Steve 'Flash' JuonAt first when looking into IshDARR I thought he had vanished before the pandemic, but since I quickly found posts by him on Instagram this year, it once again served as a reminder why the “authoritative encyclopedia” often isn’t. The one thing they did get right is that IshDARR had a small role in the movie White Boy Rick. Other than that his discography is sadly incomplete, including this EP that he released in 2023. Instead of talking about his current work though I want to delve into something a little closer to his Hollywood debut, and that’s the 2017 release of “Four the Better.”
The video for “Foreplay” certainly has the look of a major motion picture, with a director framing up shots of Ish and the female he’s interested in, both pretending to look at each other without doing so but occasionally giving each other “fuck eyes.” He’s writing his phone number down for her, she’s lingering on a piano as he strokes the keys the way he would her, it’s pretty clear where things are going for them. I honestly would have interpreted this as some down and dirty R&B given the fact Ish is singing more than rapping on this track, but even on songs like “Free” he has a very musical delivery. Not a pitch corrected delivery though — a genuinely musical voice free (pun intended) of AutoTune manipulation.
A sultry saxophone and floating flute definitely add to the air of intrigue, and I appreciate him throwing references to A Tribe Called Quest into this mix. IshDARR didn’t strike me as an incredibly hardcore rapper at first, but on “Lies” he turns it up a notch and starts rapid firing both his rhymes and his profanities. You could argue he’s showing off how nimble his breath control is, and if that’s true then it worked because I walked away impressed. “I don’t be worried about nothing” quips Ish and it feels that way listening to him. This probably wasn’t recorded in one take, but just like a NBA player who practiced the same shot millions of times, he makes it feel effortless when he delivers.
Coincidentally he’s “Air Max fucking 95 to the sky” on the very next song, so balling seems to come naturally to IshDARR. So does the GQ look if videos like “Foreplay” and “Mucho Mango” are any indication. What I really noticed about the latter is the interpolation of “Wanna Be a Baller.” Ish may hail from Milwaukee but clearly schooled himself in the H-Town classics growing up, and hearing that hook come back in the present day and age put a big smile on my face.
It’s not hard to see why his charisma and charm brought him to the big screen on “Four the Better.” What is hard to see is why nobody has capitalized on it in a major way since then. I realize the public is fickle and that success is fleeting in the rap game, and that IshDARR may have veered so close to R&B with his raps that he missed out on the rise of the Soundcloud generation entirely. It’s also possible that I hear something that other people don’t, but to me, there’s an “it factor” to IshDARR that already has me looking forward to reviewing more of his work in the future.