Album Review: Supreme Cut Untouched Magnificence II by Da Flyy Hooligan
A Harlesden rapper stocks his sequel with Conway, Gunn, and a posthumous Sean Price verse over vintage drumless Agor loops. The bravado is real, but so is the grief.
Agor’s loops arrive bare, stripped to their samples and little else—a soul organ cresting, a brass phrase bending on its own, piano keys left to ring without a snare or hi-hat to corral them. Roc Marciano drew that blueprint years ago, where the absence of drums forces the rapper to carry all the momentum, and on Supreme Cut Untouched Magnificence II, Da Flyy Hooligan—the former Iron Braydz, a Nigerian-born MC who planted himself in Harlesden, northwest London, in the early ‘90s—picks up that weight without stumbling. He made the first S.C.U.M. with Agor in 2017 through his own GourmetDeluxxx imprint, featuring Westside Gunn and Hus KingPin, and in the years since has burned through roughly twenty projects, collaborating with Sonnyjim, The Beat Junkies, and Tesla’s Ghost, among others. The sequel reunites the same producer, pulls from the same drumless soul-sample well, and stocks a guest list that tilts almost entirely toward the American underground.
The hook on “Veblen Goodz” lays the terms flat: “You got my back, I got your back/Say nothing else, my nigga.” Mutual protection isn’t one of the album’s themes. It’s the currency. Nearly every song on S.C.U.M. II either affirms that bond or recounts what happens when someone breaks it. On “True Stories,” Da Flyy Hooligan talks about burying a brother in an undisclosed location until somebody ratted to collect a larger share. On “Lab Coats,” he snaps SIMs, ghosts his proximity, and burns his burner phone before calling anything in—no snitches in his circle, and if you hold the nine to see his brain get blown, you were always going to do it. “Nightingale Road” spends its first half breezing through a Maserati in White City and a Nipsey Hussle dedication, then cuts to a phone call from a cousin describing a violation so severe that Hooli tells his family there are no guarantees.
“Disregard his life or make a man approach you violently
Death before dishonor, move cautiously for loyalty.”
Half of what this album is about fits inside a single “Guilty Verdix” breath—Hooli rattles off a Celine colorblock fleece, Casablanca merino, a full grain leather briefcase, a red Veneno, custom-made Giuseppes, and imported Miles Davis while splitting wigs and causing a full eclipse with a .50 caliber. “Saville Row II” puts him in a camel hair coat maneuvering blocks like Ayrton Senna, sipping from Versace wine goblets in Vienna, then spraying the tech while shorty on the fourth floor watches the bloodshed. Westside Gunn matches that frequency on his hook—Spring ‘17 Balmain, kilo Cuban links, bust-down Rollies, cocaine cookers, a thirteen gauge to the back—and the two of them sound like they’re shopping and shooting in one afternoon without changing clothes. Conway runs an identical program on “Alligator Skin II,” making dope boy money off mixtapes while his wrist aches from whipping raw yay, talking about torso shots rupturing spleens and then calling most current rappers talentless.
Three continents feed the angriest track on the album. On “China,” M1 opens wiping smiles off faces with a gun, remembering ‘99 touring with Big Pun, and wanting to smack Bush for what he did to Haitians in Miami. Hooli’s hook pins COVID blame on Boris Johnson and says China had nothing to do with it. His bars get into EDL shirts, dodgy prime ministers, marching for Darfur while holding concealed weapons, self-defense turning into all-out war, then calls himself “a fly revolutionary rooted in the compost.” General Steele closes it with du’as for struggling men, “No country for old men, the young guns busting,” and a Fred Hampton reference (“OG chairman Fred, killed and it’s bad/If we ain’t fighting just to live, we probably already dead.”). Rome Streetz brings a different gear on “Lab Coats,” rapping about starting with a pocket full of pieces and custies on the curb, outgrowing close-minded friends, and taking risks to sit in a big Benz. His contribution has a hunger Guilty Simpson’s doesn’t quite match—Simpson’s campfire imagery on the aforementioned “Guilty Verdix” stays in a comfortable lane, punching but rarely surprising. Sean Price’s posthumous turn is looser, funnier, meaner: “Happy drug dealer, sell crack with a smile now,” karate-chopping krills, calling himself the prophet of profit, referencing Elijah Muhammad. It sounds like Price walked into the booth without a plan and left with something better than a plan would have given him.
The bravado drops on the final track with “Expensive Wishes.” In the first, Hooli sprays on new Versace and then his mind goes backward—writing for survival, defeating rivals, praying God would listen, one man with a mission who doesn’t get to see his children. The aim is to make enough so his kids can own buildings, Maybachs, Basquiat art, apartments overlooking cities. Then the years in solitary, not answering calls, while his mama was getting worried. He saw the day she was getting buried and felt like a failure who couldn’t make her wishes come true. The second half stays there—wishing he’d spent more time in her presence, wishing he’d given her more presents, knowing her life was a blessing and that she suffered many traumas. Then the brother who was hating, the shirt soaking from a laceration, sixty-four stitches, eight months of pain.
“My mind was faded, set my life or death
I knew the truth and walked away from hatred.”
The album doesn’t need to be perfect to earn respect, and it isn’t perfect. After eleven tracks of Kenzo and ICU threats and cocaine cookers and rose gold Lexuses, this is where the record does something the rest of the album never asks for—it tells the truth about what all the loyalty and all the luxury and all the violence actually cost a person when the lights go off and there’s nobody left in the room.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “China,” “Saville Row II,” “Expensive Wishes”