For BlueBucksClan, popping bottles with models in the club isn’t a flex, it’s a religion. The Los Angeles duo is devoted to a life where every night sounds like a bachelor party that has gotten out of hand. This is deliberate—each of DJ and Jeeezy’s mixtapes is like an individual How to Be a Player handbook. A few of the guide’s tips would probably include: Rack up the room service charges like the kid from Home Alone, wear designer clothes at all times even if you’re chilling in the crib, and take your date to get her toes done. Take their advice, and you too will be leaving the club arm in arm with NFL wives and actresses.
On the third edition of their Clan Way series, BlueBucksClan stick to this blueprint. But their approach holds more weight than your standard lifestyle rap fare; on top of the wild, sex-fueled anecdotes and out-of-pocket extravagance is an ode to their brotherhood. Now in their late twenties, DJ and Jeeezy have been close since their teen years in the Pop Warner football program in South Central. They played together in high school, where DJ was a cornerback and Jeeezy was on the D-line. That chemistry is reflected in the music they’ve been releasing since 2019’s Clan Way: The pair is a pure rap duo in that they sound almost incomplete without each other, and at times, their connection feels nearly telepathic. DJ is the smooth talker, always using his inside voice, and Jeeezy has a rumbling but surprisingly nimble flow. When they rap, they function as each other’s sounding boards. It’s like they’re at the gym, recapping all the shit that they got into lately.
For the most part, there are no frills on Clan Way 3, just DJ and Jeeezy getting fly and sleeping around. Sometimes, the tag team shakes up the structure of their tracks, hooking their stories around a specific phrase. On “Have You Ever,” DJ and Jeeezy tie almost every line to the question in the song’s title. “Have you ever took a nigga bitch and left him scarred for life?” asks Jeeezy, like he can’t believe he did exactly that. Other times, it’s when they’re going line for line; on “FYM,” they daydream about the exes they can’t stop thinking about.
What’s missing here is the bouncy, hyper-regional L.A. production that they’ve sidestepped since 2020’s Clan Way 2. Popular producers from other cities, like Honorable C.N.O.T.E., Chopsquad DJ, and Buddah Bless, drop beats here, and they’re never poorly crafted. But the breeziness of the West Coast sound is what helps to hammer in the dissonance between their outlandish stories and blasé attitude. Still, beats aren’t entirely the point of BlueBucksClan; their production is usually pretty minimal anyway, purposefully directing most of the attention to their words.
And for much of Clan Way 3, the stories they tell are fun as hell. There’s an onslaught of pop culture references, including mentions of Pauly D and Bryce Harper; throwaway lines about lobster dates and shopping for Prada heels; and a casual phone call on “Jeeezy WYA” that perfectly encapsulates the duo’s relationship. In the song, DJ rings Jeeezy to let him know he’s at the Ritz Carlton with six women, but Jeeezy is out to dinner with his girlfriend and her family. Jeeezy ditches them and it’s not entirely worth it, so the two just go and do their own thing. Sure, it sounds like a bit in an early Jamie Foxx sex comedy that has aged terribly, but the way they bounce off each other is so natural and effortless that a struggling plot can be overlooked. With BlueBucksClan, you come for the antics, but stay for the brotherly bond.
