Real Bad Boldy

Langue disponible : anglais

Few rappers had a better 2020 than Boldy James. After breaking out with his 2013 Alchemist-produced debut, My 1st Chemistry Set, the Detroit veteran spent the rest of the 2010s putting out subpar mixtapes on Mass Appeal Records and fading from relevancy. He made a sudden and big return at the top of 2020 with his highly-regarded sophomore record The Price of Tea In China, a neo-noir masterpiece also produced by The Alchemist. Over the summer, he dropped an even more elaborate jazz fusion opus with Detroit producer Sterling Toles, and then announced his signing to Griselda Records with a more stripped-back mixtape helmed by Jay Versace.

His fourth and final album of 2020, Real Bad Boldy, is a collaboration with the L.A. producer Real Bad Man that serves as a concise victory lap for a year that completely rehabilitated his career. Whereas all of the previous albums had a cinematic quality to them—shape-shifting beats, film samples strung between his verses, and memoir-like storytelling—Real Bad Boldy harnesses the raw power of his delivery over the type of warm soul loops you'd hear on a Roc Maricano album. The positively stunning ethereal sounds in the back of "Street Shit" contrast gorgeously with Boldy's croaky voice, while songs like "Good Foot" and "Champion" have a triumphant stride that's quite different from the formless compositions of The Price of Tea In China.

On all of his records, Boldy raps about the traumas and triumphs of cooking and selling drugs, both with a sense of sober remove and a dead-eyed realism that underscores how he'll carry those brutal tales with him for the rest of his life. The tape is stuffed with play-by-plays of shoot-outs and detailed notes about the everyday hustle of dealing drugs. "They ask me how I write my raps, I say my scale wrote it," he raps during "Failed Attempt." However, these stories never come across as proud recollections of the glory days because he'll also drop lines about fighting two counts of first-degree murder at the age of 13. "I'm high strung, come from where the good die young/ Graveyard under my belt, put that shit on my son," he utters with his matter-of-fact baritone during "On Ten". The overall mood is deservedly upbeat here, but Boldy doesn't forego the macabre atmosphere that makes him compelling enough to shell out four full-length projects in a single year. © Eli Enis/Qobuz