Young Nudy

Anyways

BY Clayton TomlinsonPublished Feb 28, 2020

9
Anyways, the debut from Hotlanta's whiny, crooning, staccato rapper extraordinaire Young Nudy, is his latest in a short line of extended releases; the only other of the same quality is his collab with Pi'erre Bourne 2019's Sli'merre. On the latter, his voice was often another sound for Bourne to toy with, but on Anyways Nudy is bombastic, full of life, of weed and of aspiration, like any wholesome twenty-something.
 
Over 16 tracks, with beats that range from minimalist hi-hats to symphonic and melodic techno-laced trap beats, we hear him rap about his life on the streets in all its confusion, anxiety and unfortunate violence. On the finale, "Do It With the..." he repeats the line "Do it with the Choppa," a popular term for a big gun, in between talking about robbing people, yet it works and enthralls. That is the through-line to his oeuvre — Nudy does things other rappers do, but it works so well for him where others fail or seem phony.
 
Nudy's range comes out when you compare "Do It With the…" to Anyways' second song, "No Go." With a haunting, funereal beat that's a hi-hat with a scary moan in the background, Nudy talks about how fierce he and Slaughter Gang, his group with cousin 21 Savage, are. All of this while spitting a million words a second, so it seems, laughing and making raspberries like you would on a baby's belly. It's insane and scary and sad but it works, hell yes it does.
(RCA)

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