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Niontay lives in New York now, but his style blends elements of his midwest birthplace (Milwaukee) and the Florida town where he was raised (Kissimee) with the sounds of his adopted home city. With his debut album Dontay’s Inferno dropping April 7 via 10k, he’s shared a new track featuring the label’s founder (and a New York transplant-turned-hero himself), MIKE.
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“Wheredeyat???” follows the previously released cuts “Blitzberg” and “Ain’t Shit,” as the record’s third single. The song is also produced by MIKE under his dj blackpower alias, which by default gives it the most recognizably N.Y.C. sound of the bunch. Luckily, Niontay’s loose, new-school flow sits comfortably over the smooth, old-school beat — a distinctly laid-back instrumental that still manages to project a kinetic, big-city feel through its just-ahead-of-the-beat, cymbal-heavy drum line. Against this backdrop, he and MIKE trade bars like two old friends talking trash. It’s a low-stakes conversation, the kind in which what’s said matters less than the tangible chemistry that keeps it going.
As if acknowledging the bullshitting nature of their bars, MIKE drops a “Shut the fuck up!” vocal tag at the start and end of the track that sounds, in context, like an older passerby scolding the two rappers for their meaningless juvenilia.
Watch the song’s Nicholas Stafford Briggs-directed music video — which features an easter-egg snippet of a second, unreleased track at the end — above.
