Album Review: Finesse the World 2 by RetcH
A friend killed on his birthday, a brother gone, years of cases. RetcH turns the decade since Finesse the World into his coldest, most cohesive album.
Hackensack is a city which is very close to the George Washington Bridge, and therefore the rap music from there has always been “New York but without the shine.” During the 2010s, one of the biggest local exports in the rap music industry was RetcH, a storyteller known for collecting Polos, who came up with the Finesse the World album in 2015. It became legendary because of its street drug detail, while the artist was facing charges in reality. The following decade produced albums called After the Verdict and Administrative Segregation, which mixed up county time and silences. Finesse the World 2 appears, which has been assembled using similar ingredients of grim sample loops and unsentimental, rough voice.
One of his friends has been killed on his birthday, and RetcH describes that experience in the track “Martin Luther Six.” As the drums by Python P are hitting stronger, RetcH lists the calibers, the campus kids he skipped classes with to avoid the raids, spades games in the county and presents himself as an artist painting pictures out of pain, feeling “like Martin at the Lincoln” when speaking at the stage. The voice of King finishes the song, saying the part of “I Have a Dream” about the daybreak where a Negro still cannot be free one hundred years later. The song “Point Guard” develops the idea of the floor general and lists shooters on the roster, shooters on the bricks, shooters in jail and rivals, who are being stood over “just like AI.” On the track “1/2 of It,” RetcH describes the situation in one breath: “Brother died, and then I lost my bitch/I contemplated, put it to my head and let it click.” Percs do not work anymore. There was a car chase in 2019 that ended up in court, and the hook claims that the full story cannot be told. The second verse of the song becomes a letter to his brother, promising to complete the mission and tell everybody everything to make them feel what he felt.
Finesse the World 2 starts with the track called “Disclaimer 2” where RetcH delivers a spoken intro about living a life until the end and earning a college degree, followed by a job, which pays thirty thousand dollars per year and leaves five thousand dollars for survival once the taxes, student loans and five hundred dollars rent are paid. RetcH replies to the questions of how anybody eats by specifying his listeners - the brick sellers, the door kickers, the women selling themselves for the sake of being able to give something to their children, the dealers making fake drugs for small cities, the paranoid guys who “keep guns all through they home.” The artist sounds very dry and aggressive, and his flexes are professional—“Trappers move like stockbrokers.” He concludes with the dedication for those “that done caught stay silent, never squeal.”
The clock is not stopped on “Dayshift/Nightshift.” The beat switch leads the artist to a shared verse with his longtime partner and guest Sha Hef, talking about the shooting trial opened by the snitch and setting the bail price “at 1.5,” which is hard to bond out. Hef sounds heavy and gruff, a slow and bruising authority, compared to the grim RetcH, and nobody tries to lift any of these stories. The track “Tutorial” squeezes all this working knowledge in a manual over the minimal trap drums, quick plain orders: wipe bullets with Lysol, wear masks before cameras, retire outfit, go alone, follow routine and let it cool off during a few months. RetcH says it as the rules for someone who should already know that.
He goes back to Second Street Park on “Hood Dayz,” house parties back in the school times, “shooting things, you know them hood games,” and the moment the memories turn: “Niggas started dying, that was really when the hood changed.” There is something nostalgic in the loop under RetcH’s voice, and the rapper uses it to include all the people surrounding the story—the disappointed mother, who had other plans for her son, a grandmother constantly praying for him, killers at the trailer and the woman he almost does not trust at all. The news report sampled in this song about gun violence in Paterson finishes the track—the resident says to the reporter she is leaving for Texas after two shootings in one month. The track “Rainstorm” keeps this gloomy atmosphere. RetcH sounds weary and introspective, dodging raindrops in the rainstorm, watching how the people act believing he has some money, revealing that sometimes he catches himself crying alone. But the reason behind this emotional mechanism is revealed: “I’m hurt so I be rockin’ chrome.”
XD .40 answers the fire on “Return Shots,” an interlude with the verse in it, a compact retaliation talk, which is completed by spoken coda encouraging young men to buy guns instead of chains. RetcH keeps the aggression throughout the song, and it is easier to perceive the retaliation bars than the previous floor-general playcalling. “Ian Hirsch” keeps the aggression but in the middle lane pocket without adding new shades. RetcH calculates the price of freedom and justice in forty thousand dollars each and then attacks the rival, whose case has been dropped thanks to a father knowing the mayor. “Who Would Thought” finds RetcH amazed by the situation, the open intro of the track followed by the locked drums and everything he managed to achieve in spite of all the odds - Madison Square Garden and Barclays stages for a man “trapping out apartments,” beaten cases “like I’m Gotti,” comeback “just like Brady.” He puts his conditions on everything: “Gotta go through shit to get the shit/Can’t say fuck the streets.” This dedication is taken quite literally. These are the people from the roll call.
In “Six Brady,” RetcH is amused by his threat level, taunting over the repetitive loop, which strips off throughout the track, claiming that if pimping were a sport they would have to put him on the Wheaties box. Then the rapping is stopped and the voice of the person, in the deep pain takes over, he calls his game the loneliest sport in the world, says he has not seen his kids for months, that he does not want his opponents’ titles, he wants their health, he wants their kids to see the pain, he wants their grandchildren to remember him as a bizarre individual. RetcH allows this rant to continue much longer than comfortable, and it becomes the most obvious hurt in this track, the price of all that amusement.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “1/2 of It,” “Hood Dayz,” “Dayshift/Nightshift”