Andrew Veeder on May 30th, 2013

0

[Buzz Bands LA today welcomes a new contributing writer, Andrew Veeder. He has flow too.]

Last year, a 17-year-old kid from Brooklyn put out a new mixtape – but it sounded as if it’d been buried in a time capsule since his birth in 1995. Now eighteen, Joey Bada$$ is emerging as one of the most exciting up-and-coming rap stars of the east coast. His sound consistently harkens back to the mid-’90s golden age of New York hip-hop – Nas, A Tribe Called Quest – full of soulful samples invigorated by timeless kick-snare sounds and turntablist touches; but it’s his rhyming style that truly sets him apart, the dense webs of inventive rhetoric that he spits with such ease. His newest track, “Word Is Bond,” is no exception, the first from his forthcoming “Summer Knights” mixtape. Over production from Statik Selektah built over a dark, beautiful piano snippet and woven with scratch flourishes, Joey switches up his rapid-fire flow effortlessly, playfully jumping all over this 4-4 beat and crafting a stunning string of prose full of references from “Apollo 13,” George Pataki and “Chappelle’s Show.” On the heels of “Unorthodox” and “A Day in the Life” earlier this year, “Summer Knights” and his forthcoming debut album “B4DA$$” are looking more and more exciting.

||| Download: “Word Is Bond”