Rap Blog is a weekly showcase of a standout rap song. Follow our playlists on Apple Music and Spotify.
Next week marks one year since Hurricane Wisdom released “Giannis,” the single that propelled the then-20-year-old to millions of views thanks to his smooth, soulful raps, equal parts melodic and marble-mouthed. On February mixtape Perfect Storm, his meandering baritone brought gravitas and tenderness to tracks fast and slow alike, but he sounded especially good alongside NoCap, RaqBaby, and Loe Shimmy, whose precise flows seemed to kick Hurricane into higher gear.
Hurricane pays the favor forward on “Drugs Callin Remix,” which enlists Lil Baby for an especially glassy verse, the Atlanta star mumbling about jumping off the porch and loving too hard in a pinched head voice. Rapping over the song’s flip of “Perkys Calling,” he sounds calm if not quite content, pouring up Quagen in the middle of his paranoia.
Hurricane’s crystalline verse from the original song is unchanged, but you might consider the music video, filmed backstage on tour, a victory lap in its own right: Baby and G-Herbo rap along to Hurricane’s vocals while he glad-hands with Druski, Rob49, and more. It’s not like he needed to fix anything — when I saw him on tour with Bossman Dlow this spring, “Drugs Callin” was the song that got the biggest pop. Of course Lil Baby wanted a piece.
