Written by
The corniest shit that I’m willing to admit about myself is I’ve never stopped thinking about when J. Cole rapped, “All good jokes contain true shit.” It’s probably the single rap bar I reference the most in my life. (’Cause it’s facts!) Social currency is built on good jokes that contain true shit. There’s one in particular that took over my Twitter feed at the start of this month: This dude wrote, “DMV beats sound like construction sites,” an observation so cogent yet so simple, so emblematic of the song he attached to it—“Faces” by Skino—that the post blew up and inspired dozens more tweets full of clanging metals and Dolan Rides and slaphappy snares.
On “Faces” and Skino’s subsequent tape, Blood & Oil, those rough percussive jolts act as a Trojan horse for seraphic melodies and falsettos. That juxtaposition places the D.C. rapper’s stoic, shoot-first-ask-questions-last raps in a cinematic light, or it tries to. Blood & Oil feels emblematic of both what’s right and wrong with free car music in the DMV. At their most experimental, free car beats are some of the most exciting music out right now, and after coming up on the DMV’s signature creepy, piano-based numbers, it’s interesting how Skino strays left of center here. His producers find a shadowy space between the headrush of cloud rap and the glitchiness of PC Music hyperpop, where everything sounds colossal and darkly palatial. I feel the rumbling creep of brae’s “Knee Deep” beat and immediately feel a few feet taller walking down the street. The way wspkartel makes the vocal chops on “Im Sick” whir like helicopter blades, the way the witch house beams shimmer on “K,” the way Neno builds hair-raising tension with wordless, operatic melody on “Nomad” and “Crown”—all aim to take Skino to a new, more ambitious level.
No score yet, be the first to add.
As his stature has risen in Southeast D.C. the past few years, Skino’s one-note deadpan has taken shape over the exact kind of metallic carnage that inspired that “construction site” tweet. Like a lot of his contemporaries, Skino’s raps depend on rhythmic stasis and the context and fervor of his disses more than his ability to assemble a rhyme scheme or a clever punchline. Though the DMV remains the most exciting street rap region in my eyes, at its worst, it’s plagued by homogeneity; what separates one local rapper’s punch-in flow from the next is often marginal. Skino can’t seem to break that cycle: There’s not enough specificity or emotion in his vignettes, not enough dynamism in his delivery or creativity in his word choice to distinguish who he is as an artist. Whether it was intended or not, Blood & Oil really just feels like his answer to the other street rappers in his city—Xang, Zel, and (beef aside) Too Many Strikers—using intricate, mosaic production to go against the grain. Now that he’s strayed out of his comfort zone, Skino comes across sluggish and barren.
At first the music feels promising: Skino’s ad-libs are explosive (“Bdrrrr!!!”), he has no shortage of confidence, and the beat selection is pointedly sensory. But the closer you lean in the more that idea dissipates. Skino’s raps feel effortless in the sense that he could deadass crank out a dozen songs a day by skimming through the same general ideas. “Blow shit, we’a spin in a fast car,” he raps on “Fast Life,” a track teeming with lines frustratingly vague or unoriginal or both: “I got shit on my mind, I’m toxic”; “Niggas wan’ battle rap like we TikTokin’.” He’s hoppin’ out cars, he’s hitting rival members in the head, he’s—poppin’ pills and going on hills? And he’s telling you in the plainest, most immediate terms that come to mind.
Blood & Oil is decent when you mentally place sound and atmosphere at the forefront. I’ma gladly keep “Knee Deep” and “Im Sick” and “Crown” in rotation on the strength of their chilling sound design and Skino’s ability to sink into a steady flow. But he struggles to translate these individual flashes of talent into a body of work that says something human about him.
