Album Review: Roofless Records for Drop Tops: Disc 2 by Curren$y, Wiz Khalifa & Harry Fraud
Curren$y and Wiz Khalifa have been making the same album together for seventeen years, and it keeps working.
Somewhere north of 150 projects populate Curren$y’s discography page—try scrolling through it sometime. Solo albums, producer pairings with The Alchemist and DJ.Fresh and Trauma Tone and MonstaBeatz, collaborative tapes with Smoke DZA and Larry June. He left Lil Wayne’s Young Money in the late 2000s, founded Jet Life, and has released at a pace that makes even Gucci Mane’s output look manageable. Wiz Khalifa went from Pittsburgh mixtapes to a number-one single with “Black and Yellow” to a twelve-week chart-topper with Charlie Puth, and still every couple years circles back to Spitta for another round. They first linked on How Fly in 2009, when Wiz was a regional stoner rapper and Curren$y was figuring out what independence looked like. They reunited for 2009 a decade later. Roofless Records for Drop Tops is a two-part series, both halves from this month. The first installment runs on Cardo beats, recorded partly on Twitch streams. The second, entirely produced by Harry Fraud, drops the features and the guests. Just Wiz and Spitta, talking over Fraud’s loops.
Harry Fraud’s samples reach further back than anything Cardo laid on the previous installment. Cardo built tracks to knock at a stoplight; Fraud chops vintage soul into slow circles, piano lines borrowed from 1974 Italian film scores nobody bothered to reissue. “La música de Harry Fraud” drops early on “Champagne Bottle Emotes” and honestly, it’s the right call for these two. When Curren$y rattles off Canal Street, Melrose, Soho, Michigan Street in Chicago on the same verse, the sample gives each city a second before moving on. Wiz describes falling asleep on a private jet and waking up inside a dream he was already living on “Smoke N’ Pray.” The beat has that kind of patience—slow enough to let you catch the details.
Most of what these two are rapping about is inventory. ‘64 Impalas parked next to ‘65 El Dorados with no Forgiatos, candy-paint Z28s, Ferraris, Rolls Royces, emergency Porsches, a ‘79 El Camino with a hot motor. Casino boats and C-notes. Pro Model shell toes in white and blue that Currensy’s partner tracked down because no store carries them. Wiz names the Steelers and Saints both winning Super Bowls; Currensy names Marcus Allen, Art Shell, Bo Jackson, Ricky Henderson stolen bases, Jose Canseco home runs. The sports references pile up the same way the car references do. “Surpass your superiors, that’s for the up-and-coming,” Curren$y says on “z28.” “Where I come from, dog eat dog, that stand for somethin’.” Two bars later, a woman calls at 2 a.m. with a friend, but he got bad news from the hood and might not be in the mood. The verse moves on.
The partnership goes back further than the cars or the money, and “Long As You Live” is where that shows. The hook puts it plainly: touch a million, realize that isn’t enough, bring more in, cop something cool, do it again. Currensy calls the alliance almost twenty years old, etched in stone in 2009, ordering a new Bentley on his laptop while the hook circles. Wiz picks it up, rapping, “You don’t get niggas like Spitta that’ll take you to the crib and show you everything from how to dress to how to live.” Piano apartment to foreign cars and elevators to the loft. He sneaks past the doorman because she told him she’s lonely, checks the forecast for a private flight.
“House where the hill is
Name on the building, everything in our name for our children.”
Curren$y’s best flex on Disc 2 comes when he imagines a Verzuz on “Storm Shadow & Snake Eyes,” his opponent rolling out missiles while he counters with Ferraris, Rolls Royces, and emergency Porsches before adding, “spiders, nigga/I bring out arachnophobia.” Wiz says he wasn’t supposed to have the Ferrari but pulled up anyway and people looked mad. On “Palm Island,” the closer, Wiz suggests they write the book when they’re done, rapping, “How to hustle hard but make it look fun/How to start off with ounces and make it double up/How to cook up a classic and make another one.” Then a woman got too high at his crib and asked if he’d Uber her home. He rolled two doobies and made a song about it.
Favorite Track(s): “Long As You Live,” “Champagne Bottle Emotes,” “z28”