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On "Anyways," Young Nudy Wants to Be Famous on His Terms

After a slightly-tumultuous 2019, Young Nudy, who has spoken at length about how much he loves solitude, uses Anyways to mostly set the record straight and reaffirm his values.

Young Nudy - No Go (Official Video)

Young Nudy refuses to strip himself of his authenticity.

"Sh*t deeper than rap," he broods on "Deeper Than Rap" the bouncy sixth track off Nudy's new mixtape, Anyways. "I done seen a lot of n***** fall off tryna play with that trap." For Nudy, rap stardom is a real danger. After performing at a Super Bowl event in Atlanta last February, Nudy and his cousin 21 Savage were arrested and charged with aggravated assault, the latter being taken into I.C.E. custody for allegedly being "unlawfully present in the U.S." Nudy's currently free but admitted to Pitchfork that the whole ordeal scared him and put his name in headlines for all the wrong reasons. "I thought the promoter had set me up...they didn't tell me sh*t," he said.

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While jail time and police encounters have been known to boost a rapper's reputation, Nudy thinks that speaking on legal woes is a corny way to garner acclaim. For him, maintaining "good energy" is imperative. In this sense, Anyways is rife with the same dark humor and sarcasm as 2019's beloved Sli'merre, but Nudy has honed in on his enunciation and often speaks across the project with a new-found sense of conviction. "I done got a lil' older, what y'all don't understand," he says on "Understanding." "I'm not that same n****, but I'm still that same n****."

It's true; Nudy's colorful anecdotes are still scattered throughout, ("N***** out here got my name in they mouth, let my name taste like sh*t."), but after a pretty crazy 2019, Nudy, who has spoken at length about how much he loves solitude, uses Anyways to mostly set the record straight and reaffirm his values. Everything feels more purposeful as a result, but while the instrumentals remain quirky, they don't take center stage as they did on Sli'merre, and that's too bad.

Granted, Nudy wants you to hear what he's saying, and there are still great moments of effervescence on tracks like "Blue Cheese Salad" and "No Comprende," but a lot of the album's heavier moments feel unrefined and, at times, recycled and contradictory. He says on "No Go" that he doesn't want to start any feuds with other rappers, but then a track later he addresses Gunna by name as he briefly questions his authenticity.

But moments of repetition are forgiven when Nudy speaks frankly. He is painfully aware of his toxic relationship with street life and dirty money. On "A Nudy Story," he speaks on his first robbery with nostalgia and recounts feeling intoxicated by the prospect of riches. ("I was amazed by that sh*t, like, "Do they make more of this sh*t?"). He was lured in quickly and was additionally hardened by his dad's sudden departure from his life. They have since reconciled, but the timing of it all made loyalty of the utmost importance to Nudy.

Anyways isn't the shot at mainstream recognition that S'limerre felt like it was. In fact, the former feels like more of a retraction. S'limerre was stacked with hard-hitting features from 21 Savage, Megan Thee Stallion, DaBaby and others, but Anyways is a strictly solo venture, and despite their unbreakable kinship, even P'ierre Bourne is notably absent from the project. But the mixtape's unrefined nature feels purposeful when put into a broader lens. The streets are familiar to Nudy, while Hip-Hop stardom, as shown by the recent murder of Pop Smoke last week in Hollywood Hills, is what's truly frightening and unpredictable. Nudy is gonna stay out of it for now and stay moving at his own pace. "I just be on some chill sh*t," he told Pitchfork. "I'm just worried about me. I'm trying to keep up with the future. The world is changing."

Anyways

Tekashi 6ix9ine's Made Snitching Cool

The bastard got away with it...for now

Tekashi 6ix9inePower 105.1's Powerhouse NYC concert, Inside, New Jersey, USA - 28 Oct 2018

Photo by Steve Ferdman/Shutterstock

Exactly one year ago, 22-year-old Daniel Hernandez was known to the masses as a gruff, Bushwick-based rapper with rainbow-colored hair.

As Tekashi 6ix9ine, Hernandez's brash antics always spoke louder than his music, and, as a result, he became the perfect pop culture patsy. The more attention he got, the more attention he sought. By the end of his breakout rise in 2017, Tekashi 6ix9ine had already faked his own death. By the end of 2018, he was on trial for federal racketeering charges, among a slew of other crimes, and he faced a minimum of 32 years in prison.

The fall of 6ix9ine was imminent, and after Hernandez spilled his guts on the witness stand, exposing the wrongdoings of the Nine Trey Bloods, it seemed he had sealed his fate. In the case of two of his convictions, 6ix9ine's music played in court as confessional testimony, to which Hernandez agreed that his lifestyle was no different than the antics described in his music. The trial garnered an insane amount of media attention and in the process set an ugly precedent for the way rappers are charged. "6ix9ine worked with the authorities to argue that...his art reflects reality," wrote Pitchfork. "He is essentially the biggest rapper ever to say there is no difference between his life and his art, the argument so often and so dangerously lobbed at musicians with far less resources to defend themselves." Hernandez sang like a canary with perfect pitch, and his career was seemingly ending the same way it began: in the form of a meme.

Tekashi 6ix9ine Appears to Order Hit on Chief Keef's Cousin in Shocking New Video | TMZwww.youtube.com

But here we are, 13 months later, on the day of his sentencing, and media outlets speculated all week long how the saga of 6ix9ine would end. Word spread like wildfire (mostly by 6ix9ine and his defense team), that the rapper might walk away today with time served, to which the internet was divided. The judge did not go that route and instead sentenced Hernandez to 2 years in federal prison, plus five years of supervised probation. It seems to be a fitting end to the reign of 6ix9ine, with Daniel Hernandez emerging from his fame-induced coma to issue what appeared to be an honest apology for misrepresenting himself. "I was blessed with the gift of an opportunity that most people dream of but squandered it by getting involved with the wrong people," he told the court today. "I should have been true to myself and my fans."

But 6ix9ine's career is far from over. While behind bars, the rapper inked a $10 million record deal. Complex, Rolling Stone, and Showtime are all crafting various docu-series on 6ix9ine's life. With all this commotion, it's easy for people to forget that the crimes charged came at the expense of real victims. Prior to the sentencing, a handful of victims penned impact statements to Judge Paul Engelmayer and pleaded that Hernandez serves the maximum sentence. "[He] destroyed the normal adulthood that I was striving for," wrote one victim. Did the victims get the justice they deserved, or were their traumatic experiences ultimately undermined?

Either way, 6ix9ine still remains a hurricane, consuming media attention and money despite the very real destruction his actions have caused. As the public awaits the fate of another sour-puss pop culture autocrat, the trial of 6ix9ine in its entirety serves as a fair indicator for how justice is upheld against celebrities. They don't entirely get away with it, but they still kind of do.

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