narrowcast: Deep Album Cuts Vol. 290: Young Dolph

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 290: Young Dolph

Next week, November 17th will mark a year since Young Dolph's death. I feel like he was underrated in his lifetime and didn't even really get the love he deserved even in death, perhaps because there have been so many untimely deaths in rap in the last couple years, people are almost numb to it.

Young Dolph deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Missed Count

2. Hold Up Hold Up Hold Up

3. Fuck It

4. Talking To My Scale

5. But I'm Bulletproof

6. Drop It Off (f/ Migos)

7. Thank Tha Plug (f/ Migos)

8. Point Across

9. Rubberband Money

10. Pulled Up (f/ 2 Chainz)

11. Lipstick

12. Dum and Dummer (with Key Glock)

13. Case Closed (with Key Glock)

14. 16 Zips

15. While I'm Rollin' Up (f/ 8Ball & MJG)

16. A-Plus

17. Loves Me Not (f/ Don Trip and Starlito)

18. Not No More

19. Booked Up (f/ Gucci Mane)

20. South Memphis

21. I Think I'm Spring (f/ Juicy J)

22. Nervous

Track 9 from Welcome To Dolph World (2010)

Track 19 from High Class Street Music (2011)

Track 21 from High Class Street Music 2: Hustler's Paradise (2011)

Track 16 from A Time 2 Kill (2012)

Track 15 from Blue Magic (2012)

Track 17 from High Class Street Music 3: Trappin' Out A Mansion (2013)

Track 20 from South Memphis Kingpin (2013)

Track 7 from Cross Country Trappin' (2014)

Track 18 from High Class Street Music 4: American Gangster (2014)

Track 10 from High Class Street Music 5: The Plug Best Friend (2015)

Track 14 from 16 Zips (2015)

Track 1 from Shittin' On The Industry (2015)

Tracks 3 from King Of Memphis (2016)

Track 22 from Rich Crack Baby (2016)

Track 6 from Gelato (2017)

Track 5 from Bulletproof (2017)

Track 8 from Thinking Out Loud (2017)

Track 11 from Role Model (2018)

Track 12 from Dum and Dummer with Key Glock (2019)

Track 2 from Rich Slave (2020)

Track 13 from Dum and Dummer 2 with Key Glock (2021)

Track 4 from Paper Route Illuminati with Paper Route Empire (2021)

I decided to try and cover his whole career instead of just his most popular albums and mixtapes. And I focused on solo projects, but it made sense to me to include his collaborative albums with Key Glock (two of his three top 10 albums on the Billboard 200) and the final release of his life time, the Paper Route Illuminati compilation. "Talking To My Scale" has one of the funniest false endings of all time.

For a while Young Dolph kinda felt like the classic southern rap archetype of a guys like Bun B or Lil Flip whose guest verses were what drove his stardom when O.T. Genasis's "Cut It" and Colonel Loud's "California" were bigger than Dolph's solo records. His legend was really cemented in 2017 when he survived his vehicle being shot at over 100 times, and he almost immediately followed the incident with the album Bulletproof and the song titles that ran together as a statement ("100 Shots," "In Charlotte," "But I'm Bulletproof," and so on). A year later, he turned down a major label deal worth over $20 million to stay independent, and released a hit single called "Major." Unfortunately, if people are willing to fire 100 shots at you, they're probably not going to give up trying to kill you, and it was sad to hear that Dolph's luck ran out last year, for a while it almost felt like he really was invincible.

Given the recent Takeoff tragedy, I was happy to find that Dolph had a couple songs with Migos that have great Takeoff verses. And I love hearing Dolph on songs with 8Ball & MJG and Juicy J, Memphis is really one of the greatest rap cities and it really feels like the '90s trailblazers have embraced the newer generations. I tried to showcase the producers that Dolph had the most chemistry with, including Bandplay ("Hold Up Hold Up Hold Up," "Dum and Dummer"), Zaytoven ("Drop It Off," "Point Across," "Nervous"), Buddah Bless ("But I'm Bulletproof"), and DJ Squeeky ("Fuck It," "16 Zips").