MUSIC

Joyner Lucas and Logic Leave Their Beef Behind in New Video For "Isis"

The two lyricists put their differences aside and give the world the collaboration we've been waiting for.

Joyner Lucas is officially three-for-three with singles leading up to the release of his highly anticipated forthcoming album, ADHD.

First, he got fans hyped with the release of "I Love" in October of 2018. Then, nearly seven months later, he followed it up by criticizing God on the heavy-hitting "Devil's Work." Now, he's got a couple more tricks up his sleeve with the release of his latest video, "Isis."
The song came as a shock to those who follow hip hop closely. It features Logic, and the two emcees have periodically taken shots at one another over the last couple of years. The feud appears to be fully finished, though, and Logic briefly addresses it in his verse. He borrows and builds from Biggie when he spits, "What's beef? / Beef is brother's dyin' over shit that never mattered in the first place, lyin' in the street / What's peace? / Peace is when you leave it in the past, let it heal like a cast / When enough time pass, and you blast." Here, Logic is letting us know that he and Joyner decided to take the high road, letting bygones be bygones, nodding to Biggie (and, inadvertently, Pac) to explain why.
The song itself is everything you could hope for from the pairing of these two lyrically gifted emcees. Bar for bar, they both go hard, neither clearly outshining the other. They appear to be having a good time in the video as well – donning tactical army gear, waving around automatic weapons, and rapping on top of tanks on a military base somewhere in the Middle East.
At times, the video feels uncomfortably reductive, though, in how it seems to generalize and make light of a long and bloody history of American foreign policy blunders in the Middle East, as well as cash in on the vicious current of Islamophobia in the US. However, there is a major plot twist toward the latter half of the video that might spin these concerns into political commentary. You'll have to check it out and decide for yourself.

Check it out below, and keep an eye out for ADHD, which could drop any day now.
MUSIC

Logic Bucks Critics on "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind"

The 29-year-old emcee trolls his haters on refreshing new album

Logic is done with hate and negativity.

On the title track of his latest release, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, he raps, "That's why I keep flowin', that's why I keep perserverin' / Even when I'm hearing I'm a bitch, I'm a fag / I'm a motherfuckin' hypebeast, I ain't black in the slight least / I ain't good enough, I should quit, I should kill myself / ''Cause you'll never be Kenny' / 'You'll never be better than Drizzy or Cole' / 'You're losing your hair, you're too fucking old' / These are the comments I'm readin' on Twitter right now / That made me depressed and they pullin' me down / I'm trying to swim but I think I'm'a drown / So I'm'a turn my feelin' into a sound / And play it when nobody else is around."

This opening track sets the tone for the scathingly honest, self-aware, introspective, and devil-may-care attitude that Logic adopts throughout the rest of the project. On Confessions, his sixth studio album, we see a different side of Logic – one that has been notably missing from his more recent releases, and one that often leads to good music (especially in hip hop) – and that is the side that doesn't care what you think. This sentiment manifests itself not only in the album's lyrical content but in how much fun Logic appears to be having on some of these songs.

He's assembled a motley crew of features, too, with no regard to how pigeonholing rap elitists may perceive them. In addition to the Eminem feature on the chart-topping "Homicide," there are also special guest verses from Gucci Mane, YBN Cordae, G-Eazy, Wiz Khalifa, and none other than Will Smith. If nothing else, this features list feels a little antagonistic, as if Logic might be trolling us a little bit. Or, more accurately, Logic seems to be trolling the armchair hip hop critics who will, no doubt, find plenty to complain about when they hear Will Smith rapping with his characteristically buttery old-school flow in 2019; when they find out that the emcee who controversially dubbed himself Bobby Biracial has chosen to feature the other two biggest white rappers in the game on his album; and when they hear Logic dabbling in trap with Gucci Mane on the funky ode to ballin', "Icy." His goal on Confessions may be best summed up by a line in the second half of "Mama / Show Love:" "I'm pushin' 30, my man, it's time to have fun."

In addition to addressing his haters and focusing on doing things his way despite all the criticism, Logic weaves a couple other tangible through lines into this album. On songs like "Wannabe," "Mama / Show Love," "Lost in Translation," and "BOBBY," he goes in on the trappings, difficulties, and stresses that come with fame. On songs like "Pardon my Ego," "Icy," "COMMANDO," and "Still Ballin'," he flaunts his material success. And on "Clickbait," "Cocaine," and "Homicide," Logic flexes his muscle as a cultural critic, satirizing the current state of hip hop, as well as touching on addiction (both to drugs and social media).

Although these themes are all clearly present on Confessions..., together they make the album feel a little bit scattered – as if there was a definite attempt to create a thematically cohesive project, but it never quite came together in the end. The individual songs never really coalesce to become something greater than the sum of their parts in the end. Which is perfectly fine; a great album certainly does not need to be thematically cohesive; however, you get the sense that a concerted effort was put forth to produce an album that was, and so it registers as falling slightly short of what this album seems like it wants to be.

That being said, there are definitely some great cuts on this record. The production – provided primarily by longtime Logic collaborator and executive producer, 6ix, along with !llMind, DJ Khalil, Keanu Beats, Shroom, Bregma, Haze, and others – is on point from the first track to the 16th, with little to no filler. We probably could have done without Will Smith's paternal lecture on "Don't Be Afraid to be Different" (although it was still kind of fun to hear him rap again), and there are definitely a couple of tracks that are more forgettable than others.

Even so, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is firmly rooted in hip-hop (which fans will likely find refreshing after Logic's brief foray into alt-rock and pop for his last album / the soundtrack to his book, Supermarket). And, at the end of the day, even though the emcee is taking a relatively carefree approach to his music, both in terms of the subjects he's tackling and with whom he's collaborating, he is still carefully crafting his songs, bar by bar, and it shows – in the amount of thought put into his lyrics, and the exacting precision of his flows.


Dustin DiPaulo is a writer and musician from Rochester, New York. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University and can most likely be found at a local concert, dive bar, or comedy club (if he's not getting lost somewhere in the woods).


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Logic and Eminem Just Released the Song of the Year: "Homicide"

The two emcees invite us to revel in lyrical slaughter with them

There are some artists who get hit with anticipatory hate and blind criticism well before their upcoming projects even drop.

Rappers Logic and Eminem are both very familiar with this. Logic, for one, has been branded by the Twittersphere and Redditopia as corny and predictable. And public assertions of his biracial identity have also been ill-received by many, at least in various comments sections and subreddits, where shade-throwing seems to have become a national sport.

Does Eminem's familiarity with knee-jerk criticism even need to be addressed? Slim Shady is definitely no stranger to shade, though some of the scandals surrounding the rapper have been more warranted than others over the course of his 25-year career. Some of the lyrics of his earlier work, for example, were famously rallied against by LGBTQ advocacy groups such as GLAAD. But more recently, the majority criticism has been directed at the quality of his music rather than the controversy of his lyrics.

On "Homicide," though, the two emcees everyone loves to hate team up for an impressive spectacle of murderous flows. Over a beat made of pure fire (produced by Bregma) Logic leads the lyrical onslaught with a hook, which is really more of an occasionally reprised verse than a catchy chorus, spitting, "Fuck rap / Bustin' like an addict with a semi-automatic / who done had it, and he ready for anyone to buck back / Hold up, catch a vibe, ain't no way in hell we leavin' nobody alive / Leave a suicide note? Fuck that." Logic, throughout the course of his following two verses manages to confidently rap on Eminem's level—a feat few emcees could perform.

On the third verse, Eminem reminds the world why he's often listed as one of the best to ever pick up a mic. It's the quick-witted wordplay and intricate, multi-syllabic rhyme schemes he weaves into rapid-fire bars like, "Beast mode, motherfuckers 'bout to get hit / With so many foul lines, you think I'm a free throw / Figured it was about time for people to eat crow / You about to get out-rhymed, how could I be dethroned? / I stay on my toes [tows] like the repo, a behemoth in sheep clothes / From the East Coast to the West, I'm the ethos and I'm the G.O.A.T / Who the best, I don't gotta say a fuckin' thing, though / 'Cause MCs know."

This is the first track that Eminem and Logic have teamed up for and it was a definite success. The outsider status that both rappers have enjoyed throughout their careers, in hindsight, makes you wonder why this collab didn't happen sooner.

"Homicide" is the third single from Logic's forthcoming album, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

Homicide



Dustin DiPaulo is a writer and musician from Rochester, New York. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University and can most likely be found at a local concert, dive bar, or comedy club (if he's not getting lost somewhere in the woods).


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