We recently ran an article talking about the recent “sample drill” phenomenon going on in New York right now that has seen quite a few mainstream hits and underground classics get warped into drill form and skated over by many of the city’s hardest young artists, today one of the undisputed innovators of this new wave Big YAYA is joined by Big Baby for a new Useless Films directed visual “BARACK,” on which perhaps the initial architect of sample-drill, Sparkheem, who alongside artists like Goonew and Xanman, as well as producers like Spizzledoe, Mannyvelli, and Johnny Carvaggio, first began reworking old-school classics with futuristic trap drums, which albeit in Sparkheem’s case was at a more distinctively DMV-rhythym.
Sparkheem blew my fucking mind with this one, as he flipped Drake, Rick Ross, and French Montana’s iconic 2012 “Stay Schemin'” at a faster pace with the off-kilter percussion that makes drill-music, in the NYC/UK sense, so instantly recognizable. It’s funny to me that YAYA hopped on such a legendary track that was in many ways dominated by Drake because I was just thinking that it is only a matter of time until The 6 God decides to steal YAYA’s (or really the entire Woodhull Ave crew’s) unique and hilarious ‘Grinchinese’ lingo, and this might just be the song that puts them on Drake’s radar. Both YAYA and Big Baby who I was introduced to on “BARACK” absolutely tweaked and snapped for bar after bar, punching one line in over another at machine-gun pace. This track is going to be stuck in my playlist for a very long time and honestly I like it a lot more than the original.