On The Bricktionary, Boldy’s poise doesn’t really feel a hair misplaced amongst Fraud’s elevated entropy—even on extra mainstream-leaning collaborations just like the standout Tee Grizzley-assisted “Cecil Fielder,” the place there’s no query about who’s wielding management. Boldy’s superpower has all the time been making minute phrases really feel monumental, packing sage knowledge on mortality and precarity into his road chronicles. “This road shit open sport/One minute you him, the subsequent minute you proper again in your knuckles,” he raps with trademark assuredness on “Pillar to Put up,” keenly conscious of how rapidly shit can flip on a dime. Reflection has lengthy been a trademark of Boldy’s raps, however as he continues to distance himself from the traumatic aftermath of devastating automotive crash, his vary of recollections expands to place his complete journey underneath a microscope.
Boldy’s stage of evocative element is extraordinary, setting up sprawling worlds from his reminiscences of Detroit in a matter of seconds. Specificities bubble to the forefront of Boldy’s thoughts like intrusive ideas: linking with associates on road whose names you may solely recall when you’d had your personal toes planted in them, needing to be satisfied to not get rid of a rival on his solution to the highest, seeing visceral photographs of bullets going by way of backs and out of stomachs, and sensing a lie when he hears minute modifications in vocal pitches by way of a telephone. On “Harvey Grant,” it seems like he’s introducing you to his complete household tree whereas doing drops off on the native Goal and Residence Depot, ending with a prayer request: “Forgive me for my sins and all of the evil within the hearts of males.”
Boldy and Fraud’s technical brilliance on The Bricktionary is direct and exact, not overcomplicated, and it permits their respective manufacturing and writing types to suit like puzzle items. This type of no-frills method leans on intrinsic high quality and dependability, not on bells and whistles and leaps into the stratosphere. Nearer “Fish Grease” rambles with a peaceable vocal refrain that might soundtrack an ascension to heaven as Boldy takes the listener by way of a startlingly frank year-by-year catalog of his close-calls and epic triumphs. “Keep in mind grindin’ within the rain, nights when it was pourin’ down/Now I’m within the Vary hydroplanin’, work whiter than a dinette serviette/Hood name me Sir Brick Van Exel a.okay.a. Mr. Pyrex Chapman/Clio bangin’ off the lilac, telephone slappin’ like a telethon,” he beams with understated satisfaction. It’s true that by most estimates, the milkman started to vanish from public view within the Nineteen Sixties, stymied by the proliferation of suburbs, grocery shops, and fridges. However in Boldy’s supply, you possibly can virtually hear a figuring out wink, as if he’s sure his model of magnetism won’t ever exit of favor—regardless of how a lot issues change round him.
