Rick Ross feat. Jadakiss - Oil Money Gang (2013)
I don’t actually know what “Yacht-Rap” is, other than that its mostly made by Rick Ross and probably sounds good to anybody who’s actually on a Yacht. This isn’t to say that even something dismal like Keane might sound good to anybody who’s on a Yacht (and strike a particular emotional chord with any prostitutes on-board), but Yacht-Rap sets out to be just that VIP ticket. The beats are at a laid-back tempo and the samples are somehow breezy; on “Oil Money Gang” the airiness is in the glittery echo of those high piano notes and the sigh-like ”Ahhhhh!” of Lonnie Liston Smith. (“Dreams of Tomorrow” is as gorgeous and languorously drawn out as a midsummer’s day.)
I might be being influenced here by the experience of listening to this track on a beautiful summer’s day with my desk fan sweeping a cool breeze over me every few seconds. Truly, this is lower middle-class recession Yachting. I’m eating a banana too. Stunting.
For Yacht-Rappers, Yacht-Rap must encapsulate the feeling of being surrounded by natural and man-made beauty while simultaneously luxuriating in the manliness and demi-godliness which placed you on the summit of the money-mountain. For most of its fans, it evokes a fantasy.
There’s something fantastical about Summer, don’t you think? Nobody hopes for the “perfect Winter”. Nor even the “perfect Spring” or “perfect Autumn”. Particularly in countries like England, where for most of the year it seems like a miserable slog just getting out of the house to go to the shops, we invest all of our hopes in Summer.
For people like me who have experienced and continue to experience depression, Summer can actually be the MOST depressing time of the year; and it’s for the very reason that Summer is supposed to be the BEST time of the year. The peak. And so, as a bit of a ponce, I can’t help but find something melancholy about the lushest summer soundtrack contenders (think “Daylight" by Roy Ayers/RAMP).
Again, this could be a very British sensation; since we always know that the brightest days come and go in a flash, snuffed out by a dribble, we look at even the bluest skies and can’t help but feel a little blue ourselves.
Put me on luxury Yacht with a coterie of underwear models and a garden refuse sack full of cocaine and I’d probably last about two weeks before the unbearable melancholy of mortality had eradicated any pleasure left in me. I would do the honourable thing at this point: hand over the keys to an optimist like Rick Ross, tie myself to a giant novelty bottle of Cristal weighing 100 KG and hurl myself over the side to sleep with the other wet fishes.