Black Dave – Stay Black

Black Dave – Stay Black
Self-released: 2013

It seems odd to bring up sincerity on a mixtape with song titles like “Bucket Low (Fuck It Tho)”, “Bitch N*gga Why You Fake” and “Muthafuck! My Enemies”, but there is a massive feeling of truthfulness to Black Dave’s mixtape Stay Black. 

It is difficult to ignore an Odd Future comparison, so allow me to get that out of the way.  Black Dave skates, he’s young, he is associated with several powerful groups of up-and-coming young rappers including The Pro Era movement, and most importantly, he is green-yet-confident.  This sort of mentality is fascinating to a listener.  What makes this dude so confident, so entitled, so prepared, when he has so many dues to pay, and a potentially long and stressful path to success?  This sort of confidence lets the listener put their trust in the artist, as if ‘Dave must know what he’s doing.’

“Boomin N Zoomin”, featuring Lil Mouse, contains all of the ingredients for the perfect mindless rap song: excessive use of the N word, gunshots, easy-to-memorize lyrics, and to cap it all off, a pre-pubescent sounding Mouse casually spitting about kush and double cups of sizzurp.  Although the lyrical content battles my theory of the mixtape’s honesty (I truly hope a 13-year-old boy is just talking big when he raps about sizzurp), the convergence of the quality of the recording, the beat, each rapper’s delivery, and the overall tone of the song result in a genuine song, even if it is a bit boring.

“Free BK” has a surprisingly strong West Coast influence for a song with Brooklyn in the title.  The beat, produced by BadMilk, is delicately thuggish, with whimpering strings, muffled lines from Big L in the background, and little guitar plucks; lots of subtle bits that combine nicely to make a great ’90s LA track.  It could easily fit into MTV’s music video rotation from the Yo MTV Raps era.  I see shoes on telephone lines, lots of moving shots of impoverished neighborhoods from car windows, whips bouncing with hydraulics, thugs standing on the corner by a bodega, all the usual stuff from the golden era L.A rap videos. Not to mention the lyrics most often repeated in the song are “fuck the police”, which makes it even more L.A.  It’s the kind of song you instinctively turn up when it comes on the radio.

“Thinkin About You” is Black Dave’s go at a somber sad rap song in memory of a lost friend.  Nothing in the lyrics quite tugs at the heartstrings, yet the sincerity is there.  He adds a heavier cadence and more dynamics to his voice to compensate for the lack of depth in the lyrics.  He raps “Wishin you was here today/just so I could give back all the promises I made/How the fuck I’m s’posed to maintain/when my realest motherfucker got slain.”  Not very poetic, but his sentiment is enough to drive the tone home.

“Rap & Skate” is a fun feel good track about… rapping and skating.  “If you make moves, gotta make moves in a major way/It’s about what you prove and what you do, not what you say/N*gga real talk, I really rap, and I really skate.” Here is Dave again proving his candor, telling the listeners as straightforward as he can that he is no phony. Dave shows who’s boss in verse two, spitting doubletime, oozing confidence.

“Frontin” with T-Shyne represents the other side of the spectrum from “Free BK”.  Paranoid, hostile, and fiery  both Dave and T-Shyne give fitting verses on snitches and how they oh-so-loathe them.  ave raps “He said he was my man, he said he was my friend/but now I turn around this motherfucker just pretend/Dirty ass snitch, a motherfucking dog, see that’s the real reason we never got along.”  He doesn’t drop any names, but if you’re reading this and you know this song is about you, watch yo back son.

The production on the mixtape toes the line between boring and inventive.  There are certain aspects I find myself appreciating, while others I have been hearing nonstop since 2008 and would rather do without them.  “Bucket Low” takes a traditionally wimpy instrument, the flute, and makes it into a slow, eerie  SpaceGhostPurrp-esque beat. Meanwhile there are tracks like “Bitch N*gga Why You Fake”, which is so repetitive both lyrically and musically, that if it were a ride at an amusement park, you’d puke. “Little Bit Mo” featuring Meech of Flatbush Zombies sounds exactly how you think it might: like a leftover from a Flatbush Zombies mixtape, that the crew tossed to one of their dudes to see if he make something of it.  This is not to say the track is bad.  Both rappers deliver tight verses, complete with the Bone Thugs style raps seen on lots of ASAP stuff, another nice throwback/homage to the ’90s.

The keep-it-real vibe is definitely working for Dave, but I fear he puts too much emphasis on that and not on his originality.  As a relatively new rapper, he is playing by the rules in sticking to formulas, which is a good move, but I’m more interested in what he might do next time.

3 out of 5