Clara WangWith little real production, experience, or exposure, rapper 2f8ce somehow delivers a compelling magnetism in his new mixtape, “Parental Advisory.” Hailing from the town of Fort Valley, Georgia, 2f8ce is all raw talent and slipknot metaphors. He occasionally falls prey to the pitfalls that all new rappers do, but in general “Parental Advisory” is a neat piece of work.
The mixtape consists mostly of generic industry beats, sampling hits like “Roc Boys” and “0-100.” The lack of actual production is at times distracting and definitely detracting to the overall experience, but the lyrics are nice enough for me to resurrect Big L as a comparison. From the first to the last track, 2f8ce delivers aggressive rhyming rife with jokes and total irreverence.
In the opening track, “Holy Ghost,” he establishes that he’s coming after all y’all bitches, an assailment that is continued through the record. One of the best tracks of the album is the following song, “Fxck Yall,” which is stylistically reminiscent of Eminem, although that may be just due to the “Fuck the world, and your mama” tone. The chorus emphasizes his mockery, “Fuck y’all, act like it’s against the law to be me/ You don’t like this shit, I don’t give a shit, don’t fucking buy the CD,” and he spits caustic lines against religion and racial hypocrisy.
He goes after everybody, from ignorance in the black community to biblical parables, sparing no one. With lines like, “I find it strange that the bite of an apple can make the world a goddamn disaster/ I find it crazy that the only book we could have was the bible back when we were saying master/ Who am I to complain? If life was fair, Eve would’ve had a candy apple,” and “Called Obama like, I got it dog, we can steal the black vote and really clean them/ Raise the food stamps and legalize weed/ That’ll give us the black folks we need/ Blacks will see a black on TV, whatever he says I’m sure they’ll agree/ Dear promoter on BET, cause they don’t really watch NBC,” I can almost forget the oversampled industry beats he’s rhyming over.
“I,” sampling Kendrick Lamar’s hit, is the most positive he gets on the mixtape, and here he tones down the aggression to a bit more of a come-up story. “0-100” is hilariously packed with clever pop-culture references, joking about pretty much every VladTV headline; “Living with a THOT that need a dildo to do squats.” Although the warped production is at times distracting, with the proper resources these dope lines could really go somewhere. It’s been a while since I’ve truly been surprised by unrefined talent, and 2f8ce is a rapper with a lot of potential.