On The Bricktionary, Boldy’s poise doesn’t feel a hair out of place among Fraud’s increased entropy—even on more mainstream-leaning collaborations like the standout Tee Grizzley-assisted “Cecil Fielder,” where there’s no question about who is wielding control. Boldy’s superpower has always been making minute phrases feel monumental, packing sage wisdom on mortality and precarity into his street chronicles. “This street shit open game/One minute you him, the next minute you right back on your knuckles,” he raps with trademark assuredness on “Pillar to Post,” keenly aware of how quickly shit can flip on a dime. Reflection has long been a hallmark of Boldy’s raps, but as he continues to distance himself from the traumatic aftermath of devastating car crash, his range of recollections expands to put his entire journey under a microscope.
Boldy’s level of evocative detail is extraordinary, constructing sprawling worlds from his memories of Detroit in a matter of seconds. Specificities bubble to the forefront of Boldy’s mind like intrusive thoughts: linking with affiliates on street whose names you could only recall if you’d had your own feet planted in them, needing to be convinced not to eliminate a rival on his way to the top, seeing visceral images of bullets going through backs and out of stomachs, and sensing a lie when he hears minute changes in vocal pitches through a phone. On “Harvey Grant,” it feels like he’s introducing you to his entire family tree while doing drops off at the local Target and Home Depot, finishing with a prayer request: “Forgive me for my sins and all the evil in the hearts of men.”
Boldy and Fraud’s technical brilliance on The Bricktionary is direct and precise, not overcomplicated, and it allows their respective production and writing styles to fit like puzzle pieces. This kind of no-frills approach leans on intrinsic quality and dependability, not on bells and whistles and leaps into the stratosphere. Closer “Fish Grease” rambles with a peaceful vocal chorus that could soundtrack an ascension to heaven as Boldy takes the listener through a startlingly frank year-by-year catalog of his close-calls and epic triumphs. “Remember grindin’ in the rain, nights when it was pourin’ down/Now I’m in the Range hydroplanin’, work whiter than a dinette napkin/Hood call me Sir Brick Van Exel a.k.a. Mr. Pyrex Chapman/Clio bangin’ off the lilac, phone slappin’ like a telethon,” he beams with understated satisfaction. It’s true that by most estimates, the milkman began to disappear from public view in the 1960s, stymied by the proliferation of suburbs, grocery stores, and refrigerators. But in Boldy’s delivery, you can almost hear a knowing wink, as if he’s certain his brand of magnetism will never go out of style—no matter how much things change around him.
