Decades of neglect and slashed funding have pushed the United States’ public housing system into crisis. Increased privatization, mass renovations, and sweeping demolitions have displaced longtime tenants while fattening the pockets of corporations and landlords, whose agendas treat locals as an afterthought. Nearly every major city in the US has their own horror stories as a result—including Washington, DC, where Paco Panama was raised. He grew up in a project in the southeastern part of town, which he says was torn down around 2020. Paco was rapping before that, but with nothing left to do after it was razed, he started spending more time in the studio. His hustler rap is an unglamorous, morally complex firsthand account of an ecosystem full of drug dealers, addicts, lookout boys, and cops. It’s political even if it’s not heavy-handed.
Paco Panama’s first mixtape of the year, Southside Sopranos, drops him directly into that unrelenting world. Southside Sopranos isn’t quite as weighty as last year’s breakout mixtape The Wire Vol. 1, named after the Baltimore-set HBO show. That’s mostly because of The Sopranos theme, which is showcased in the form of goofy, grating Italian gangster skits by hometown comedian Chico Bean that are headscratchingly more Don Corleone than Tony Soprano. (He wishes he was as funny as Master P’s Black Italian character in the MP Da Last Don movie.) But Paco is a colorful and evocative rapper, stuffing tracks with vignettes of neighborhood dealings and hard-earned life lessons that only sometimes veer into empty clichés. All of these tales are related with the worn-down voice of a longtime bruiser just shootin’ the shit on a stoop; the breezy, soulful tint on the doomsday bounce of DMV street rap helps emphasize that mood.
His stories are vivid and unfurl gradually, making them feel as dramatic as movie clips. Whether he’s lining the interior of his whip with bricks before a long out-of-state drive on “Contraband,” or detailing the intricacies of traphouse shifts on “DC House,” the scenes feel complete instead of blurry. Sometimes he evokes the weathered Detroit duo Los and Nutty, whose dope dealing epics are no doubt a heavy inspiration. But Paco branches out by focusing on the consequences of the lifestyle, one that he’s remorseful about when he’s not hypnotized by hood glory. (It makes sense that one of the first rap songs he knew was Scarface’s psychologically conflicted “Born Killer.”) Occasionally he’s cold-blooded about it all, like when he raps “Fuck yo’ problems, see a therapist” on “Supreme Clientele.” Yet more often than not, you can feel the weight on his shoulders: “Life will fuck you up, you gotta adapt to it/Everyday struggles I had to trap through it,” he says a few bars into “Time Will Tell.” The mixtape runs nearly an hour; the moral complexity of what he has to do to survive rears its head again and again.
His writing has range, too: He can pen a melancholy tribute to his grandmother (“Letter to Granny”) just as well as he can team up with his crew for some small-time flexing (“A-Team”). There are even a few bars that will make you laugh, like on “Evil Genius.” Paco follows up a rhyme about how much “powder” he has with a long breath—as if he’s about to spit something momentous—but actually ends up saying, “Like a nigga got on a pamper.” That range doesn’t extend to love songs; I’m skeptical that he actually cares about any of the relationship issues he gripes about on “Major.”
What takes no convincing is how alive his stomping grounds feel. His depiction is raw and grueling, one with not a lot of hope or ways out, but he raps about it with warmth. On “Extortion,” there’s the spit-shined Benz and the park where he used to get into trouble with the guys. On “Soul Food,” both disturbing and sweet memories are rehashed with the nostalgia of family dinners. In a revolving door of DC street rappers whose city feels as dark and dangerous as Gotham, Paco stands out as the grounded man on the block who takes in the details that are usually glossed over.
