One of the most surprising mixtapes of 2012 was made by a Flatbush teenager named Jo-Vaughn Scott a.k.a. Joey Bada$$, an Edward R. Murrow High School student who channeled Native Tongues-style rap music with a deceptively sharp edge while heading up the intriguing Pro Era collective. Simply put, the kid could rap. No matter how much his flows echoed the work of his chosen style’s well-entrenched pioneers (Mos Def, Common, Q-Tip, Doom), his skills were such that 1999 was a fresh, welcome spin on well-worn subject matter.
Since that initial excitement, a lot has happened. In December, one of Joey’s best friends, Pro Era’s Capital STEEZ, tragically took his own life amid a storm of strange rumors, tweeting “The end” the night he committed suicide. Around the same time as STEEZ’s death, Joey turned down an offer to sign with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation imprint, later saying it would take a $3 million dollar advance to sign him (A$AP Rocky, who rose to prominence at roughly the same age, reportedly got that figure from RCA). All the drama pulls down Summer Knights, a record that mines the same bank of 90s rap influences but does so with a more negative, fuck-the-world mentality. The enthusiastic momentum that buoyed 1999 is missing, and Summer Knights is much cloudier proposition.
Even imbued with a darker tint than his debut mixtape, the touchpoints often feel clumsy. It starts with the lyrics: “Somehow the rap game reminds me of the trap game/ In fact is the exact same, and these tracks is my crack ‘caine,” raps Joey on “Sweet Dreams”. Knotty lines like “Fulfill your needs with similes non similar/ Spit that unfamiliar, put that on familia” (“Hillary $wank”) amount to nicely rapped nonsense. There’s much talk of “similes and verbs”, “metaphysics”, and there are direct homages: “Sorry Bonita” chops up A Tribe Called Quest’s spacey classic “Bonita Applebum”, and there’s a song called “Word Is Bond”. It’s one thing to bat around references, ping-ponging them in a way that riffs on the established themes and vocabulary of rap music. But the approach feels off. Take “Death of YOLO”, a song built off a promising, darkly funny concept-- the protagonist of the song is dead, having taken YOLO too far. Why deliver it with a straight face?
All that said, Summer Knights features strong production. If I had to pick a Native Tongues record to compare it to, it'd be the back half of A Tribe Called Quest’s relatively downcast Beats Rhymes & Life, where keys, hi-hats, snares, and low basslines mingle to create a warm bed of texture to get loose over. Joey can still rap, but the producers on Summer Knights-- Pro Era affiliates Chuck Strangers, Kirk Knight and Lee Bannon with single tracks produced by DOOM, Statik Selektah and Oddissee respectively-- are the real highlights here. While something like “#LongLiveSTEELO” is an affecting, heartfelt cut from Joey-- it’s basically Joey’s version of “I’ll Be Missing You”, complete with Faith Evans-like backup-- you’re 16 tracks deep into a listless affair.
Instead of embracing the styles of more contemporary-minded peers and bending those sounds into his own shapes-- seemingly a must in today's rap climate, if you want to work with a major and get played on the radio-- Summer Knights moves in the other direction, retreating to well-made templates without adding anything to them. Joey deals with heavier shit, but feels weighed down by it. The clunky lyrics wouldn't be a big of a deal if lyricism in the mode of his heroes wasn't one of the aspects he was deliberately playing up. But the deeper problem is one of tone. Joey too often comes out looking like someone who’s already grown weary of the system, an 18-year-old curmudgeon, a sharp contrast with the energy that 1999 promised.
