Album Review: Finessin Distribution Deals by Fox BD
With his second project of the year, Fox BD reps West Memphis and Bouldercrest at once and sells two-minute songs about kidnappings, lean proposals, and the locked-up half of his family.
The loudest rap from that corner of West Memphis right now belongs to a crew named the Foxes, whose leader, Fox BD, can’t sit still on either side of the Mississippi River, representing the home field and Atlanta’s Bouldercrest at the same time and taking heat when anyone categorizes him as an Arkansan. His crew is deep, deep thousands by his own admission, with half of them free and the rest in jail, and waiting for him to keep them alive. He brings them all on board onto Finessin Distribution Deals, bar for bar. Fox wants company on his track.
He yells Cam onto “the one-twos” in “Keyboard Gangstas,” a hit for those computer-ass computer guys who never got under his skin, and pauses to ask Juice, on paper, if this one’s his. He double Foxes constantly, a second one heckling one in from the ad-libs. He goes at people who post a dead friend for attention and mamas raising GoFundMes for sons who flaunted money their whole lives on “I’m Adapted” while the Fox behind him wonders how that works, then tells himself to shut his trap. He sets his best scene inside the song itself, a studio disagreement over a crashed rental, someone screaming, “You wanna crash mine? You wanna crash like I’ll crash, gang,” and Fox in a Burberry puffer in hundred-degree heat, with his muscle shirt and jorts underneath, Glock in hand, chain loose on old school “like Tunechi in ‘08.”
He indulges in cruelty as comedy on “20k Purse,” spending twenty thousand dollars on a designer bag “like Uzi,” logging an Amber Alert for a guy his crew just captured and opting for the pixie cut when a woman asks him to choose her next hairstyle. He equips a whole apartment on “Livin Room,” a five-star woman lounging around five hundred fentanyl pills and twenty choppas, and sets a rule: no one may call someone a rat without paperwork to back it up. He switches from a nail technician making his trigger fingers presentable to a .308 bow-legging a man that walked in straight that same verse, then comes clean about botching a bikini shave with Nair. That’s all he wants to get for Christmas, a cup that’s purple.
The most genuine love song he offers goes to the drank, a dating relationship he officially recognizes on “Pharmacy R Us”: “Thank God for introducing me to lean, I’m proposing to her.” The love affair’s already in trouble, the doc terminating refills and his mama catching him mid-conversation with his muppet. Unc FaceTimes in from the bath with a recipe; the pours go in by four, by example of Drakeo The Ruler, and Babyface Ray stops to get charged for the clean drank; Jeffersons flex completely intact. He and Lil Yachty divide more of it on “Seals Dekline” where the discussion of the drank involves a request to have Bieber elaborate and a wish he’d alerted Granny to store up Actavis prior to a ban. He couples his lean addiction with a woman’s Xanax addiction on “G6” while Sexyy Red notes another of them taking and looking fancy about it. He confesses the price on “Baffled”: “I’m gettin’ fed up, I’m tired of purple shit sittin’ in my lungs,” a line that’s sandwiched between gator boots, a five grand mink carpet, the three investments he’ll mention, clothes, drugs and bump stocks.
West Memphis comes up hardest on “Goal Post,” reminding him of the time when he walked by a dead body in his very living room.
“You ever seen a dead body sittin’ in yo’ living room, mind yo’ business, just walk past it
Next morning, had to go to school, brush it off my shoulders, act normal like nothing happened.”
West Memphis comes up hardest on “Goal Post,” reminding him of the time when he walked by a dead body in his very living room. He attaches the name to his memory with a one-word tag, confusion. YTB Fatt got some G6s in 2016 and decided to skip a million-dollar meeting. And Fox replies to him with his own survival method: bows and show, and a funeral that he didn’t attend. “Fell out with bro before he died, ain’t show up at the funeral, send my condolences.” The guy standing behind him adds, “Still love you though.” His family reunion starts with “Bakk to Square 1,” where he raises a toast to all the people who lined up with him, asking Lil’ Mo to be free, the last one to see four years ago heading to jail. And ends with “Hear Me Out, Just One Time,” where he talks about who became brave since Fox took them in and pays his respect to the partner whose heart became numb from street losses.
At this moment, two hundred dollars is the cost of the album, which can be paid using CashApp, Apple Pay, or Chime, and “Lmaooooooo” is his pitch, giving his justification for the death spiral of a hook about petty paper. Fox calculates his man’s price tag: “For what you signed for your publishing, I spent that on drank.” Asked in the camera, he just sits there, not replying, avoiding any fines, just like Marshawn Lynch refused to answer questions on media day (you know, “I’m just here so I don’t get fined”). Being a distributor, he sets his own price and follows the money notifications; nobody gets any part until he does.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “I’m Adapted,” “Pharmacy R Us,” “Goal Post”