Joey Purp - iiiDrops

Pitchfork 82

“I done been on both sides of the burner/I done witnessed both sides of the murder/I done seen a nigga killed/And seen a nigga kill a nigga.” This is how Joey Purp opens up his new mixtape, iiiDrops—announcing himself as a street-savvy, thug-fluent, criminal-adjacent observer of society's darker corners. He's more on the sidelines than in the fields, but he's not an outsider looking in, either. An accessory by necessity, he's smart enough to not snitch and careful enough to make his death threats subliminal, yet still aware enough to speak as the conscience from within the belly of the beast, because he personally knows of the tolls paid on the backroads to riches. “You see the world in my daughter's eyes/If you had seen what she had seen, you'd be traumatized,” he raps.

It's tempting to simplify when talking about artists, to shave off their multitudes, flatten, and categorize them. Because he is part of Chicago's Savemoney crew—the loose collective of artists that includes Chance the Rapper, Vic Mensa, and others—Joey comes with a certain set of preconceptions, namely that he be a technically proficient stylist with a progressive artistic bent. He fits that bill, sometimes, but he's a little deeper and more human than that. Boastful and thoughtful, socially aware and defiantly filthy, longing for the music industry's spoils while simultaneously disregarding them—his various sides come together on iiiDrops, which is more well-rounded and definitive than his woozy The Purple Tape or his word-centric experimentalism as part of Leather Corduroys.

Where Chance spent Coloring Book showcasing the audacity of his hope for a better tomorrow, Joey is a panoramic and holistic realist when he looks around at the forces and people that support the cycle of violence in his hometown. On “Cornerstore” he rides a horn-powered groove from Thelonious Martin and Donnie Trumpet, dropping off pinpoint observations along the way: He recalls speaking to his brother who may never come home from behind bars, confesses of marijuana dreams of drug kingpin success, notes that “White kids deal with problems that we never knew to bother/Arguing with they dads, we pray we ever knew our fathers,” and watches gentrification from ground zero: “Now up in the corners where killers used to inhabit/They built a row of new condos where they tore down project buildings.” He's joined by Saba (another Savemoney satellite), who matches him observation for observation: “My best friend from when I was 11, posted with the weapon/Actin' like he do not see me step into they section/We used to hoop daily and treat it like a profession/And now I'm walking by him like I'm some type of pedestrian.”

Joey’s songs make no distinction between the personal and political, and see systemic failures through the lenses of individuals without ever quite pointing fingers or succumbing to victimization. “We grow up being neglected by our elected officials,” he raps on “Money & Bitches.” “My nigga, cry me a river, I’ll buy you a tissue/ I don’t wanna hear your complainin’, you pressin’ my issue/All I know is money and bitches.” There’s also little difference between good thoughts and worthy wordplay—every rhyme and idea flows into a next; almost every moment is quotable and represents a greater whole. It’s an astounding feat for someone who tried to lean and swag his way through his first solo project.

In a year that's been dominated by headline releases from marquee artists, iiiDrops has the making of a sleeper hit. The POV is measured and insightful, the rhyming is assured by both technical and narrative metrics, and the music is quietly confident and sharply novel—Knox Fortune and GARREN's funky broken soul on “Photobooth,” OddCouple's triumphant swing on “Morning Sex,” the stripped Neptunes-ish drumplay of “Girls@” and “Say You Do,” updated blaxploitation psychedelia on “Godbody,” a semi-paranoid summer evening pulse to “When I'm Gone.” Some of the numbers sound like they belong of a producer’s showcase, more than a rapper’s coming out party, but Joey rides every beat with an easy intensity that makes his worldview the unifying factor here. He never allows the tracks to become the sole point of focus, and it takes Chance the Rapper—going on about dead batteries as a pick-up line to girls “readin' Ta-Nehisi Coates”—to upstage the star of this show.

Purp is adept at juggling and offering competing meanings, often from within the same song: “When I'm Gone” shuffles between a tale of relationship drama and fights with his boss, while the closer “Escape” is a Drake-like stream of boasting and history and chest-thumping prediction that plays like Purp's “5 A.M. in Chicago.” But he never comes off jumbled or all-over-the-place; he not only sees both sides of murder, but also the bigger picture. On “Morning Sex,” he raps, “Look in the mirror, all I see is the money / I close my eyes, all I see is the money.” He's not immune to capitalism's siren, but he's aware of the opportunity costs. Unfortunately, his gaze does not extend to seeing women in whole; there's nary a girl mentioned who isn't a ho, a nag, or one or the other in the making. That’s a disappointing state of affairs, but there is hope: If you look into his daughter’s eyes, you can see the world. And when he looks in the mirror, he sees his mother’s eyes. He's traumatized, but he’s still looking.