At Native Mag we love anthems; those songs that take all the hallmarks of the sounds dominating the charts in any epoch and combines them into an Oeuvre that transcends all the flaws of the genre. This is especially hard to do when you’re a hip-hop rapper in a post-millennial music industry where the scene can just as quickly be changed by a record executive as it can by a 16 year old Tumblr rapper with 4 million followers. So when we first heard the BankyOnDBeatz produced ‘Squad’ by #90’sbaby affiliated bilingual rapper Idris King, I was pleasantly surprised to find, we had on our hands an Anthem!

King pays homage to 90’s rap, the era that he and the other denizens of #90’sbaby, completely stripped of references to violence and drugs or even hypersexuality, choosing instead to celebrate community and camaraderie. When he asks ‘Who you know fresher than my squad’, it’s more a rhetorical question than an affront. King already knows exactly who he is and where he stands. The wordplay comes swift and King makes suprisingly good use of the pauses to emphasize his punchlines.

But Squad simply wouldn’t be the juggernaut it is without BankyOnDBeatz’s production work. He’s been on our radar since his female rapper led mixtape Fuego Senoras, so his technique of stripped down instrumentals, heavy percussion and horn adlibs are quite familiar. Squad is even more impressive when you realise Idris King only met Banky a week before the song was recorded.

Ecouter ‘SQUAD!’ ici.

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