Reject, and the leftover bars paid feature. This is the latter. Even when he’s selling b-roll, he’s one of the best doing it, so no complaints. No surprise, 38 Spesh washes everyone. He is one of the most under-rated names of the past decade, a rapper-producer who excels at both and never half-stepped once. Dave East remains Dave East, the substandard sum of his better influences.
Talk about fumbling the bag. God damn. This was a Frankenstein feature failure, a pointless music video, and an utterly blown opportunity. In an era overflowing with incredible, innovative production in every last schismatic subgenre of hip hop & her ten thousand bastard children, this is one of the worst beats I heard this year from anyone. Two Dickies.
