Steve 'Flash' JuonI typically associate drill music with the city (and neighborhoods) of Chicago along with successful rappers from that scene like G Herbo and Lil Durk. Success breeds imitation though, and a bevy of artists from the five boroughs of NYC have tried to lay claim to starting “New York drill” as a rap style. Before listening to Ron Suno’s “Its My Time” I had no idea he was one of those people, though I suspect even his own fans might not be aware of it. Suno’s rise to fame came from making viral social media content on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. A casual search for his name might suggest he’s a comedian first, a content creator second, and a drill rapper third.
“Why he talk hot? He don’t know me
I got the green, that’s another dead homie”
Given “Its My Time” is his fifth album that was probably not his intent, but when you get any slice of the limelight in the fickle internet landscape, you don’t really question it. What I do question is why a rapper known for his humor is so serious. Now if you’re going to call yourself a drill rapper regardless of where you hail from, a hail of bullets is probably flying out of your verses. I get that he’s trying to represent the style authentically, and I’ll even grant that his success as a comedic content creator was an accident whereas his rap career is by his design. If that’s the case songs like “Medula” (featuring C Blu) are only more baffling — not less.
“You get shot if you laughin, thinkin it’s a joke”
In every visualizer from “Its My Time” Ron Suno is smiling ear to ear like The Joker as he’s riding one woman riding another woman, paint splattered all over the walls and all three. Looks like fun right? Like Splatoon in real life? Then why so serious Ron? He’s not having fun on these songs. His earnest sincerity about how hard he is is almost painful, especially when the vocals are spit in a rapid fire manner that allows him almost no vocal inflection or pitch shifting. “What They Gon Say” exemplifies that in a literal way by making it look like everything is on fire inside a Dance Dance Revolution cabinet. There’s no time for flair here — you just gotta keep up or it’s game over.
After 32 minutes of his super aggressive posturing at super aggressive speeds, it’s a relief to reach the end of the album and hear silence. That’s not the reaction I should have to a good rap album whether or not it’s in the drill genre. Let me make something perfectly clear here — Ron Suno is an entertaining dude. If you’re not going to take anything else away from this review, take away this — you can watch his reels/shorts/clips and enjoy yourself. It’s a shame that he wants to be the leading rapper for New York drill, let alone be a drill rapper at all, because this is not a guy I want to hear about spraying the opps with semi-automatics. I’m not saying New York needs to leave it to Chi-Raq, but in this one case at least, they do it much better. “Its My Time” sets out to prove how hard he is, but unlike his other content, it’s not fun to consume.