Rio da Yung OG — Accidental Shit Talkin (#Boyz Entertainment \ EMPIRE)
A lot of songs have been written by accident, but Rio da Yung OG goes further. He claims his Accidental Shit Talkin was recorded by accident. It may seem like a provocation, yet his EP maps out new ground for future hip hop music.
City on My Back, Rio’s previous record, was full of joy and ignorant happiness. Full of guests, catchy hooks and laidback production, it drew a pretty picture of how good life had been treating Rio. City on My Back was Rio’s idea of how an album on a major label should sound like. Accidental Shit Talkin is a much darker affair, purely for non-artistic reasons: you can’t be full of glee when a prison sentence is looming over you. But his future problems are not discussed in his EP in any form, nor could they be glimpsed at between the lines.
Perhaps this dark mood is what pushed this Flint rapper to experiment with the form of his music. When Anna Akhmatova famously said that even rubbish can inspire poetry, she meant that even a smallest events of everyday life can become a foundation for a poem. Rio makes poetry out of rubbish, but on the level of form, not content, as Akhmatova meant it. Failed lines, dialogues between recording, sounds of chains moving, ramblings after the end of the song, slips of the tongue — all the leftovers and garbage of the recording process are included in his songs. Where previously, people valued a clean record, now this junk of a recording process gets valorized inside a track. It was pioneered earlier this year by another Flint rapper Louie Ray, and Rio brings it on another level. “I didn’t even mean to do this song”, he says on “Practice”, possibly the best track here, with a stellar production by Rio’s favorite producer Sav. A practice, a prelude, a warm-up unintentionally become a final product.
This groundbreaking move revitalizes Rio’s lyrical themes. Since this spring, he has been going around in circles, rapping about money and designer clothes. With the outrageous lines and funny punchlines gone, he began to sound like any other rapper. On Accidental Shit Talkin he moves toward metarap: writing itself becomes his main topic. Usually, it is on a later stage of life poets become more and more self-conscious and produce poetry about poetry (history knows a lot of them, Auden and Brodsky, for example, to name just a few). So Rio’s interest in poetry, recording and music business in general is a sign of his maturity as an artist. Most clearly and openly he states this on “Lights Off”: “We don’t sell drugs. We sell punchlines and bars. I finna sell an ounce of rap right now.”
Behind this “accidental” songwriting lays a hard work. Music may appear to be written and recorded by accident but Rio’s steady climb to the rank of top rappers is no accident.
