Retroactive: Pilot Talk

 

     Listening to Curren$y’s music or seeing him live is a unique experience.  Curren$y, the Hot Spitta has a seemingly endless supply of lyrics to craft and build the world he pulls you into.  Whether you’re sitting in your room listening to him on headphones or surrounded by 100 people in a small club, you always feel at home in his green-tinged world.  Ski Beatz obviously has a lot to do with the soundscape, producing ninety percent of the album. Ski and Curren$y go together like Dre and Snoop in the way they just fit each other and flow naturally.  Curren$y sounds perfectly at home over any Ski Beatz production. While re-listening to this album, I was surprised to see the amount of featured guests but I think it speaks to Curren$y’s talent and ability that he is never overshadowed even by the like of Snoop Dogg and Jay Electronica.  Every feature is simply a guest passing through in Spitta Andretti’s foliage fantasy.  The way Curren$y raps is effortless and impressive without being too bombastic.  His flow sounds lazy but he fits so many rhymes into each sentence and changes his structure so many times that it’s nearly impossible to keep up.  The advent of genius these last few years helped a lot in doing research for this post (see lyrics below.).

     This album came out at the beginning of summer 2010 and I was looking forward to it more than anybody.  I was two years in at the University of San Francisco and already was a huge Curren$y fan.  In 2010, I was on DatPiff everyday devouring any and all new Hip Hop music.  I listened to everything Curren$y had to offer: Fast Times at Ridgemont Fly,  Welcome to the Winner’s Circle, Life at 30,000 Feet, etc.  In a lot of ways I feel like Curren$y was ahead of his time with the push he made virally pre-Pilot Talk.  Some of the coolest, most raw music videos came out in promotion for Pilot Talk (Life Under the Scope being the first, below).  He also had already made his presence known in the underground with the amount of quality free material he had floating out there.  His career post-Young Money was revived in large part through that DatPiff audience he won over with quality music.  When Pilot Talk finally came out, I remember thinking how big he was gonna get and thinking things would never be the same.  He definitely got bigger, but lucky for all of us, Curren$y never changed.  He still releases multiple projects a year, he still raps about “weed jars and race cars,” he still pulls new fans in with every live show, music video and freestyle.  Curren$y, the Hot Spitta does what he does and he continues to do it better than anybody else.  If you’ve never listened to him, this album is as great a place to start as any.  If you’re an old head like myself, take the trip down memory lane and remember what it was like to sit back, light one up and join Curren$y in his slow, stony, surreal soundscape.

Lyric Breakdown:

Key:

“Percy” = my personal favorite lyric(s) aka the lyric that made me shake my head, pound my desk or howl in laughter

“Top Shelf” = advice freely given by the Spitta Andretti for your benefit aka shit you should listen to

“puff, puff, pass” = outstanding line/lyric by a guest feature

1.Example

• Percy: “I said I’d quit smoking these beats but I relapsed”
• Top Shelf: “I am an example of what can happen when you quit being afraid to gamble”

2.Audio Dope II

• Percy: “So high, that my neighbors thought I moved out//Because your boy stay gone//now tell me that i ain’t got it, and then keep a straight face punk”
• Top Shelf: “Break your foot tryna kick how I kick it//Kill yourself tryna live how I’m living”

3.King Kong

• Percy: “spendin’ my cheese, smokin’ my broccoli//Dressed neat, left the hotel suite sloppy off the Chopper tree”
• Top Shelf: “Tearin through the city//Snatchin’ bitches top of the building//King Kong ain’t got shit on me”

4.Seat Change f. Snoop Dogg

• Percy: “My bud covered in fuzz but not surrounded by the police”
• Top Shelf: “She fucked up and realized she lost her seat”

5.Breakfast

• Percy: “Fly in the hive, buzzin’, them bugs can’t be him//Illegible letters in my ledger you can’t read em”
• Top Shelf: “Refused the majors and stay real, I kept my promise”

6.Roasted f. Trademark da Skydiver, Young Roddy

• Percy: “The more I smoke the smaller the doobie get//They takin’ shots at the jets on some John Woo movie shit”
• Top Shelf: “Get it crackin’ like lobsters ice vodka and the bong’s bubblin'”

7.Skybourne f. Big K.R.I.T., Smoke DZA

• Percy: “That’s word from a bird in a fuzzy herb tree”
• Top Shelf: “I told them put it all on Spitta, guaranteed winner”
• Puff, Puff, Pass: “Been killing it since contra” – Smoke DZA

8.The Hangover f. Sir Michael Rocks

• Percy: “Come through with that killer weed//Alfred Hitchcock in a ziplock”
• Top Shelf: “Dollar signs my only language//Fluently speak it//And reject fools comin’ in my lane with that weak shit”

9.The Day f. Mos Def, Jay Electronica

• Percy: “I’m a throw some chicken bones and feathers on a hundred bucks//and summon up the thunder what?//The voodoo man is coming bruh” Jay Electronica
• Top Shelf: “you gotta know when to hold em’, know when to fold em'”
• Puff, Puff, Pass: “Excuse me as I do me cruisin’ rudely down the highway” – Jay Electronica

10.Prioritize f. Nes Phips

• Percy: “Mission Impossible: completed//Obstacles are optical illusions//We don’t really see em”
• Top Shelf: “Instead of going into overkill, pay your fuckin’ beeper bill bitch”

11.Chilled Coughphee f. Devin the Dude

• Percy: “Quarter bag, mostly shake, but this will have to do I guess”
• Top Shelf: “I saw ‘The Mack’ when I was only 11 years old//And i swore, to never be a simp for a ho”
• Puff, Puff, Pass: “But it really don’t matter who’s the highest//If it ain’t dope, there’s no hope they ain’t gone buy it” – Devin the Dude

12.Address f. Stalley

• Percy: “Wakin’ and bakin’ Anita’s greatest hits blastin’//pedal mashin’, paper twistin'”
• Top Shelf: “It’s all good ain’t gotta be said, it’s already understood//Ain’t nothin, ain’t nothin’ change but the address” 

13.Life Under the Scope

• Percy: “Puzzled by my shuffle icky wood in the bengals//Adjust my wing rudders in the presence of danger”
• Top Shelf: “But we ain’t trippin’//Cause we’ll get there in a minute”

Bonus:

Fool….

Jet Life to the next life….