His music is easy to consume a lot of because his writing is so consistently compelling, so when he raps of chasing after bags and watching dudes cuff their girls out of the corner of his eye as they prepare to walk past him, there’s an allure to it. The things embraced in his songs are the same luxuries of life I occasionally indulge in (though to a much smaller degree): Weed, Chevys, girls from out of town. Most of it is because of his stellar writing, short stories packed with imagery delivered in a distinct, stoned New Orleans drawl, but part of it is due to my ability to relate. Independent of discarded edible wrappers and extinguished half-ounces of atomic blueberry kush, I’ve listened to a lot of Curren$y in the past year. I think being stoned heightened my senses enough to pay more attention. That’s not to say you have to be stoned to understand it. “Cut the check or we gon’ cut your fucking bungee cord.” “Bad bitch, ‘bout to swallow all my stress for me!”īecoming a regular consumer of reefer obviously helped me really appreciate Curren$y’s writing. This is to say nothing of how many times I’ve rapped along with Wayne’s outstanding verse on “Fat Albert,” star-making if it had come from a young talent, and arguably the veteran’s most sterling rapping in a decade. Don’t you see a fiftysomething black dude, graying beard, wearing sunglasses inside(!) a dank jazz bar? And I’m not talking “dank” as in “a scuzzy bar reeking of cigarettes.” I’ve had daytime drives through Downtown Tacoma-with the THC from a homemade weed cookie thickening my bloodstream-getting lost in the psychedelic synths and stoned riding music of “Inspiration.” In 2016, I drove around Tacoma on sunny afternoons and late summer nights blaring the saxophones of “Vibrations” accompanied by a bassline that only can be described as “fucking cool.” Seriously. But his music is a world I didn’t willfully immerse myself in until last year’s Carrolton Heist, produced entirely by undoubtedly my favorite beatmaker of the past decade, the Alchemist. Any kind of rap fan who argues Curren$y isn’t a dope MC at face value is fooling themselves. I listened to the first two installments of Pilot Talk, Covert Coup, Weekend at Burnies, and a few other of his more heralded releases when they were new. That is the risk I take.Ĭurren$y was always one of those artists whose work I appreciated more than I liked. There’s a very good chance by the time this feature is published, it will already be outdated thanks to a new release cropping up. It’s like if Robert Pollard hotboxed an eighth every day before lunch and started kicking raps instead of drinking gallons of beer while doing windmills on his guitar. There aren’t enough hours in the day to do what I’ve gotta do to earn money, spend time with the people I care about, climb the mountains and sing the songs I wanna sing, and legitimately absorb all the music Curren$y has produced while staying current with the music he continues to produce. Before the extensive obsession with his music which led to just flat-out admitting he’s now one of my favorite rappers, I was intimidated to dive in. There are a lot of rap fans-obsessive rap fans, the type that visit this site daily-daunted by the task of still keeping up with Curren$y’s music. TEQUILA SUNRISE, SEVEN O’CLOCK THIS MORNING Douglas Martin is associated with the pot like gumbo.