Bossman Dlow: Chicken Talkin Bastard Album Review

Chicken Talkin Bastard is the fourth standalone Bossman Dlow mixtape and yet here’s all I know about him so far: He doesn’t seem to have ever heard of a wallet, so he carries money around in large stacks of bills that look to weigh as much as a newborn baby; he spends so much time in VIP sections of strip clubs that he probably gets his packages delivered there; he might be the second-most dangerous driver in Florida, behind Tiger Woods. With catchphrases like a 20th-century sitcom star, he churns out over-the-top motivation trap with so little autobiographical detail that I don’t even think I can picture him doing any normal human activity. Try real hard: Can you imagine Bossman Dlow walking his dog or visiting his grandmother? It’s a severe lack of depth that would be a bigger deal if he wasn’t so good at his old-fashioned brand of uncomplicated radio hits.

Chicken Talkin Bastard works because of the way Dlow folds elements of vintage Florida freak-rap, Louisiana baller music, and Atlanta extravagance into his unserious, iced-out fantasies of shutting down the club. “Motion Party” doesn’t overthink its flip of Khia’s twerk anthem “My Neck, My Back”—it simply turns it into another twerk anthem, just with Dlow’s conversational touch: “What’s your name? Bae, you know you some fine shit.” The rollicking call-and-response hook of “Let’s Go Get Em” shakes off the menace of the No Limit original to become a lot goofier and dancier. If it’s not the next College GameDay theme song, someone isn’t doing their job right. He slows it down with the churchly bounce of “Act Like Money,” which sounds like it’s about to be one of those heartfelt rags-to-riches T.I. joints, but Dlow will be Dlow: “She so blessed, ’fore I eat it, gotta say my grace.” He never breaks character, like if the Terminator were reprogrammed to shop at Neiman Marcus.

The little bit of context added by diving into his musical upbringing goes a long way. Still, it’s a persona that’s easier to connect with on a single-by-single basis rather than over the course of an entire mixtape. Outside of the highlights, as strong as they are, a big chunk of Chicken Talkin Bastard is forgettable fluff that mostly exists to bring more attention to those singles. There’s no reason to care about Dlow trying out new TikTok lingo (“Tendernism”) or getting punchlines off with DaBaby (“Goddess”) or reviving Trey Songz for an uncomfortably flirtatious duet that just comes across creepy because Trey Songz is involved (“You So Pressure”). Listen to song after song and his funny quirks turn repetitive, with an overreliance on bass-heavy Detroit-meets-Memphis Young & Turnt 2 type beats that sound straight off the CMG assembly line.

If you’re bumping a Bossman Dlow album front-to-back, though, you are a goddamn sicko. You’re meant to absorb Chicken Talkin Bastard through osmosis—hearing the latest hit on your local radio station every morning as the DJ promotes their club appearance, hearing another track in the background while scrolling TikTok or sitting in the barber’s chair. Then, by the time you actually hit up a club, you know all the words without trying and have little lines that only mean something to you. For me, it would be how he grunts, “My pockets just a little more heavier” over the nostalgic Atlanta trap horns of “Flood,” or when he mentions that he was on the Titanic on “Iceberg,” because I like to imagine what Bossman Dlow would have been doing on the Titanic. Or possibly all of “How I’m Livin,” his version of one of those Cash Money flex-a-thons where he talks about his Louis Vuitton scarf and diamond-dancing timepiece like they’re magical trinkets he found in a lost tomb. It’s hard being an it-isn’t-that-deep radio rapper in an era where radio doesn’t matter as much as it used to, but Bossman Dlow is making it work like nobody else.