A long time of neglect and slashed funding have pushed america’ public housing system into disaster. Elevated privatization, mass renovations, and sweeping demolitions have displaced longtime tenants whereas fattening the pockets of firms and landlords, whose agendas deal with locals as an afterthought. Almost each main metropolis within the US has their very own horror tales because of this—together with Washington, DC, the place Paco Panama was raised. He grew up in a mission within the southeastern a part of city, which he says was torn down round 2020. Paco was rapping earlier than that, however with nothing left to do after it was razed, he began spending extra time within the studio. His hustler rap is an unglamorous, morally complicated firsthand account of an ecosystem stuffed with drug sellers, addicts, lookout boys, and cops. It’s political even when it’s not heavy-handed.
Paco Panama’s first mixtape of the 12 months, Southside Sopranos, drops him instantly into that unrelenting world. Southside Sopranos isn’t fairly as weighty as final 12 months’s breakout mixtape The Wire Vol. 1, named after the Baltimore-set HBO present. That’s principally due to The Sopranos theme, which is showcased within the type of goofy, grating Italian gangster skits by hometown comic Chico Bean which might be headscratchingly extra Don Corleone than Tony Soprano. (He needs he was as humorous as Grasp P’s Black Italian character within the MP Da Final Don film.) However Paco is a colourful and evocative rapper, stuffing tracks with vignettes of neighborhood dealings and hard-earned life classes that solely typically veer into empty clichés. All of those tales are associated with the worn-down voice of a longtime bruiser simply shootin’ the shit on a stoop; the breezy, soulful tint on the doomsday bounce of DMV avenue rap helps emphasize that temper.
His tales are vivid and unfurl progressively, making them really feel as dramatic as film clips. Whether or not he’s lining the inside of his whip with bricks earlier than a protracted out-of-state drive on “Contraband,” or detailing the intricacies of traphouse shifts on “DC Home,” the scenes really feel full as an alternative of blurry. Typically he evokes the weathered Detroit duo Los and Nutty, whose dope dealing epics are little doubt a heavy inspiration. However Paco branches out by specializing in the results of the approach to life, one which he’s remorseful about when he’s not hypnotized by hood glory. (It is sensible that one of many first rap songs he knew was Scarface’s psychologically conflicted “Born Killer.”) Sometimes he’s cold-blooded about all of it, like when he raps “Fuck yo’ issues, see a therapist” on “Supreme Clientele.” But most of the time, you may really feel the burden on his shoulders: “Life will fuck you up, you gotta adapt to it/On a regular basis struggles I needed to lure by it,” he says a number of bars into “Time Will Inform.” The mixtape runs practically an hour; the ethical complexity of what he has to do to outlive rears its head many times.
