Album Review: Surprise Motherfuckers by twogeebs & Action Figure 973
twogeebs turns slasher flicks, the drug corner, and the rap business into punchlines over Action Figure 973’s blunt drums. The menace stays real the whole way.
More rappers name themselves fewer times in their careers than Action Figure 973. From the sounds of these twelve tracks, all recorded under the same luchador alter ego and produced by a producer working under the same persona, he doesn’t shy away from twogeebs calling him out by name more than a couple times between lines and ad-libs. Working on the same corner as twogeebs in the DITCD.COM area, also known as Zilla Rocca’s inner circle, the latter is Zilla F. Baby to those in the mix and on the mic. He’ll drop a slasher story, then a corner move, all in the same monotone, all with a low, grimy drum pattern working to complement it. What’s delivered doesn’t give room for the humor to soften the violence—it’s delivered in a flat monotone, which keeps the slasher stories feeling fresh despite the familiar nature of many lines.
What’s meant to be a horror scene occurring long after midnight in “Surprise Motherfuckers,” where “Satan really trapped in here with me” is turned into something like “Jason and Freddy screams,” which eventually becomes paint in the face of the listener (”Your blood spatter, bitch, that’s dire paint”) with no more warmth of emotion behind it than a punchline. Lines like “I was Edgar Allan Poe” bleed into “You Jason Weaver, I’m Jason Voorhees,” and the children’s TV-show related pun and the slasher come almost in the same breath, but still manage to fall in the same beat as the dope (“They was sleepin’ on me, but I was out here stuffin’ pillows with dope”).
“You Got Served” sees an Italian plug, “mob ties,” waiting at the corner every weekend, which he “smack dab on the corner,” raps up to “make a mil’ every month,” with a red, green and white, Godfather-inspired street that “he can’t help but to feel half in love with”. “Is it worth sellin’ your soul? Sometimes it feels a way” follows soon after in “You Got Served,” “Is it worth sellin’ your soul just so you can be poppin’?”, in his warning of what’s to come. He keeps dropping the advice, “What’s a goon to a goblin? Wayne was tryna warn us”, followed soon after by the statement, “I think these days it’s too late, we all may just be goners.” In “Banned From CVS,” the trade-off goes back to the comical with an Omar-like drug dealer stealing medication at the register (“more tablets than the Apple Store”), with every narco who drops on the scene setting off a celebration.
The fear of damnation is the closest thing that has grown to him by the time that he turns on business, and that is something meaner. Most clearly “Preaching 2 tha Choir,” where prosecution has tried to enter rap lyrics into evidence, and the rappers just kept turning over the ammo. He writes “Since the beginning, had us writin’ our rap sheets” and then “They usin’ our art in legal battles” and then “I hope one of them judges get shot” and then the verse closes with “Everybody wanna be hip-hop ‘til it’s time to be hip-hop.” A quiet dropped, his own album gets added to the indictment; “seven years probation for sellin’ pills.” And in “Raid tha Industry,” he pulls off a robbery, where he and Action drain the safe, punchline after punchline, “Made rap an equestrian sport, my mask a Trojan horse.” He flies out rich and abandons them all.
JOHNNYTRA$H barrels into “It’s Time 4 You 2 Die” as mean as he gets, stating his creation of all things Black and American; “I created blues, bitch, I created rock ‘n’ roll/I made hip-hop and soul” and then morphing race into a nightmare: “What’s race? It’s a hole, and it’s time to climb out of it.” The back half brings a twogeebs signature driest threat: “For you, this shit is doomsday/For me, it’s just a Tuesday,” with a title bent; “I’m the Omni-Man of what being ominous is.” Malcolmsef gives over the mic to plain writing on “Sef Interlude 2,” stating, “My frame of mind should hang in the Louvre,” and a final twogeebs line brings in the relationship between drugs and gospel; “Jesus turned water to wine, I turn coke into crack.” The beat of “Underscore” gets lost with its crowd, and Jazzy Lion man gets some good jabs in (“vintage Ralph, not no Pac”), GOMMi J’s line on flipping grams, and three voices with a long hook that extends the song far beyond the ability of its concept to maintain, though twogeebs closes with, as good as “Get put in this New Jersey dirt” is, it can’t fix the overall sprawl of the song.
He is less comical than that, more hung upon a more ethereal, held feeling. He is a darker, tighter, meaner MC on “Nightmares in Edison,” and it shows in lines like, “I put your soul in the sky, you not even rebel,” before his own name turns itself into a monster: “I’m Godzilla, F baby, nigga, who you s’posed to be?” It then switches over into brag mode based on work ethic, listing thirteen tapes deep with pride, “This like my thirteenth tape, nigga, I’m bad luck,” and “my catalog is Kevlar,” Edison taking the place of whatever is keeping him afraid. He also gets a quick jab at Joe Budden on the way out: “gossipin’ like bitches with Joe Budden,” keeping a Pokémon on the cover while he aims all over the place: “They on pussy shit, so I keep a meowth on the cover.”
Hurt is the only one he hasn’t dabbled in until “How Could You.” Rapping accusations to his girl who went through his phone and possibly talked to the feds, he bleeds in the wrestling, “You think I’m out fucking hoes/I’m watching wrestling on TV,” and gives away what the whole thing boils down to, “I love pussy, but not more than money and rapping.” However, the verse that stays with you comes on “Aye That’s My Drink,” where he comes off the corner for a moment to acknowledge what the phone is doing to everyone. “It’s a fast food world, they microwavin’ it all,” he spits, and the screen turns the bright, cheap, unending light, “‘For You’ page dopamine to the brain/This shit is insane, it’s like digital cocaine.” The dope he can’t quit selling, and the phone he can’t quit scrolling, are one and the same product by the final verse. He left the rest of his guys just as he found them, blindfolded with their eyes on the wall.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “You Got Served,” “Raid tha Industry,” “Nightmares in Edison”