Day 55: Joey Bada$$ — ALL-AMERIKKKAN BADA$$
Joey Bada$$ (or at least my relationship with his work) is a perfect example of how one’s perception of a rapper can evolve just as their output does. I was fascinated by the boom-bap revivalism of 1999 a breezy, left-field debut where Joey demonstrated a maturity on the mic that an MC twice his age (17 at the time) would kill for. He had an uncanny knack for clever wordplay and unconventional rhyme schemes: double entendres spanned lines and piffed-up portmanteaus revealed themselves only after repeated listens. His flow could be blistering, but just as often settling into the pocket of the cool, jazzy beats on tracks like Fromdatombs. He was among a handful of promising rappers who put the emphasis on their craft and led hip hop audiences to believe that a new Progressive Era of (B)east coast rap was back.
Maybe it was just my perception, but Joey seemed to switch up his shtick in a way that didn’t sit well with me over the years. Maybe I wasn’t cool with the idea that he dialed up the bravado once folks started riding his wave. Whatever the reason, I pretty much sat the Summer Knights and B4DA$$ album cycles out, giving it some cursory listens, but not wearing out the metaphorical tape like I did with the nouveau-nostalgic debut release that preceded them.
It’s weird that it took me getting obsessed with Mr. Robot to give Joey’s ALL-AMERIKKKAN BADA$$ another shot, but there’s a certain thematic connection if you look closely. Though I can’t say much about his Seinfeld-obsessed character without giving away major plot points, it’s clear that Joey drew inspiration from the show’s core belief that American democracy is little more than a tool to enforce compliance and extract value from the individual. In Joey’s case, ALL-AMERIKKKAN BADA$$ is a platform to diagnose the sociopolitical ills that plague (African) America, one that finds him tapping into a righteous anger and a third-eye wokeness that’s perhaps been lingering there all along. While it’s hard not to find it a little disjointed compared to something like To Pimp a Butterfly, it’s a relatively direct and unique document propelled forward by the strength of Joey’s convictions.
There’s no doubt that the lyrics of ALL-AMERIKKKAN BADA$$ find Joey leveraging his skills with wordplay for more political ends. He’s less focused on delivering enlightening turns of phrase than he is on elucidating listener’s on the traumas and challenges of being black in a country built on a false promise, trying to find solidarity with the other super predators. “LAND OF THE FREE” falls short of calling for reparations, but finds Joey taking up the mantle as a vessel for his ancestors and drawing the connection between hundreds of years of oppression and the modern systems designed to extract our complacency. “WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME? (MISS AMERIKKKA)” is a tale of unrequited (self) love: “why you treat me like I don’t matter? Why you always kicking my ladder? Why you never hearing my side to the story? Why you never look me in the eye to say sorry?”
That’s not to say the album is only gloomy consciousness-raising. “DEVASTATED” tries to celebrate how far Joey has come without losing sight of where he’s been, tracing his rise from nothing to greatness while telling us that he “don’t need the money just to say that I’m rich.” The spirit’s in the right place, but the message is perhaps a bit muddled. “RING THE ALARM,” another detour from proselytizing raps, adds bark to the album’s incisive bite. Meechy Darko sounding like some vengeful spirits ready to raise hell on Joey Bada$$’ behalf, and Kirk Knight/Nyck Caution’s traded bars provided a welcome breather from the album’s weightiness.
It’s interesting (but not necessarily an indictment) that the mood starts to shift once guest stars join the fray. The Schoolboy Q-assisted “ROCKABYE BABY” finds Joey channeling Malcolm X rather than MLK, going hard over a skewed take on west coast G-funk rhythm. The imagery here is as violent as any gangsta rap, but maintains its ties to the broader historical context that paints inner-city violence as the systemic problem that it is. “From getting lynched in a field to owning buildings,” Q raps, showing that even amid boasts, he refuses to forget his place in history. “SUPER PREDATORS” and “LEGENDARY” reconcile Bada$$’ boom-bap roots with his more enlightened perspective, the latter of which features a pinch-hit verse from philosopher prince J. Cole, who ponders the weight of his wealth in a world when so many have so little.
If there’s a problem, it’s that the album possesses an overwhelming amount of thematic similarity from track to track without any sort of connective tissue. I never thought I’d say this, but this feels like one album that could benefit from more skits or spoken word interludes. The closest we get is extended outro meditation “AMERIKKKAN IDOL”, where Joey connects the extrajudicial killing of unarmed black men at the hands of the police as a warning sign of an impending civil war that Trump’s government could use as a pretext to subjugate — perhaps even exterminate — a wide swath of the black population.
There are lots of ideas to unpack here, and it’s clear that Joey is well-informed and intent on using his platform to elevate his audience’s consciousness of the interconnected issues plaguing the African American community in Trump’s America. Joey’s heart and rhymes are in the right place, but it’s hard for him to measure up to the lofty standards set by other African American creatives. Ta-Nehisi Coates or Kendrick Lamar he is not. Because for as well as AMERIKKKAN BADA$$ calls out our problems, the listener’s left wondering how to channel their rage, or where to focus their newly-opened third eye. Maybe asking a 22 year old to save the world is too much. But if he can find a way to continue to explore this subject matter without things getting too repetitive or tiresome, I have faith that the rapper I’ve written off once before can figure it out.
This is Day 55 in my 100 albums in 100 days series, where I review a new album or EP I haven’t heard in full before every day through December 31st. Check out yesterday’s post or see the full archives for more.
