Flo Rida - "Still Missin'" (mp3)
Out of all the questionably talented rappers who've risen to fame during Miami's recent radio rap renaissance, Flo Rida might be the only one who actually sounds good on the city's dominant brand of bright, synth-driven beats. Where guys like Rick Ross and Plies just sluggishly drawl over those fast-paced drums and can't help but sound clumsy, Flo Rida constantly raps in a smooth doubletime cadence with frequent divergences into triplets and other subtle rhythmic accents. His voice isn't that appealing and he rarely says anything interesting, but he sounds downright brilliant next to his most obvious points of comparison, and I've been rooting for him ever since his standout verse on the last DJ Khaled album.
Unfortunately, the track Flo Rida rode to the big time, "Low," was practically the only T-Pain hit of the past year beloved by rap radio significantly less than by pop radio, and his label waited until 3 months after it topped the chart and sold millions of single downloads to release his album, with no buzz-building street single or significant guest appearances on other people's records, so pretty much no hip hop fans were checking for Mail On Sunday by the time it was released. He had no time to even be hip and new before becoming a cheesy crossover artist, which might be his own fault I guess. The album certainly helps push him in that direction with Sean Kingston, will.i.am and Timbaland hooks.
I'm not going to act like Mail On Sunday is a masterpiece just to be contrarian, of course. Hell, my two favorite tracks are "Don't Know How To Act" featuring Yung Joc (who I ordinarily hate but sounds great here), and the extraordinarily silly "Still Missin'." At first I glossed over the latter as just a lame girl song, until I realized that Flo Rida has written an entire seemingly sincere breakup song around some incredibly ridiculous wordplay based on the two most common usages of the word "hoe," as in the hook's refrains of "my lawnmower home, but my hoe's still missin'" and "my rake's in the shed, but my hoe's still missin'." And if that's not enough, he actually sticks to that conceit for the verses, only finally giving up the ghost in the 3rd verse and confessing "and I ain't talking about the hoe you find in the dictionary." So yeah, maybe Flo Rida doesn't deserve much of your respect, but still, I'd sure as hell rather listen to this than Trilla.
Out of all the questionably talented rappers who've risen to fame during Miami's recent radio rap renaissance, Flo Rida might be the only one who actually sounds good on the city's dominant brand of bright, synth-driven beats. Where guys like Rick Ross and Plies just sluggishly drawl over those fast-paced drums and can't help but sound clumsy, Flo Rida constantly raps in a smooth doubletime cadence with frequent divergences into triplets and other subtle rhythmic accents. His voice isn't that appealing and he rarely says anything interesting, but he sounds downright brilliant next to his most obvious points of comparison, and I've been rooting for him ever since his standout verse on the last DJ Khaled album.
Unfortunately, the track Flo Rida rode to the big time, "Low," was practically the only T-Pain hit of the past year beloved by rap radio significantly less than by pop radio, and his label waited until 3 months after it topped the chart and sold millions of single downloads to release his album, with no buzz-building street single or significant guest appearances on other people's records, so pretty much no hip hop fans were checking for Mail On Sunday by the time it was released. He had no time to even be hip and new before becoming a cheesy crossover artist, which might be his own fault I guess. The album certainly helps push him in that direction with Sean Kingston, will.i.am and Timbaland hooks.
I'm not going to act like Mail On Sunday is a masterpiece just to be contrarian, of course. Hell, my two favorite tracks are "Don't Know How To Act" featuring Yung Joc (who I ordinarily hate but sounds great here), and the extraordinarily silly "Still Missin'." At first I glossed over the latter as just a lame girl song, until I realized that Flo Rida has written an entire seemingly sincere breakup song around some incredibly ridiculous wordplay based on the two most common usages of the word "hoe," as in the hook's refrains of "my lawnmower home, but my hoe's still missin'" and "my rake's in the shed, but my hoe's still missin'." And if that's not enough, he actually sticks to that conceit for the verses, only finally giving up the ghost in the 3rd verse and confessing "and I ain't talking about the hoe you find in the dictionary." So yeah, maybe Flo Rida doesn't deserve much of your respect, but still, I'd sure as hell rather listen to this than Trilla.
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on Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 9:30 AM.
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