Stream: Buddy, ‘Black 2’

Kevin Bronson on July 2nd, 2020

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Buddy is on a roll.

The Compton rapper born Simmie Sims III, who cut a wide swath across the land with his 2018 debut album “Harlan & Alondra,” has unleashed a torrent of music since the pandemic started, the most notable of which was “Black 2,” a prickly statement on race and cultural appropriation that serves as an addendum to his album’s track “Black,” featuring A$AP Ferg.

In the 2018 song, Buddy spits, “I’m so black on black on black on black on,” declaring that despite “Four hundred years of oppression / I’m about to get me that black Tesla.” To an outsider, that ride might sound nice, but at what price? “Know you wanna be just like me, huh? / ‘Til the police wanna lock me up,” he raps on “Black 2,” tying everything up with the line, “Everybody wanna be black, don’t nobody wanna be a nigga.”

That single followed the release of April’s “Janktape Vol. 1,” made in collaboration with long-running L.A. rapper Kent Jamz (of Overdoz). It’s a wild ride of the long-player ranging from warm and sweet (“She Think” and “To the Grave”) to brash (“Bad Boys”). Spot the movie homages in the video for the latter.

Buddy’s latest single “Faces,” out this week, features Lucky Daye and is about those grimaces people make while in the act of. The song wears out its welcome pretty quickly, but Buddy says it’s the first of more collabs coming this summer, making quarantine less boring.

||| Stream: “Black 2” and “Faces”