There’s not a rapper I’ve texted more friends about this year than Fox BD. The one-minute-older twin brother of the popular YTB Fatt from West Memphis, Arkansas, floated onto my radar last summer with Eat, Sip, Shxt, Studio—more for the Devin the Dude–style album cover of him taking a dump than the music—but took off for real in January with Suxh an Asshole, one of the funniest and best rap mixtapes of the year. Landing somewhere between peak Rio Da Yung OG madness and Rylo Rodriguez braindumps, he’s got a flair for out of pocket yet oddly personal punchline rap full of crooked life advice (“Bxthces Everywhere”), intrusive thoughts, and family secrets: his mom’s beer-drinking habit, his cousin’s purse-snatching addiction. BD delivers this stream of unfiltered opinions and slurred country shit talk in a near-breathless, sometimes-rhyming blur like he’s doing an impromptu Def Comedy Jam set. You know one of his songs really works when you can’t shut up about it.
Unfortunately, the new tape, Finessin Distribution Deals, doesn’t get me talking like Suxh an Asshole did. Its down-the-middle Memphis club and trap revival beats and growing emphasis on player motivation rap makes it easy to tell that, over the last seven months, BD’s become further enmeshed in the commercial hip-hop industries of Atlanta, where he now lives. Not like brushing shoulders with Lil Baby and Lil Yachty is a musical death sentence (Veeze is still tearing it up), but for a rapper who specialized in free-flowing street sermons, that slight touch of formalism and structure depletes the vibe. For example, on “Seals Dekline,” BD’s back-and-forth with Yachty sounds like it could have just been a throwaway from the last Concrete Boys tape. They don’t say anything that humorous or memorable over the dated, throbbing Michigan-ish 808s. “G6” feels like it’s only here because he can’t turn down the streams on a Sexyy Red collab—and he’s trying too hard to act as nasty as her. The f-bomb slur on the hook of “20k Purse” is the ultimate sign of going through the motions.
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Fox BD might be struggling with the switch into the professional rapper ecosystem, but even at half-speed his dark humor is still a riot. I particularly like when he’s in hip-hop Larry David mode, getting cranky about stuff that is either trivial or has nothing to do with him: On “Livin Room,” he’s on the club promoters’ case because the bottle girls are misspelling words on the walk-out signs; on “I’m Adapted,” he finger-wags, “Nigga post all that money when he alive, soon he die, mama postin’ a GoFundMe (How that work?).” The ad-libs are essential to a Fox BD lyric because a lot of the time they’re what make the songs seem like they were ripped directly from real-life conversations. I’m thinking of the self-disappointment in “shit weak” after he realizes he’s grown a gut and can’t clown on big dudes anymore, or the “Proud of you” he hits a girl with after he notices she’s been building up her muscle in the gym—I wouldn’t be surprised if this is actually his go-to move when he’s DMing women in response to their gym selfies.
