On 2017’s Big Fish Theory, Vince pivoted to coarse, edgy dance music and divided the fandom. The taut, minimal beats on Summertime came as a shock after the more traditional gangsta-rap vibe of 2014’s Hell Can Wait EP. This is Cali music tradition, not so far removed from the balance of murder raps and slick grooves at the root of G-funk, or the sweet-sounding terror of psych rock.Īs much as songs like “Blue Suede” and “Hands Up” tell us that Staples understands Cali rap convention, the catalogue often seems to be in conflict with the expectation of adherence to a sound closely tied to the rapper’s home state. The off-putting juxtaposition of beauty and danger in the visual element of Vince’s work examines the dualities of Southern California, where it rarely rains but you still run the risk of getting wet up. Vince Staples wants you to know how easy it is to die in America in the shadow of the intersecting codes that govern the streets, amid the territorial scuffles of gang life and the ease of a terrible experience with the police. The same album’s “Are You With That?” is set to a scene where the artist is slowly chased by a car that runs him over. “Law of Averages” from last summer’s Vince Staples starts with a tailgate party and ends with the revelers lying on the ground, seemingly dead. The video for Summertime’s “Señorita” surveys scenes of inner-city chaos before pulling back to reveal a white family watching the footage in a museum. You see Vince glaring out of an open car window at the beginning of the video for “Norf Norf” from 2015’s Summertime ’ 06, and you wonder where he’s heading until the camera pans out to reveal a police-car siren overhead. They lure you into a sense of comfort they gleefully snatch away. They’re compact horror stories with unexpected twists. In the two-and-a-half-minute clip, the Long Beach rapper makes an appearance at a house party where he bumps into another reveler’s arm, tripping off a disagreement that ends with the rapper being stomped out by a group and stumbling to a convenience store to secure a bag of ice for his bloody face. The video for Vince Staples’s new single “Magic” is a testament to how easily a day can go to hell over a minor dispute in the America where physical danger is as real of a daily consideration as the weather. In the meantime, billion-dollar police departments have enough surplus to donate to Ukraine if you live in a neighborhood where gunshots aren’t uncommon, the influx of funding hasn’t made you that much safer. We have seen affluent New Yorkers try to stop the city from moving unhoused citizens into vacant hotel rooms during the early pandemic, we have seen people sensationalize shoplifting in San Francisco, and we have now seen rich Angelenos regaling us with elaborate murder fantasies over a guy getting smacked in the face. But city residents are every bit as susceptible to scaremongering. Living in the cities in question at the time, you caught vile, indelible moments of law-enforcement overreach and brutality. In the last presidential election we saw suburban voters whipped into a frenzy over hypothetical depravity following the protests of 2020.
![little homies little homies](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1887/8337/products/CD0208_BaseballLittleHomies2_1024x1024.jpg)
Little homies serial#
We’re titillated by documentaries about serial killers, creative scammers, and historical atrocities, but conversations about crime often break down because the people furthest from it and the people most directly affected by it often have very different ideas about the nature of the threat. Americans have a paradoxical relationship with violence.
![little homies little homies](https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/154717679374_/Lot-Of-40-Homies-Figures-Series-1-10-Little.jpg)
food cart erupted in gunfire, killing one. Sunday night, during the Oscar broadcast, a dispute near an East L.A. after being hit by a car while he sought assistance for gunshot wounds sustained moments earlier as he was robbed in broad daylight. The Friday before the show, a man died in South L.A. It wasn’t even the tenth-wildest story in Los Angeles that week. But playing it off as unconscionable behavior was an odd choice. Like, duh, try not to hit anyone at the premier gala in your profession. The histrionics about the Oscars last month were a poignant reminder that some people see violence as a looming, existential threat on the march from far away, and some people live in the numb inevitability of it.