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.
BigXThaPlug, who claims Crip affiliations, followed up his gold-certified debut album with Take Care in October. On the standout “Lost the Love,” he shows that while showbiz has its perks, shit is not entirely sweet. Hangers-on are everywhere—friends want to bump him off for his clout, lovers and family worm their way into his pockets. “Where was these folks when my pockets was empty/Where was these folks the long nights I was dealin’,” he says, removed from it all but still aggrieved.
While he’s in a better place financially and no longer dealing with the immediate dangers of Crip living, being a provider and an artist has him depressed about a new burden: celebrity. There’s a shocking moment near the middle of the track where he mentions a falling out with his brother over being in the street. But X hopes that his brother will still “keep his pole on him” because he knows firsthand how quickly things can turn left. That urgency comes through in X’s bouncy delivery over a shrieking blues vocal sample and booming drums courtesy of producers Haze, Sheffmade, and Zuus. That vintage Texas sound, so often the backdrop for an anthem or a party track, is instead played as a dirge for the rapper’s deteriorating patience. He’s home every night, drowning his sorrows in a double cup, running from his problems. “Rappin’ my pain, this the shit that y’all wanted,” he says at the end of the song’s lone, extended verse. He’s breathing and well-off, with millions of listeners, but the pit in his gut is only growing.
The rap game can be stifling, even suffocating. But to Cavalier, who releases music on the independent New York label Backwoodz Studioz, it’s much better than the alternative. “Gifted & Talented,” from this year’s Cine, a collaborative album with producer Child Actor, takes a less fatalistic view of trading the bullshit for the rap lifestyle. At this stage, Cav is glad that his hands are for “rubbing lanolin on cellulose” instead of packaging and trading drugs. “You know what’s not pussy? Makin’ it home,” he says with his chest: “Makin’ it like I ain’t just see some shit/Make you throw ya faith to the wolves.”
The molly he used to move with friends left him scarred enough, but even thinking about what’s happening in dark corners now keeps Cav on edge. But there’s no sense of anxiety or unease about his next steps—he’s already suaver than any hangers-on could dare to be. He jumped off the porch a long time ago and has nothing but contempt for phonies chasing clout. The humid pulse of Child Actor’s production, a cloud of drums, bass, and vocals that contract and swell like a migraine, pushes him further toward artistic freedom. For Cav, the risk management of his old life is for the birds; being able to tour, create how he wants, and buy all the Polo clothing he can wear is a decent trade-off.
Home means something different for X and Cav. For a rising artist like X, who is one of the next great hopes for Texas rap, navigating fame can feel like navigating the streets—he’s still searching for new guards and coping mechanisms as he spends a lot of time trying not to succumb to his own anxiety. Cav is both further removed from his tough days and creating at a more modest ceiling and pace that suits him, which leads him to a more velour outlook. Both have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams simply by having a place to hang their hats. But finding a home and finding peace are not one and the same.
A previous version of this post said BigXThaPlug is from Houston; he is from Dallas.
