"Sky" "Keemy Casanova" and "Who Want Smoke??" on the POW Best Rap Songs of 2021
25. Nardo Wick feat. G Herbo, Lil Durk, 21 Savage - “Who Want Smoke??”
The hook on “Who Want Smoke??” isn’t vocal or even musical; it’s a series of five stomps on the beat, intruding like a comic book sound effect. Jacksonville’s Nardo Wick brags about his guns, insisting he won’t be caught unarmed even while pumping gas. He pauses only for the stomps, like he might be wary of authorities at his door, until he smirks that it’s the sound of his steps. You can hear the rapper’s Florida roots in the way he raps his threats through clenched teeth, but 19-year-old Nardo listened to G Herbo and Lil Durk as a young teen, and their taunting delivery clearly influenced his flow.
The original “Who Want Smoke??” came out in January, but those stomps were lip-synced on TikTok all summer, and an all-star remix with a Cole Bennett video pushed the song to Billboard Top 20 in October. In his verse, Durk dismisses /r/chiraqology doofuses who spam him about pills and drills like they know the difference between fact and fiction while referencing another of his 2021 hits in the process: “Got it back in blood, y’all just don’t know, that’s how it’s sposed to be.” 21 Savage catches a rival “leaving bingo with his bitch” and claps in double time over the stomps, onomatopoeia as double entendre for backshots or sneak attacks. Herbo cashes $100K checks to make up for the fact his aunt’s house still smells like crack. He adds his own accompaniment to the stomps too: shaking his chains, stacked heavy enough to sound like a tambourine.
Herbo’s flex is a perfect conclusion to a track with three rappers, who emerged from the streets into major label rap success, co-signing a new artist in their lineage. After the premature deaths of Fredo Santana, King Von, FBG Duck, and so many others, it’s nice to see the influence of Chicago drill stars on equal footing with Atlanta, even by a young rapper (and his team at RCA) coming up across the country.
17. Akeem Ali - “Keemy Casanova”
“Keemy Casanova” feels beamed in from a wholly sexier place and time, like a commercial for a 900 number glimpsed through half-shut eyelids. Jackson, MS rapper Akeem Ali introduces his alter ego, a slick-talking pimp generations of pastiche removed from the lurid paperbacks of Iceberg Slim. He’s a mental mathematician with women in South Carolina, Arkansas, and Florida, but right now he’s in your kitchen cooking grits and putting dick in your wife. He’s got his shirt spread wide open like it doesn’t even have buttons, and a switchblade tucked away because he’d rather stab somebody than risk breaking an immaculately manicured fingernail. The smooth organ loops from producer OthelloBeats leave room for Ali to rap one lengthy verse. Who needs a hook when the bars comfortably accumulate like a silk robe pooling on the bedroom floor?
“Keemy Casanova” became the overture for Mack in the Day Starring Keemy Casanova, an EP that seeks the same nostalgia for the unremembered ‘70s as Silk Sonic but without the Grammys bait sheen. The track took off this year thanks to a December 2020 performance on The 85 South Show that proved Ali has the skills to perform his syllable-dense verses live without sacrificing any charisma. In his years of rapping before developing his pimp persona, Ali looked to Jamie Foxx to improve his showmanship. “Keemy Casanova” matches the goofy perfection of Foxx’s best music, like “Blame It” or his Ray Charles re-creation on “Gold Digger.” They’re funny, but not a joke, and they’re committed to the character, enough to get a little two-step on if the ladies are watching. How many other songs on this list can you dance to?
15. Playboi Carti - “Sky”
Let’s not complicate things. “Sky” is a song by Playboi Carti about being really high and how that can be fun and scary and numb all at once. The cult Atlanta rapper interpolates Bone Thugs’ “1st of Tha Month,” but unlike their immortal depiction of paydays during poverty, Carti doesn’t sound like he’s wanted for anything in his life. On the hook, Carti tells his boy to roll ten blunts, and his own ad-libs sound astonished. Surrounded by drugs, cash, and guns, it’s funny that his only concern is sexual paranoia. He demands to know if his girl slept with anyone else in the room, repeating himself in an uneven tumble, though he says they’re best friends, not a couple and he doesn’t even like to hug. But even that subsides with the promise of more syrup and blunts.
Then again, analyzing Carti lyrics might be missing the point (though shout-out to whatever Discord server first transcribed every ad-lib with the accuracy of a cloistered monk). On Whole Lotta Red, the sound is the point. As Carti told his inspiration and collaborator Kid Cudi, “You got rappers who like being around rappers, and then you got rappers like me who like being around producers.” On “Sky,” he mutters and yelps over an endlessly repeating riff that sounds like it was recorded with a Guitar Hero controller, courtesy of a South Korean merch designer / producer who goes by Art Dealer. Carti finds new pockets every few bars, his voice scraping the roof of his natural range but smoothed over with a dab of Auto-Tune. It’s a quick hit of pure id.
Originally published on POW.