The World Is What It Is

This is truly a strange time for Hip Hop. In the interest of full disclosure, I decided to check this album out thanks to an endorsement from Noz, but beyond posting one of the worst songs on the album he never spoke on it, so. Plies is one of those blatantly, unapologetically silly ringtone rappers you and your boys use as a piñata when you’re not on guard writing on the internet, being objective and open minded.

Plies, which first of all might be the worst rap name I’ve ever heard, doesn’t really flow so much as he shouts in drawl. It’s this nasal, whiny bray delivered excruciatingly slow in simplistic couplets that suggest it’s meant for mass consumption. And most of the Plies songs you’ve ever heard are that bad. On The Realist, Plies third album in 17 months, there are several songs so laughably bad they confirm every worst fear and suspicion you had coming in. These songs are about women and Plies status as a sexual deity. Plies is also one of these guys who considers rap a hustle, who Peter Rosenberg eloquently lashed out against the other day. Plies stands by rap as a profession, and actually on the defiant, gorgeous “Heard Of Me” boasts about his ringtone sales as he bashes the major labels trying to jerk him. Tribe, the Lox and more traditionalist outfits have been bemoaning the major label system for years, do we fault Plies for beating it?

Plies is from East Dunbar Florida, a place that from Brooklyn certainly evokes an exotic mixture of hood and country I remember best from the awesome Year of the Bull, a documentary about an outside linebacker on a High School football team in Liberty City, Miami. On “Co-Defendant”, a song all about how paranoid and unfriendly Plies is because he doesn’t want so called friends to end up becoming the song’s title, he displays the area in which he truly excels as an MC. It’s all very straight forward, personal detail concerning how he’ll chill with people but won’t bring them to his crib, he won’t fuck with overly friendly people, generally an anti-social anthem. The point is you’ve bought weed off at least one guy like this, and whether or not Plies has gone through what that guy has you come away from this song feeling like you understand his paranoia a little better.

Beyond his roots and his place on Slip-N-Slide Records, you can really feel the presence of Trick Daddy on Plies music. He just might be Trick’s spiritual heir, with the word “goon” replacing “thug” and technical virtuosity being replaced with raw emotional power. In some ways on songs like “Family Straight” his lack of technical prowess works to his advantage. Without crafty delivery or clever punchlines dressing up his content, the song comes across as a charged, distraught relation of some very personal problems. In other words, the simple delivery suggests honesty and straightforwardness, which for me is a completely new way to earn authenticity.

2nd Chance - Plies
But what really snapped my mind in half and made me want to sit down and write a post about fucking Plies is when he attacks a subject close to my heart that I’ve almost never heard mentioned in Hip Hop and he addresses at length: Institutional Racism. Plies apparently has a brother and some boys doing serious time, and as a result dedicates a few songs to their plight. There’s a real heartfelt, bittersweet sadness to “Gotta Be”. While the song is dedicated to those who’ve managed to avoid getting knocked, the implication in the production and delivery is there are many who haven’t. My favorite song, the one I’m posting and am most convinced will sell you is “2^nd Chance”. Plies talks about disproportionate sentences, the unfairness of a system in which money goes a long way towards determining how much time you serve, and the most affecting moment in which he imagines being up on the bench with a gavel, sentencing a judge’s child and wishing the judge could understand how it felt. Plies has a fairly laughable style and is prone to making you wince with his braggadocio and threats. He makes awful love songs and if you happen to be on an above ground train around three o’clock in the afternoon you’ll almost definitely hear his voice if a middle school boy or girl receives a phone call. But on “2^nd Chance” his helpless frustration is tangible, and he’s absolutely right.