Rroxket. Image via the "Ganger" music video
My favorite memory of a recent Ken Carson concert was hearing the entire concert hall sing along to "ganger" the casually viral breakout of Gwinnett County rapper RRoxket. That song's half-mumbled flow, as if RRoxket is falling asleep or perhaps losing fine motor control, occasionally breaks into an exultant "extended clip this 30 clip mag," leaping out at you like a whale breaching the surface. Echoed by a chorus of hundreds, it felt like a hymn.
“Backwards,” off the self-titled followup to July’s Red Ranger tape, is similarly focused on textures over intelligibility, zippy couplets (“Your boy a snake like he rattle / even mom told me don’t tattle”) buried in the mix beneath reversing synths and insistent skipping snares. It’s an unusually low-energy song on the tape, neither playful nor menacing, practically morose in its wistfulness — even if RRoxket’s still talking about taxing dope buyers and putting his enemies on their backs. Stacked against the other songs on RRoxket, “Backwards” is particularly restrained, a gentle introduction to the young rapper’s freewheeling sound.