If you don’t know Playthatboizay’s name from his own scattered releases there’s a chance you caught him on the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, or perhaps his guest spot with Health on their Disco 4 project. Most probably, as with that unlikely movie moment, it has something to do with Denzel Curry. A long time supporter of his fellow Carol City rapper, Curry has featured Zay on a string of guest spots and opening slots leading up to ‘Hoodlumz’ (also feat A$AP Rocky) which arrived on last month’s King of the Mischievous South Vol. 2 mixtape. Reappearing here as a central pole of VIP, ‘Hoodlumz’ is a boisterous, rapid fire charge through the familiar ‘life on the streets’ mix of bombast and despair.
Recent single ‘Temple Run’ is named for an addictive game in which, having liberated a cursed idol from a lost temple you attempt to flee while beset by obstacles and pursued by demon monkeys. This is very much the mood of the album, Zay sounds hunted, closed in and desperate. Working with UK producer Kwes Darko (slowthai) the sound of VIP is harsh and atonal, the atmosphere hostile and impatient. The whole thing only just passes a half-hour, its compact tracks rolling into one another, bass momentum pulling trap beats and rough circling loops of industrial whine that constantly crank the anxiety dial. It’s low on shifts of pace or tone. There are no smooth jams. It’s relentless.
Moving between a hardcore bark and a staccato flow, Zay’s delivery comes in chopped and punchy syllables. It’s undeniably effective but leaves limited room for lyrical dexterity or elaborate twists of vocabulary. Funny at first, the ‘Hustle Man’ (skit) comes to feel like a self-mocking capsule of the album with his excitable jabbering only being shut down and rejected. It’s worth noting that he started work on this album just days after being dumped and the female voices that appear across it come in various shades of annoyed, scornful and dismissive.
VIP goes hard. Dark, furious and claustrophobic, it tears around under the oppressive Florida night contorting as it tries to find a channel for its pent up energy. But as much as he rages, Zay casts things in a baleful light, sick with dread and dejection. He feels like it’s time to go. He is the VIP, a title he says is about acknowledging “that your existence is important … putting yourself first without anyone’s approval.” Not a bunch of feelgood affirmations and self-help positivity, VIP is more a raking over of the ugly carnage. Opening with sirens and ending in gunshots, it burns with betrayal and dissatisfaction, wounded in heart and mind and soul. The final track ‘The Weak’ wraps up his disillusionment, everything is empty and the mood is bleak, he seems despairing to the point of suicidal, “I know they gon’ clap and laugh at my demise.”
