Forgive me for being crude, but J.I.D is pure motherfucking fire. DiCaprio 2, the 2018 sequel to the 28-year-old Atlanta rapper’s 2015 EP, is one of those end-to-end burners that testifies not only to the young MC’s unfuckwithable future, but also to the future of hip-hop as a whole. DiCaprio 2 might even be a portent of positivity for the entire art of writing. From album opener “Frequency Change” — the rare rap skit that feels essential to the overall arc of the album — to the hilariously titled closer “Despacito Too,” J.I.D fires off top-tier rhymes at a breakneck pace with a style and finesse that will make you forget all the wack rappers stinking up your newsfeed.
These are weird times to be a rap fan, with a heap of schmucks among the genre’s headliners, a morass of old fogeys and young knuckleheads in the underground, and a middle tier that is, well, really middling. And there’s more music to wade through than ever: Forget about having the time to keep up with it all if you don’t have the wide-open schedule of an underachieving young 20-something. Forget the easily parsed days of regional sounds and simple geographic categorization. (Well, the cicada noises and Southern drawls at the end of DiCaprio 2’s “Slick Talk” are regional as fuck, and DJ Drama shouting all over the tape is classic Peach State, but you get what I’m saying.)
As a child of the ’80s and ’90s, I have found my entire cultural life shaped by hip-hop music. I’ve witnessed the art form’s evolution and expansion, seen its guiding principles refocus repeatedly, heard its timbre change a dozen times over. I’ve seen hip-hop blamed for problems it didn’t cause, praised for solutions it didn’t create, and misinterpreted and reinterpreted in mind-melting ways. I’ve been lucky enough to make hip-hop listening a central part of my career. I’ve seen hundreds of rap shows, heard thousands of rap records. And I feel that with folks like J.I.D at the helm, the genre is heading into its best possible future.
The old rules of rap fandom and criticism are out the window today, and yet young artists like J.I.D still check off all the Golden Age boxes. He dominates the fundamentals and masters the microscopic details that make or break an MC, and still elevates the genre. His storytelling, his non sequiturs, his character development, even his weed jokes — they all imbue this author with a disproportionate sense of professional jealousy. But beyond that, he can run a show: He’s a performer and a producer, collaborating on some of the most engaging visuals in the rap game. He’s not just a guy with a mic — he’s a guy with a vision.
That vision is expansive, often containing multiple viewpoints in single couplets, holding multitudes of attitudes within a single voice. J.I.D juggles the complexities American life — “Off da Zoinkys” packs blistering considerations of personal pain, systemic inequality and broad societal power dynamics into one three-minute burst — and he bounces the melody around each word to create hooks out of every line. It’s evidence of an MC prying open the possibilities of his art. This is three-dimensional hip-hop that pops in a way mainstream cartoon-rap (see: Lil Pump) can’t. J.I.D’s swagger reveals flashes of vulnerability and humanity, which — like the titular shots of “151 Rum” — burn hot and vaporize fast. When J.I.D sings “shit ain’t really working out” on “Workin Out,” there’s a very adult, very authentic sadness that puts emo poseurs in the shade.
These emotionally open moments give DiCaprio 2 a stark modernity, placing it firmly in the Age of Wokeness without ever losing the hardcore edge that connects it to the classics of the genre. When Wu-Tang Clan’s Method Man makes a cameo on “Hot Box,” the blunt gets passed like a baton, from one generation to the next. But DiCaprio 2 is not a nostalgic album. All of the old-school elements on the LP — Ahmad Jamal samples! 808s! — are used to create contemporary sounds that underscore the forward-looking fast rapping that has become J.I.D’s trademark. More than anything, DiCaprio 2 feels like a shot across the bow, warning everyone that J.I.D is going to do big things in the future, and they’re going to want to keep up.
