Troop! Paid In Full! 4-finger rings! etc etc zzzzzzz!

Realistically, there are only two types of back-in-the-day joints in Rap : you've got the ones crammed full of emotionally-rich vignettes about life as a shorty in the 'hood which are so vividly detailed that they can put you right there in the shoes of their writer, and then there's the other 98% where you'll find dudes rhyming "boombox" with "pop-locked" and "hopscotch" for the ten billionth time. Essentially, This new Twista cut amounts to a 70% from column B/30% from column A ratio, and yet, somehow, it still jams :

"I remember when the walls had graffiti on it
took a look at 'em next summer now they got G.D on it"

Twista - I'm Old School
(From Reloaded mixtape; 2012)


I really want to loathe this song since Twista just lazily reels off a caboodle of generic old-school signifiers like brickphones, dookie ropes and furry Kangols, before almost torpedoing it entirely with that heinous "pop-locking, my True Religions look like bellbottoms" line which might possibly replace Beanie Siegal's "girls rule the world, shit, that's what Beyon' say/where your destiny lies, that's Beyonce" rhyme from the otherwise impeccable Kush Dreaming as the worst Rap lyric of 2012. Problem is, Twista uses some very striking imagery in this, the beat sounds like it was gaffled from a folder called ‘hard-boiled instrumentals that Fat Trel really needs to Rap over’, and he has the decency not to use the phrase ‘real Hip-Hop’ in either of his verses so the song ends up being an unlikely minor-triumph.