Steve 'Flash' JuonDepending on where you find “Misunderstood” it will either be credited to Polo or Polo Perks. I think this happened in part because Polo didn’t want to be confused with Polo G or vice versa. It goes to show the danger of picking common words to use in your rap nom de plume if you can’t make it distinctive enough. More to the point though — is Polo or Polo Perks distinctive enough as an artist to warrant having a recognizable name different from G?
“Three hoes with me let’s have a menage
These niggaz be fakin I see they facade”
In a word, yes. While G spends a lot of the time singing his vocals, Polo a/k/a Mr. Perks is spitting bars like a Chicago drillian or one of their New York imitators. The tracks on this album have a vaguely Wolf Gang air to them as well, with the Half Hotel produced “Lohotel” sounding eerily like a Tyler track sans his deep baritone. If Polo was going to be confused with anybody that’s the more likely comparison. I also get a little bit of an A$AP Mob vibe too and that’s meant entirely as a positive.
While the artwork of “Misunderstood” gives off a Gorillaz feeling the music here couldn’t be further from it. Perks is not making catchy pop jingles with a faceless band. “Fuck That Shit.” No, literally. The tracks here have a gimmick of speeding up at the beginning and slowing down at the end, and also have the gimmick of the name of the producer influencing the actual instrumental. “FTS” is produced by Ghetto Nintendo and sounds exactly like that. I can’t place the 8-bit chiptune that he looped for the song but it definitely comes from that era of gaming.
“Misunderstood” breezes by at a breakneck 12 minutes, giving you barely enough time to appreciate Polo’s style before he’s out the door. That’s not a bad thing though since the album dropped in 2018 and if this Twitter account is any indication he’s still doing work six years later. If I’ve misidentified which Polo this is though, my bad, that’s yet another reason it’s far too common to be a rap name.