BigXThaPlug, Cavalier, and the Art of Making It Home Alive
Two great new rap songs answer the question: What comes after the anxieties of street life?
The streets are unforgiving, complicated, and often full of death. Anyone who makes it out and is able to live a meaningful life, never mind start a rap career, is fortunate. I think about this a lot as I spend my days running songs from every end of the street-rap spectrum in my headphones. Piped-up New York drill anthems where the likes of Shawny Binladen and 41 brag about toting choppers that scare their enemies into submission are thrilling at least partially because of their proximity to the action that ultimately ends the lives of so many. On the flip side, meditative artists like the late Brooklyn legend Ka or D.C. upstart Jaeychino highlight the trauma of paying pounds of flesh or moving kilos of weight. I’m not here to moralize—I enjoy both styles and believe they both have artistic value, especially if the verses are ripped from real life. But hearing rappers weave stories about a lifestyle with such a high mortality rate does occasionally weigh on me.
That’s a big reason why two recent songs, from Dallas’s BigXThaPlug and New Orleans’ Cavalier, have stuck out to me over the last few weeks. X’s “Lost the Love” and Cav’s “Gifted & Talented” aren’t about climactic shootouts and the spoils of dealing, but the soul-searching aftermath. They’re about making it home, and the thoughts that follow you there.
