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Southeast Slim’s Recycling Skills
Although Drake‘s hit “All Me” has been on the charts for like four months, let’s be honest: The song is best when his mouth is closed. That dramatic, slightly spooky Key Wane beat loses its edge when Mr. No. 1 Canadian starts yapping about his unilateral achievements. D.C.’s Southeast Slim, aka Sace, appropriately flips it all around with his remake, “All We,” which not only lets the beat shine, but also is a few notches lower on the ego index. Southeast repeatedly reps his crew—including fellow Hitter Quitter Records co-owners C and Ice-Man—and keeps his rhymes in the pocket. The overt attention to others makes sense: Southeast released an emotional, highly detailed diss track in October about Wale, alleging—among other things—that the more famous rapper had left his old friends behind. (Apparently there was some Twitter-deleting afterward.) That song, “Forever Hitter Quitter,” like “All We,” borrowed its beat from an established track: Meek Mill‘s “Dreams and Nightmares.” It was a shrewd move by Southeast, who got some XXL shine as a result. (“All We,” incidentally, doesn’t seem to be directed at anybody.) —-Joe Warminsky
Beef, Broccoli, and Bathrooms
Released in June 2012, Awthentik and Ethan Spalding‘s Beef and Broccoli had all the weed and drank references you could shake a blunt at, all told over a nice assortment of trap beats and abrasive boom-bap. In their new video for “So Clean,” Awthentik does everyday shit (literally) while smokin’ kush. Then he and Spalding play cards, drink liquor and, well, smoke more weed. Finally, towards the end, Spalding makes scrambled eggs and guzzles a beer. Diagnosis: munchies. —-Marcus J. Moore
More Bathroom Boasting
Shy Glizzy began the year on an aggressive note by borrowing the beat for Future‘s rousing, antagonistic “Sh!t.” The video, directed by Joshua Freeman, features Glizzy on a roof, in a bathroom (obviously, given the title) and in the club surrounded by bottles of Ace of Spades. Over Mike WiLL Made It’s production, Glizzy gloats repeatedly: “Real young nigga from the trenches/Bitch I got racks like tennis.” Though he doesn’t exactly do what Drake did to the beat, he still manages to entertain. It’s always fun watching someone make kingpin boasts from a bathroom. —-Julian Kimble
Just Do It
In what’s been an endless stream of singles so far, rapper Nike Nando is back with “All Krazy, All Wild,” a straightforward go-go track featuring TCB‘s “Make That Ass Clap.” The crowd-sourcing jam features a traditional go-go breakdown before Nike rhymes about twerking and a wild night on the town. He shouts out the Bowie Town Center, Georgia Avenue, and The Icon nightclub in Waldorf, Md., before letting the beat take over. Unlike his previous work, this one is short on lyrical content. Odds are this track works best in the club referenced above. —-MJM
http://youtu.be/GrMD7bPQoCQ
Escape to North Korea
The only D.C. music video to make international news this week was this one: “Escape to North Korea,” the video from two young local rappers whose jaunt to the totalitarian state turned out to be an extremely effective marketing tactic. The Guardian snagged the first homecoming interview with the duo, and the video itself premiered just in time—-shudder—-for the birthday of Kim Jong-un. —-Ally Schweitzer
