Album Review: S.K.A.T.E. by Rylo Rodriguez
Three years after Been One, the Mobile rapper comes back with songs about snitching, grief, and double cups. He is one of the best line writers in Southern rap.
The philosophy of Mobile, Alabama street rap is that talking is the most expensive thing a man can do. Rylo Rodriguez comes from Mobile, Roger Williams Housing Projects, raised by his grandfather, and in 2020, he told Rolling Stone he “wouldn’t want to be from anywhere else.” He found his footing by remixing Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby” into a life in the projects track called “Project Baby” and signed with Lil Baby’s label 4PF to produce two albums with a stream of name-checks, debts, and funerals until he ran out of flexes and things to mourn. His fourth studio album states his philosophy explicitly in its title, S.K.A.T.E., which stands for Silence Keeps All Targets Exposed. The silent man watches everybody give themselves away. The watching happens behind the walls.
He listens behind the dark, round minor key figure of “Stir” as he sends his flowers to a friend who kept his mouth shut for sixty months straight, checks up on a cousin down the road “who was made to cut his hair” to pay back the loan, passes along a bunkie’s tale of how his fiancée sprayed perfume on the letters she wrote to him in prison, and shakes his head at his uncle who snitched on Duke in Georgia and never did a day. He sends his locked-up friend’s baby mama money for each holiday so the children would have something to wear, and even though he found out his day one started talking about him before being sent to jail, he still covers his lawyer bill. He flexes in handcuffs. “They took a Patek off my wrist, put shackles on my hand/Had to turn myself in in my prime, I feel like Deion Sanders.” On the hook he tallies up his jury. GWAY, Ayesha, D.A., the judge. He answers them all on “Exposed” with one bar, “I took the stand in court, and still continue to rap,” his pride and guilt in the same breath, just before he cuts himself off from some little brother.
On “Endless Cups” he grieves between sips. “My nigga died doin’ the robbery, it sent shots through his chest.” Then he reports the wake, “They hung up his jersey like Mitchell & Ness.” He buries his people and flexes. On “Idols R’ Us” he recalls raising Mel’s casket beside that of his auntie’s son, and tells a life story in one line, “He lived nineteen years to die, it’s a fast end like Ramadan.” He digs deeper into himself on “Ecstatic.” Where he drops his earrings in the double cup, lists the cost of snitching in two lines, “Twenty years in a cell, the few that could get the mail/Twenty years in a cell, you do two if you tell,” and admits to feeling suicidal, “Suicidal thoughts are hittin’ strong, who else needin’ a prayer?” In a few lines, he dances and cries at the same time, in the strip club where his brother was killed.
Between funerals, he stays petty and hilarious. On “Really Hate U” he looks for an insult. “Me and her wasn’t on the same page, I got her a bookmark.” Then he spends the hook hating the woman who makes him rich, “But you make me rich/You make me sick.” He puts his punches one on top of the other on “Low Top Vanz” saying, “I got versatility, I’m not Doja Cat,” and keeps his childhood right there in the same verse, “I’m a project baby, I still got all my trophies on the dresser.” He works the same trick of the one-line economy when he cuts people out of his life. On “Too Real,” he claims he frees more people off lawyer bills than Harriet Tubman, and drops a twenty-year friend with one sentence, “I can’t pick the phone up for you no more, ‘cause you cooperated.” The jokes come from the verdicts.
Kevin Gates gets the most space on “Neighborhood Starz.” It’s a long, declarative verse on survival and says plainly in its first line, “This go out to everybody sufferin’ in silence.” None of the five guests leave that subject. Veeze is deadpan on “Kount Ya Hat,” but he continues policing the snitching line, “I watch him talk to the feds for an hour, like when do his lawyer speak?” YTB Fatt answers his hook question on “Say What” with a roster of snitches, “Seven hundred thousand in Ps, he was squeakin’, he gave his partner up for bows.” Twice Lil Baby appears and delivers his tightest verse on “Promises,” giving two favors in one line, “Heard yo’ man died, tryna say I got him wiped.” NoCap, his running mate from Rogerville days, joins him on “Excuse Me,” sings his pain-rap and swears, “If I love you, I’ll throw you a brick.” The guests change the body language but stay in his pocket the whole way.
When the theme turns to women with “Love 4 Luv,” the terms don’t change much. The man prizes affection with felony loyalty. “Locks From Tiffany” wraps his romance with jewelry and syrup comparisons, and on “God 2 U (Selfish Ways)” he admits the imbalance but keeps it anyway. He sells the same deal on all three: money and gifts in exchange for devotion, and uses most of the names and case numbers he piles up in his best verses. He cuts down his game furthest on “Sure G6,” a stunt session that could have been written by almost anyone.
Audemars Piguet skeleton watch exposes everything. Its case is carved away to show the working gears, and with “AP Skelly” he wears one like a memento mori, “AP skelly watch, I can still see my bone.” He blames himself, “I blame myself because I knew you was flawed, but I looked past it,” and admits what the money could never fix, “I thought gettin’ this paper would’ve eventually made me happy.” On his wrist, the gold, the hours, and the bones are in the open, the only place on S.K.A.T.E. where he lets himself be exposed.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Stir,” “Ecstatic,” “AP Skelly”