Steve 'Flash' JuonMy expectations going into “Metal Gear Sub” were unrealistic. I came across an unfamiliar rapper referencing a very familiar video game series in his album title and immediately thought Sub9K was going to be on some “Black Materia” vibes. It wasn’t even a stretch to picture a Brooklyn emcee from the late 2010’s going that route. There was a whole lot of experimentation in sound and style from the New York scene at the time — everything from grime to drill to trap was being implemented in NYC rap. Well that should tell you something about Sub9K right there. He’s definitely got that dark, grimy, post modern rap sound on songs like “Give a Fuck.” Solid Snake references though? Well… kinda.
The album’s title is not a coincidence. He describes himself as having “Metal Gear swagger” and being “O.G. like Snake” in the intro to “Hold Me Down.” He’s clearly a fan of Hideo Kojima’s work. There are no David Hayter samples though. That classic ALERT sound and accompanying tense BGM isn’t used anywhere. It wouldn’t have fit in musically to the tone of Sub9K’s style work here, but I needed more than passing references to Snake to get the vibe I was looking for. Even the album cover could have helped the presentation. Instead of a hot girl standing on a pile of cash next to an expensive car with the butterfly doors up, maybe we could have seen Snake in profile with camouflage on and a bandana blowing in the wind? Give me something Sub. I’m not asking for much.
Songs like “WTF U Wanna Do” feel like they want to make the jump from being tangentially about Metal Gear to really being about it. He teases it at the beginning and fails to deliver on the promise. It winds up being a generic song about how many shorties he’s got on his dick, how fat their asses are, and how many blowjobs he gets. “Bitch, I wanna fuck, I’ll tell you later.” He delivers rapid fire sets of words like a trigger squeezing on a semi-auto. Brrap, brrap brrap brrap. It gives him an interesting juxtaposition of Brooklyn by way of Atlanta, but he never does anything with it beyond banal bragging.
We were so close to getting something interesting on “Metal Gear Sub” but Sub9K refused to paint outside the lines in any way. Imagine if he had put even one song on the album rapping from Snake’s perspective on some “Epic Rap Battles of History” shit, but instead of doing it for comedy he really got into that O.G. Snake’s head and talked as the ultimate warrior who was ultimately weary of war. Just imagine if he did one track about nuclear disarmament. No, Sub9K stays firmly in that 2018 lane of New York rappers who tried to sound brand new but instead only changed the sound and not their actual topics or lyricism on said topics. I should have passed this one by… but at least now you can, and as Frank White once said “You’re welcome. You’re all welcome!”