Welcome to Mixdown, an ongoing series where Pitchfork staffers and contributors talk about mixtapes, mixes, and other beat-based ephemera that may not be covered in our reviews section but are worth discussing. Today, Wesley Case, Meaghan Garvey and David Turner talk about Que, the Guys, and Ty Dolla $ign.
Que: Can You Digg It?David Turner: Last year, Atlanta rapper Que had what might have been the first real Migos hit with “Young Nigga”, a song that succeeded by just repeated the title phrase to a point of near meaninglessness. The same happened with the lumbering “OG Bobby Johnson”. He released an EP earlier this year off the strength of that single and he’s back to close out the summer with a new tape, Can You Digg It? Earlier this year when his Who Is Que EP came out, I thought it was too much of the same, even for a six-song project, but this mixtape works. Even his usage of the triplet flow is endearing despite not having much to say, and I think he rocks it better than Offset, Takeoff, or Quavo. Wesley, does this tape place Que back in the same league as Migos, who spent the last year lapping him and most other Atlanta rappers?
Wesley Case: Excuse me for thinking the LeBron-stamped“OG Bobby Johnson” was merely a jam-of-the-week-but-not-next-week, because Can You Digg It? is another example of why it’s dumb to write a young, new artist off too quickly. (I call it #TJE, the Trinidad James Effect.) Que’s latest tape is a marked improvement from the almost one-note Who is Que EP. Dude’s flow isn’t Rhymesayers or anything, but it’s more nimble than those only familiar with “OG Bobby Johnson” might expect. And really, some of these songs are crafted well enough to be on the radio yesterday: “All Y’all”, with its exaggerated Migos-like hook, jackhammers its way into the cranium, and the August Alsina-bolstered “Diamonds” has a ride-out quality that would fit squarely in the faded, sad-with-success pockets of radio playlists. Also, I love “WWYD” as a fun exercise in empathy. What would I do if I saw 100 bricks? (Probably run.) My main gripe here speaks to Atlanta rap’s dominance, which is melding toward oversaturation. So many of these guys are good, but they all clearly inspire and borrow from each other to the point of sounding very similar. On Digg It?, I swore Rich Homie Quan was on “The Youth” and Young Thug was on “Too Much”. I’m not sick of this style by any means, but it’s telling when you’re checking tracklists for features that aren’t actually there. Meaghan, does Que do enough for you to separate himself from his peers and collaborators?
Meaghan Garvey: I’m not really bothered by Que’s overlap with Migos or even how he borrows the implicit vocal pathos of Future or Quan; his running-up-and-down-the-stairs, stutter-step delivery just continually entrances me, even if he doesn’t necessarily have a huge arsenal of tricks up his sleeve. But I will say my favorite moments here are when he deviates from “OG Bobby Johnson” mode a bit: when he softens his edges on “Keep It Real”, and when he goes murder-bop on “Too Much”. (I also appreciate that “Too Much” has a Bobby Johnson—the producer—beat that doesn’t sound like a lesser clone of “OG Bobby Johnson,” finally!) And even though it’s like the 49th great DJ Mustard production of the summer, which makes it a little hard to get too excited, “Rich Problems” is the perfect showcase for his triplet flow. It also has 2 Chainz explaining, “You know they call Target ‘Tar-jay’,” like he’s letting you in on this joke for the first time ever. Which, actually, if the first time I ever heard that joke was from 2 Chainz, it would make a lot of sense.
I think what I like best about Que is how his real life hype has far exceeded his Internet hype. I know this is a distinctly, and annoyingly, New York problem to have, but I feel like so often, a rapper gets talked up on Twitter for two weeks, gets some big-name remix that no one actually wants, and then no one ever speaks of them again. But with Que, even though people on the Internet stopped talking about him after a few weeks, I would still hear “OG Bobby Johnson” everywhere I went for months, and it never stopped making people lose their minds. Having that kind of IRL longevity can be tough if you’re not, like, Drake, and when so much of digesting music happens over the Internet, stuff like that is reassuring.
DT: That extended life of a rap song certainly applies to Que, because the video for “OG Bobby Johnson” came out a year ago and I was still hearing that single on the radio up through March. That is one upside for Que: if one song can find its audience beyond Twitter and Tumblr feeds, his moment of hype can extend beyond this initial burst of fame. And like Wesley mentioned, there are a number of songs—I’m hoping that “Too Much” can be it—that could easily fit on the radio, even if they sound like a number of other artists. But do we want to head out of highways of Atlanta?
MG: You know I’m always down to derail conversations in the direction of Chicago, so here we go: I put a lot of faith into relatively new Chicago duo the Guys last year off the strength of just a handful of songs. They made a gorgeous song about Pokeballs, and that single-handedly sold me; but over the span of their first few tracks, they went from minimal bop to Ice Cube-referencing political boom-bap. That sort of freelance approach isn’t always the best strategy, but it’s definitely intriguing when it’s done well. Recently they put out their second mixtape, Free the Guys, and it’s definitely built around this same “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” mentality. But what really struck me about the tape was how seamlessly (I thought) they integrated pretty thoughtful socio-political topics, along the lines of “New Slaves” but further fleshed out, something that I think, as someone who gravitates more towards “bangers” and aimless experimentation than anything I’d consider “conscious rap,” I don’t usually go for. And you know, there are bangers here too, but this tape had me re-evaluating why I don’t usually prioritize rap with a “message” anymore—especially in a month where, I think, a lot of us who listen to music for a living have found it difficult to invest much effort in talking about how the new Wiz Khalifa album sucks or whatever when there are legitimately awful things going on in real life. I don’t know, were you all as won over by this as I was, or has it just been a weird few weeks?
DT: It certainly has been a weird—well, terrible—few weeks. Part of me really appreciates Free the Guys because as much as I’d like to just shut out the world and listen to whatever stoned thoughts Wiz Khalifa have to say, I don’t feel I can do that. But at the same time this tape felt hard for me to listen to for that exact reason. “Rain” made me think of Chance the Rapper’s “Acid Rain”, which was one of my favorite songs last year, but was also a fucking punch to the gut. This tape as a whole—not excluding the larks like “Leggings”—felt a bit too heavy for me to enjoy it. After a week of staying up at night stressed out over Ferguson, only to wake up to even more crazy shit happening, the downtrodden love song of “Tell Me This” felt too much—if love isn’t real, what is the point? But I also felt tense walking the street after being so caught up in the last couple of weeks, so maybe the Guys will speak to me once I can exhale a little more once I get a chance to process all that they’re ready to discuss. Wesley, were the Guys as self-serious as I thought or is the world just bringing me too down?
WC: You two are on-point with Free the Guys touching on ugly American truths. I haven’t had a song devastate me in the way “Rain” did in a long time. There’s an obvious push-and-pull between a father recognizing the proximity of street life and aspirations for life beyond it: “I got two daughters so I gotta put the guns down” is immediately followed by “but just in case I die today …” And really, the entire song is worded in a beautifully plain and raw way, from the hook (“Don’t want anybody to see my tears so I hope it rains”) to even the spoken outro (“I can’t even go over a certain speed limit without feeling a certain type of tension in my legs”). That last line is actually a reference to car accidents, but in light of Ferguson and the general climate in the country, “Rain” feels like catharsis in the face of bleakness. At the very least, I hope it’s cathartic for whoever needs it to be.
To switch gears a bit, let me finish with an actual note I took halfway through the tape: “FINALLY, THE ODE TO LEGGINGS LEGGINGS DESERVE.”
Ty Dolla $ign: Sign LanguageWC: A man who certainly loves leggings, or maybe just getting women out of them, is Ty Dolla $ign, who recently released the 11-track Sign Language. Simply put, I’m not sure there’s another artist I find so compulsively listenable right now. So let’s start with what jumps out first: For me, it’s the disorientating production and the album’s unpredictable twists and turns musically. Like, “Drank N Cranberry” sounds so dazed and off-kilter, in a house-of-mirrors-on-molly type of way. I wouldn’t classify it as pleasurable listening, but perhaps more importantly, it signifies Ty is in complete control. And while the results don’t nearly soar out of the speakers like some of his top-shelf hits (“My Cabana”, “Or Nah”, Wiz’s “You and Your Friends”), I felt heartened by Ty’s obvious autonomy. This is a strange record—just listen to the drum programming on “Like I Do”—but I’m not mad. Only Ty could pull off an absurd, drunk-at-the-piano ode to anatomy like “Stretch”. OK, not only—The-Dream, where are you? Anyway, what are you two feeling?
MG: I mean, there is an “Ed Sheeran Interlude”, if that is any indication of how bizarre this tape is. God bless Ty Dolla $ign, man—he’s nudged his sound into the mainstream (“Loyal,” which I still hate to love, is basically Chris Brown doing Ty karaoke), but he’s obviously nowhere near complacent. I found some of the first few tracks a little jarring—“Dead Presidents” and “Lord Knows” aren’t the pillowy cabana tunes I crave from him—but I still was pretty fascinated watching these songs warp kaleidoscopically through all those weird interludes and like, late-period Noah "40" Shebib-style mid-track transitions. I kinda liked the interludes on their own more than the crazily bloated features tacked onto every song, though; pretty sure no one would miss those Big Sean or Casey Veggies verses. I also really want to believe that I’m not just imagining the subtle riffs on “Loyal” on “Intro” that flip the script onto clowning scrub dudes. David, you sipping Ty’s molly-water here, or nah?
DT: Naaaah. I love Ty on hooks so much and think “Paranoid” is one of the better song of this entire decade, but my fandom dries up quickly for his full-length project. This tape I think finally made it click as to why. I don’t actually like the on-record persona of Ty—in interviews he sound chill enough—because with few exceptions I find him loathsome and creepy, which is only further exasperated when I have to hear him for a full-length project, even at only 11 songs. My favorite track here is “Lord Knows”, because it has two rap verses—not great ones at that—that keep Ty relegated to the track’s periphery. When the the next song is called “Stretch” I just know I shouldn’t give it a listen, but I did and, well, I should’ve listened to my original instincts. But even if I don’t like Ty as a solo artist he is by far rap’s best hook writer and this tape does nothing to make me question those talents. Now if only I could get a supercut of his 2014 hooks.
MG: Let’s bring it back to something I think we can all agree on: in all seriousness, Wiz Khalifa really does fucking suck. How are you gonna ruin a song that sounds like The Avalanches gone ratchet?
WC: It’s probably too much to hope Ty’s proper debut stays Taylor Gang free, but on the bright side, we didn’t have to sit through a Berner verse on Sign Language. On second thought, maybe I would have preferred that to Big Sean’s. Anyway, my Tweet of the week goes to the homie Felipe Delerme, who summed up Ty’s most underrated gift. Ty, if you’re reading: Choose those features carefully!