Young DolphStraight face originality was his calling card. “Remember he used to rap on weed / He didn’t sell pies,” Gucci mane He will be remembered in 2021 greeting For the artist who was raised in Memphis. in kind ScarfaceSimilar to a fairy tale, Dolph can only be celebrated for something as innocuous as selling weed. He was constantly lashing out at his enemies and defying death, but his car was actually riddled with 100 bullets in 2017, and four years later, he was killed during a shooting in his hometown at the age of 36. Like TupacMakaveli character or Drakeo the rulerDolph was reckless, paranoid, and confrontation In his dirty talk, he is already clear about the inevitable Archaeology than to be forthright and targeted for it. And, like the murders of Tupac and Dracchio, another generation’s voice has been forcefully silenced.
Paper Road Frank It is Dolph’s first posthumous album, and one that honors a monumental legacy in the best way possible: by sounding exactly like a project Dolph had made while he was alive. The songs here reflect not only Dolph’s unwavering tenacity, but everything else that made him special: his charisma, deadpan sense of humor, technical prowess, vulnerability, and irresistible devotion to the rules of the streets. Briefly, Paper Road Frank is a reminder of what a complex, singular star Dolph used to be.
Dolph also had one of the best ears for beats in the game, knowing exactly what kind of production would underpin a sound as heavy and intelligent as his own. Here, he makes light work of everything he touches. The distinct “Woah” sounds like something pimp c It was going to be produced in the early 2000s UGK, dense with piano bass lines and horror movie lines. The dolphin keys flow with flair, always sneaking in a dose of humor (“In high school, I had more money than anyone else, including “College!”). Longtime collaborator BandPlay delivers many of the strongest beats, particularly the fireworks that It centers on the sitar “Uh Uh” and the bombastic “This How”, and the heavy fiddle. The latter is an easy collaboration with Cousin Dolph. glock key which echo the brilliant collaborative tapes from 2019 And the 2021.
A little co-op is just right: no pushy break-ins, just friends. In addition to the Glock and Posey cut with two holsters, Paper Road Frank Gucci Mane features (“The List”) f 2 chains (“Beep Beep”), both of which deliver some of the most memorable guest verses in recent memory. gucci who scored Two separate cooperative projects With Dolph, he’s almost in a hardcore pre-jail state on “Roster,” singing so menacingly, as if he’s swimming downstream. The best verses still belong to Dolph. If the songs themselves sound a bit like a remake of his earlier material, his rapping does more than enough to keep it engaging. He tells a great story about turning down a deal with Roc Nation, but still has $2 million to pay Jay-Z for a verse on “Hall of Fame,” and repeats his commitment to street codes on “Always,” leading, per usual ex: “I Look my tampon in my eyes,” he sings in a hushed voice, “Then I gave him the bag.”
Dolph was guided by extreme emotion. His love of family in particular was always on the side of his outburst, further evidence of the realism that Gucci and so many others admired. “I had my little boy, this shit changed my whole world / Two years later, here come my little girl,” Dolph recalls in “Old Ways” with heartbreaking seriousness. It makes the details of his murder — shot while buying cookies for his mother at a Memphis bakery — all the more crushing. Focusing on the elemental truths of his reality is the only way a posthumous album could do properly by an artist as beloved, independent, and layered as Dolph: trash talker and storyteller, devoted father of two, martyred speaker of a city, and a movement all on his own.