Rappers are measured as much by their business acumen as their musical talent-- to paraphrase Jay-Z, their ability to be not just businessmen but businesses, man. In some cases the work of rapping comes secondary to the work of selling the rapper. I'll never forget Ghostface's mercenary stage banter at 2008's Pitchfork Music Festival: "Chicago's one of our biggest markets!" Atlanta's Rich Kidz, who make a flamboyant hybrid of R&B and goon-rap, are so steeped in the art of business that they're half-removed from the business of art. "I got no purpose," Skool Boi raps on Straight Like That 3's "Kool on the Low." "I go rock out these shows/ And fuck these hoes for good promotion." Whether or not he's "good" at sex or even enjoys it is somehow irrelevant. In Rich Kidz' world, sex is networking and horizontal integration isn't just a management strategy but a double entendre.
Compared to February's Everybody Eat Bread, STL3 rests more heavily on rap, which is too bad for a few reasons, primarily that they aren't great rappers and that their ability to incorporate straight-up R&B is what made songs like "My Life" so "I See You" so great to begin with. Like any good salesmen they put their best material out front. If you would like to understand what this group does well quickly, there's "Ms. Do It All", a song with a sharp hook, simple lyrics, the tempo of a ballad, and the heft of a battle march. (The song was produced by DJ Spinz, now-famous for Ca$h Out's "Cashin Out".) Whether the song's central image-- the woman that can (and does) do it all-- is supposed to praise women or put them down is anyone's guess. In some ways, Rich Kidz are like modern-day versions of the 19th-century English dandies: straight men who are obsessed with their own appearances, alternately condescending and reverent toward women, and aspiring to aristocracy even though they were born somewhere much lower.
"The female question" gets some unfortunate answers on "Housewife", "Fantasy", and "AC Coolin'." Part of what makes Rich Kidz endearing is that it's difficult to imagine them actually being assholes-- they act hard on tape because they feel like they need to to sell records. In the long run, it's possible that they don't, but the culture they're coming from-- as written about recently by Jon Caramanica in the New York Times' T Magazine-- is one with what seem like pretty localized standards of morality. In any case, it's a look that seems uncomfortable on them-- and ultimately less interesting than the one they assume on "Ms. Do It All" anyhow, regardless of whatever vague demographic that song is aimed for.
Things pick up toward the end. The Future collaboration "Back It Up" works pretty well in part because it's delightful to hear Future's creepily insistent robot voices next to Kaelub and Skool Boi's still rapping like they sort of can't believe they're actually on the microphone. Future also offers the tape's saddest lyric, and maybe the one most specific to Rich Kidz' world: "We can't save her, so we pay for her."
Rich Kidz aren't great rappers, but they are great salesmen, and like great salesman, what they sell isn't as important as the confidence with which they sell it. "Check out my ice, I'm so icy!," "We go lingo crazy!," "I got to clean out the garage later/ now we can fuck in the garage, baby!," and my personal favorite, "It's pajama time!"-- these are lines that other writers might cut but that Rich Kidz deliver with an enthusiasm so shameless the burden to reject them falls entirely on the listener. In short, they are charming as hell, or at least can be. Over the summer, they signed to Columbia Records, a move that could either stifle what seems like a productive independent career or foster it. That STL3 is spotty is fine in part because it's free. This is a strategy any salesman understands: Hook them with the right sample and you'll have them for life.
