Song You Need: Maxo Kream and Benny The Butcher take the drug anthem to new heights

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Maxo Kream has gotten more soulful and introspective with each album he’s released. But if you’ve ever written off his continued ability to make some of the hardest music known to man, you’ve been proven wrong time and time again. On Friday, he shared “FOOTBALL HEADS,” a new single featuring Benny The Butcher that will appear alongside May’s “JIGGA DAME” on the deluxe addition of his October album WEIGHT OF THE WORLD, due out next Wednesday, July 27.

The new track, which arrives alongside an (American) football-themed video by Jerry Morka and Josh Jones, is the platonic ideal of a drug-dealing anthem: gritty and raw in texture but washed in a purifying wave of supreme confidence. “Perkies, Seroquels, we called ’em football heads when we’d sell ’em / We was goin’ fed, movin’ football heads, call it Helga,” Maxo raps on the chorus over a demented earworm of a beat by Kal Banx, remembering that specificity is the key to all good writing. “Codeine by the lean-er, pounds of gasolina and Griselda / Servin’ with my nina, cookin’ good Christina Aguilera / In that cherry-red beamer, champagne two-seater / Limo tint, John Cena,” he continues, his lightning-fast wordplay offset by the steady tempo of his easy, unbothered flow.

Benny, as ice-cold as anyone in the game, lays down a strong second verse but sounds surprisingly outclassed on “FOOTBALL HEADS,” a testament to just how hard Maxo goes here. Still, the Houston and Buffalo emcees make a formidable pair, and its hard to imagine anyone else — maybe Freddie Gibbs — going bar for bar with Maxo on a track like this in the year of our lord 2022.