Fetty Wap is the new Bob Dylan
I know you’re thinking right now that I’m about to preface this post with a disclaimer that it’s (at least mostly) a joke. But you’d be wrong and I’m completely serious.
I know I don’t need to tell you who Fetty Wap is. You’d have to be living under a rock to miss the four consecutive top 40 singles he has released. But here’s the thing. He’s more than just a hit machine (and boy, is he a hit machine), he’s the new Bob Dylan. Before you disagree, hear me out.
Like Bob Dylan, Fetty Wap has an unusual voice. Both have polarizing, love them or hate them pipes that are memorable because of their unconventionality. You know it’s going to be a Fetty song when you hear “1738!” in that voice, just like you know a Dylan track by its nasally hook.
Bob Dylan’s probably most known for the protest songs of the early 1960s written at the beginning of his career, and Fetty Wap has come out the gate making rap protest songs. How?
He’s courting women instead of relying on the tired hip hop trope of simply treating them like objects.
In what is perhaps the most romantic song of our time, ‘D.A.M.’, he sings, “I just have a question, listen to what I’m asking/Baby let me take you out, would you like it if I kissed you now?” He’s actually verbally asking for consent! And then, just when you think he can’t get any better, there’s: “right after we sex, I don’t leave I just hold her/I don’t leave I just hold her/I treat my girl like a Queen, she gets whatever she needs/And when I tell her I’m hungry, she says ‘boy get on your knees’/Go to work, girl I feast.” Hip hop has had a rocky at best history with cunnilingus; it was once taboo, it has since become a slightly more approved rap topic (only Lil Wayne has taken an unwavering pro stance no matter what year it is) but Fetty is embracing a woman’s pleasure above all else wholeheartedly—and that is radical.
Both artists are at their best when they’re singing about love. A lot of people forget Bobby D is responsible for some pretty great love songs. So is Fetty. The chorus of ‘Again’ goes, “I go out of my way to please you/I go out of the way to see you/I ain’t playing no games, I need you.” In ‘Time’ he says, “On the road all the time/And I swear I’m tryna’ get some time to spare/Tryna’ show you how much I love you/Tryna’ show you how much I care.” His sleeper hit ‘Trap Queen’ is an ode to the woman who turned to a life of crime with him to make money—a woman for whom, even though they are no longer together, Fetty is paying her college tuition as gratitude. (So he’s as princely in real life as he is in song.)
Monty is his Joan Baez of sorts. While I realize that it was Baez who introduced the folk world to Bob Dylan and it is Fetty who is on a one-man quest to make sure the rap world takes note of Monty, the double act is still present in both of them. Monty is featured on not one, not two, not even three, but nine tracks of the deluxe edition of Fetty Wap’s debut album.
His decision to make his debut album exclusively with his tight-knit crew Remy Boyz—despite clearly having the early promise to garner bigger names—mirrors Dylan’s choices to tour with The Band, The Grateful Dead, and poet Allen Ginsberg. Both send a clear message to the music world: they’re going to do this their way, conventions be damned.
Fetty employs metaphors that are nothing short of Dylanesque. Rap has always been a genre where ultimately, only the witty survive.
It takes a cleverness that few possess to write the slew of one-liners that is a rap song that cause listeners to discover something new upon every replay.
Just one is: “He playing Batman, Fetty’s gon’ rob him.” The wordplay here is first rate; not only is he implying that this other guy is no real threat with his childish, superhero games, but “rob him” is phonetically close to “Robin” who we all know is Batman’s partner. Another: “From the Garden where you better watch for them snakes.” Fetty Wap is from New Jersey, also known as the Garden State, and has to be aware of snake-like people trying to mess with him. The idea of a snake hiding in the grass has been present in a myriad of media from the Bible to Macbeth; Fetty is putting his spin on an old classic. Yet another: “My boys givin’ out shots like they all sick.” A credible threat to the haters and a masterful use of homonyms.
And finally, a veritable Picasso in its variance of imagery:
“I be in the kitchen whipping two thangs, yeah/Look, I’m karate kicking like I’m Liu Kang, yeah/Look, every time she see me make her mood change, yeah/Look, she wanna get freaky, wanna do thangs, yeah/Ay, creep up in her window like I’m Bruce Wayne, yeah/Your body like a foreign ride, you curvy, yeah/This ain’t the A, I’m tryna get dirty, yeah/Like Master P, I’m ‘bout it, I’m ‘bout it, yeah” —‘No Days Off’
This is Fetty’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’. All over the place, perhaps even cluttered, with metaphors that are seemingly disconnected, but ultimately, converge once you’ve heard it all. Dylan could perhaps be a part of hip hop’s family tree with what is arguably the first rap song; even its first line “Johnny’s in the basement, mixin’ up the medicine” has similarities with Fetty’s many bars about cooking crack for cash. (Not to mention, the entire first verse alludes to evading the police and owing a questionable man an unattainable sum of money…sound familiar to fans of hip hop?)
Now that Fetty’s first album is out, will he “go electric” or whatever is rap’s equivalent? Will he skip that rejection by his first fanbase and instead just release his Blood on the Tracks? Will he inexplicably become a born-again Christian a la late 70s Dylan? Who knows. But I wait with bated breath to see what Fetty Wap does next.
