Brooklyn drill rapper Bizzy Banks comes from a Trinidadian-American family in East New York, a prideful neighborhood at the outskirts of the borough. A short drive or train ride from East New York and things quickly change, as money gets pumped into Brooklyn, but the low-income areas remain the same. It’s like living behind a glass wall in your own hometown, with wealth and good fortune shoved in your face but no way to access it. In the best Brooklyn drill music, you can feel that tension in the rappers’ voices. Why shouldn’t they be able to have nice things and live good, too? It’s right there. And if, nobody is going to help them, they’ll figure it out, by any means necessary.
Since his 2019 breakout single “Don’t Start,” the 21-year-old Bizzy Banks has been capturing this inner battle. Days spent getting fly and tipsy and scoring quick cash will hopefully make up for the violence, trauma, and struggle that haunts him. On his debut project GMTO Vol. 1, he never outright comments on a changing Brooklyn, but you feel it. “Look, serving these fiends for what?/So I can have J’s when I step in the club,” he says on “Top 5,” maybe the best song of his young career. Earlier on the track he raps, “I was raised by the block/I was nine when my father got knocked/I was twelve when my brother got knocked/I was thirteen when I let off that shot,” and it feels like he’s trapped in a world where prosperity is around the corner for everyone except him. This tone is the mixtape’s through line. On “Heartfroze,” weak crooning doesn’t take away from heavy reflections on the paranoia and the pressure he feels on a day-t0-day basis.
Similar to Pop Smoke, the underlying weight of Bizzy Banks’ music doesn’t stop the party. On “Extra Sturdy,” an upbeat Bizzy glides over a beat from A Lau—a Harry Fraud collaborator who has helped diversify the sound of Brooklyn drill production—that sounds like you’re stuck in a funhouse at the circus. Then, there’s “Neo,” where, dated The Matrix references aside, Bizzy’s sharp flow lands somewhere between the rapid-fire G Herbo delivery he grew up on and the stop-start swagger of some of Brooklyn drill’s signature hits (see: “Big Drip”). And, “Cool Off” is ready to ring off at the end-of-the-summer backyard parties throughout New York; he balances a high-intensity verse with a calm and catchy hook.
Though, Bizzy Banks runs into the same problems nearly every Brooklyn drill rapper—except Pop—has faced on their debut mixtapes. Despite the fact that he has one of the better ears in the subgenre for production, there are still some duds: “Quarantine Freestyle” and “Quarantine Freestyle, Pt. 2,” feature the type of routine drill production that can be found any day on the Raps and Hustles YouTube page. Then, he gets poisoned by the common, misguided belief that drill rappers have to learn how to make music other than drill. Which leads to “Hold You,” an unbearable attempt at a J.I the Prince of NY-type club record, and “Beautiful,” a bizarre interpolation of Jesse McCartney’s “Beautiful Soul” and one of 2020’s most unsettling love songs.
But the peaks of GMTO Vol. 1 are high enough to overlook the parts that don’t work. On, “Don’t Start Pt. 2,” the sequel to his breakout song, Bizzy raps empathically “These niggas must think it’s really just music,” feelings he’s been holding in for years are being poured into a single verse. It’s this urgency that unites all the drill scenes, from Chicago to the UK to Brooklyn. Bizzy Banks is going to have all of the fun of a 21-year-old, even as the system works against him.
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