Flint, Michigan’s flourishing rap scene was built on duos. Particularly the smooth operating combination of YN Jay and Louie Ray and Rio Da Yung OG and RMC Mike’s unhinged team-ups. Together and solo, these four rappers have taken up most of the bandwidth, understandably since their personalities are huge and their singles centered around extremely detailed and darkly funny punchlines, heart-racing beats, and shape-shifting flows have come to define the city’s sound. But there’s a new pair with a bid to be spoken about in the same breath, GrindHard E and YSR Gramz.
Both E and Gramz have been floating around the Flint scene for a while. It was said that Rio and Mike started by laying down records at E’s place and Gramz emerged years ago with two-handers alongside local rapper KrispyLife Kidd. Though whenever E and Gramz jumped on a track with one of the big four, they often felt like afterthoughts: Gramz’s monotone delivery is frequently drowned out by Jay’s charisma on their shared singles and on E’s 2019 collab mixtape with Rio his punchlines don’t have the same level of imagery. Those weaknesses are still glaring, but their joint tape finds a sweet spot by leaning into the competitiveness of being a duo.
GrindHard E vs. YSR Gramz is conceptualized like a boxing match—each of the 12 songs is titled after a round, and instead of separating their verses, they’re intertwined to simulate the back-and-forth feel of a fierce prizefight. This theme may seem misleading considering they’re not exactly going toe to toe through battle rap-style punchlines, but instead by who can string together the hardest non-sequiturs or create the most vivid drug-dealing fantasy. “Round One” starts things out swinging, you can feel the sense of them trying to one-up the other with the best anecdote. They’re both getting ripped off. Gramz smacked a dude for shorting him on a deal. And E is unaware that trading drugs for meals at Applebee’s is bad business.
Throughout the tape this energy hardly wanes, each getting their moments in the spotlight. Over the pounding beat on “Round Six,” Gramz gets off a hilarious run of family-related vignettes: he clowns a guy for having no privacy because he lives with his mom; he does a deal while watching Lion King with his son; he labels himself the opposite of Tyrese in Baby Boy because he beat his stepfather’s ass. Then on the Enrgy-produced “Round Four,” he disgustedly raps, “You the type of nigga ask a bitch ‘Where my hug at?’” Meanwhile, E is much more exciting to listen to technically. His flow is high-pitched, erratic, and sometimes the words leave his mouth so fast that he fumbles through them and keeps going anyway. On “Round Seven,” I wish his tales were more lively but the flow has a new wrinkle every time he tags back in. Similarly on “Round Eight,” E trips up mid-verse and lets out a frustrated scream, then as the song moves on his delivery gets increasingly sloppy in the best way.
The final three songs on the tape are unnecessary, though. Aside from the titles, the format is dropped as guests join in for a few run-of-the-mill Michigan posse cuts. They’re not memorable or creative, especially “Round Ten” which is marred by Gramz casually dropping a homophobic slur—leaning on the ease of edginess instead of forming a well-thought-out punchline. Nevertheless, the first nine songs are consistently explosive. And even if the mixtape is missing the knockout or haymaker you might expect from a great boxing match, Flint has another duo worth talking about.
