Steve 'Flash' JuonIt’s unnerving to me how similar Dusty Locane and Meechy Darko sound. It’s almost like they are the same emcee from parallel dimensions. On one day I might think Locane is the raspier rapper, on the next I flip back to thinking it’s Darko. Now if there were a hundred emcees who hailed from Brooklyn who sounded like this it would be a problem (Dusty’s bio points out he’s specifically from the Canarsie neighborhood, Meechy is just “Brooklyn” in general) but having TWO isn’t such a bad thing. In a landscape of millions of aspiring emcees, two successful rappers who sound like Nine on a bender still stand out.
On “-95 Degrees” the gruff New Yorker is collaborating with Kajun Waters, who is both producing and AutoTuning hooks for songs like “Searching.” This is an interesting combination. It doesn’t strike me as something that should work at first. I didn’t really want beautiful hooks mixed with Locane’s grimy flow. To me it sounded like putting banana in a peanut butter sandwich. Gross, right? But then you taste it. Yeah it’s fat boy food, but it’s GOOD. That’s what songs like “Love Me Now” are. They take two things you wouldn’t think to put together and turn it into something delicious. “Call me Muhammad Ali the way I’m slipping that jab” quips Locane. I will bruh. I suppose that makes Kajun your Don King? Well hopefully Mr. Waters hasn’t shot anybody or stomped anyone to death.
Accidentally or purposefully he brings something beautiful out of Dusty Locane on tracks like “Dangerous,” where the raspy Brooklynite starts singing himself. I think the most dangerous thing about this song is that it sounds like something I’d hear on a drive time R&B mix. It’s not just a song for the radio station I heard in Alabama that was playing GloRilla and Kendrick Lamar — it’s a song for the radio station here that plays nothing but Cardi B and New Kids on the Block. “Love Me Now” probably has a little too much cursing for radio play in either market but it’s got that kind of hypnotic beat that a ghost produced DJ Khaled single does (maybe Kajun is that ghost).
I don’t remember the original “Chevelle” off the top of my head, but I’m going to have to track it down after bopping to this remix. This time I gotta give it to Kajun though, because his production AND his singing are stealing the show. “It’s going to be hell if you run into me.” I hope not — that’s getting into that Don King territory again. “I’m trying to take it back to the simple days.” Aren’t we all K? This one flips the script on who the star of this short album is and proves they deserved the co-billing.
“-95 Degrees” is only 22 minutes and that’s a damn shame. This might have been a spur of the moment collaboration between a rising artist and a rising singer/producer, but the two are almost perfectly met here. I’m a couple of years late to their team up but listening to it makes me hope this wasn’t the last time they worked together, and I look forward to digging even deeper into Dusty’s catalogue to find out.