Steve 'Flash' Juon“I got the swagger of Mick Jagger in my drip”
I’m not sure a rapper under the age of 30 needs to compare himself to a singer over the age of 75. One might try to argue that there are only so many words that rhyme with “swagger,” but then I can think of a half-dozen off the top of my head — dagger, bagger, bragger, stagger, nagger and sandbagger. The last one caught my eye because that’s how I felt about Yung Tory listening to “Still Here.” When this album came out in 2019, Tory was a hot prospect signed to an imprint personally run by Timbaland — Mosley Music Group — with distribution through Def Jam. In the words of an infamous video game from the 1990’s, “What could possibly go wrong?“
“I Wanna Rock” is everything that could. It’s the least Timbaland sounding song Timothy Mosley produced that I’ve ever heard. I can’t prove he phoned this one in, but I strongly suspect he chose the first bass drop in the folder, the second phone chirp in another folder, added some drums and called it a day. The performance the Mississauga rapper delivers doesn’t elevate it one bit. “Look at this drip, look at this sauce, look at my bitch, look at her walk.” He’s obsessed with two things — misogyny and oral sex. Neither one says to me that Tim signed Yung Tory thinking he was the next big rap star.
“Lola” featuring Lauren Sanderson is better, but only because Sanderson brings some SZA style energy to the track. “Girl, you a part of me/bend that back, let me see you arch for me.” Yung Tory is nothing if not consistent about his worldview. He’s out for sex and every woman merely exists to gratify his insatiable demands. “Me & You” is more of the same minus Sanderson and plus an AutoTune croon. “You know I’ma ride if you need me to/you know I’ma slide if you need me to.” His tendency of simplistic bars is equally matched by equally simplistic come-ons. He’ll say anything he has to so a girl will spend the night with him. “Girl you fucking with a big shot caller.”
I combed through the tracks of “Still Here” repeatedly trying to find what Timbaland saw in Yung Tory and drew a blank. As I’m writing this he appears to be working on an album called “Rastar 4 Ever,” a sequel to the only full length studio album he released in 2019, but after five years I’m sure whatever heat he had at the time has cooled off substantially. Unless he’s still working with Mr. Mosley, and unless the production goes above “average” to “interesting,” and unless Yung Tory has found more to do than rhyme swagger with Jagger and call every woman who won’t service him a bitch, I don’t think his comeback matters that much. We’ll see.