On F.U.N. T.O.Y., the voices surrounding Sideshow—dad and mom, friends, pastors, sidewalk philosophers—seem between the songs like a Greek Refrain of damnation. They provide no hope or encouragement. As an alternative, they element the myriad methods Sideshow and his technology are doomed. One such voice opens the file by explaining that “the younger persons are not gonna make it into heaven,” one other points hyper-specific demise threats, and one other shruggingly concedes that violence is “in his blood.” Sideshow doesn’t push again on these concepts a lot. His dead-eyed hustler tales point out somebody who’s resigned to his destiny.
Sideshow has a utilitarian, disarmingly private writing fashion, an strategy that feels much less involved with theatrics or manipulation of language than blunt power. His verses are collections of starkly composed snapshots, temporary scenes of terror or heartache rendered in vocals that recommend Boldy James and Oddisee drained of all coloration; even when his supply turns into frenetic, just like the paranoid circulate he deploys on “Unhealthy Good friend,” his voice nonetheless strikes with a slippery codeine crawl. It provides his songs a hypnotic high quality, making it straightforward to overlook brutal passages like “All my life I been stepped on/God put each toes on me/I cried, my cries they get ignored” on preliminary listens. There’s a thick air of inevitability in Sideshow’s work, the form of malaise that comes from at all times—sadly—being confirmed proper in regards to the world.
In earlier albums, Sideshow’s relationship with promoting and consuming medication occupied the margins like a distant stormcloud, affecting the environment with out being on the middle of it. Right here, substances play a extra central position as ubiquitous numbing brokers wanted to get by means of the day. Lean is his narcotic of selection. “I’m simply tryna put a thousand {dollars} in a single styrofoam,” he raps on “ Kill a Man”,” following up on that thought later within the music: “Solely codeine provides me function.”
In distinction to Sideshow’s deadpan vocals, the beats he chooses are energetic and skittish, tumbling over themselves like unfastened truck tires racing down a hill. Popstar Benny’s contributions are full of colourful, pixelated synths zigzagging round plugg drums, whereas chameleonic Chicago producer Ayochillmannn supplies shuffling, futuristic Southern funk. When mixed with Sideshow’s droopy intonations, all of it has a crackling, circuits-frying vitality. It’s tactile; you possibly can virtually scent the frayed wiring.
“Villain in Your Story (Nonetheless UA)” is a very harsh toke of a more in-depth. Marc Rivera’s trudging beat is the right backdrop for Sideshow’s unblinking honesty (“You ain’t know I’m a fucked up dude?” he raps, much less of a query than a sneer). However after half-hour of unrelenting darkness, Sideshow modifications perspective. Throughout a spoken-word outro, he explains that as a Black particular person in America, he can’t be depressed. He’s oppressed; there are programs in place designed to maintain him trapped beneath issues engineered to be insurmountable. The bleary drug abuse, the ambient menace of violence, and the voices preaching downfall are a part of a purposeful cycle. If everybody and the whole lot round you solely speaks prophecies of doom, you may ultimately turn out to be a doomsayer your self.