Everyone’s familiar with the influence of regionalism on rap music. Dudes from Houston fuck with lean and permanently sound like they’re rapping underwater. Cats from the Bay Area tend to be extra stoned weirdos, most likely influenced by living so close to generations of hippies. Rappers from New Orleans pickup traces of jazz, leading to second line rhythms and call & response throughout their music. Here’s the million dollar question though, what’s the effect of growing up and living in New York on your musical output?

The easy answer, is to say that the grittiness of New York rubs off on the rappers who come from here. As if, the struggle of fighting dudes in front of a bodega at age nine, is somehow permanently imprinted upon you and called forth when presented with a mic. That’s probably true to an extent, but, it’s doesn’t dig deep enough into the regional identity of the city. Growing up in a place that has served as a safe haven for weirdos and degenerates for decades has to leave a psychological imprint on you in some way.

In my estimation, it seems one of the defining traits of NY rappers is a sort of unabashed weirdness mixed with toughness. Rappers form NY will come out like “Yeah son, I fuck with Gundam Wing and Scarface. Now what?” like, dudes who go to ComicCon are expected to be intimately familiar with the Rockefeller Drug Trafficking laws. It’s a weird mixture of confidence and not giving a fuck attitude that NYC incubates to produce a consistent string of dudes who’re equally liable to discuss the intricacies of Marvel Comics B level characters or smack the shit out of you.

We can now add a new name to the long line of NY rap weirdos who mix grit with weird shit , Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire out of Brooklyn. eXquire’s brand of weirdness is akin to the street weirdness of a cat like Ghostface. Dude talks about hood affairs but isn’t afraid to go on a tangent about the homoerotic nature of the Ultimate Warrior to make a point, just like Mr. Starks. There’s no rapping about weird space shit no one can understand. It’s all standard NY rap shit but a lil’ left of center and without any of the post Jay-Z pretense a bunch of NY cats put on. With eX, delusions of grandeur are replaced with reality and a naked openness. If you’ve ever gotten on a train at 11 on a Saturday night with a Arizona Iced Tea tall boy, to see a chick all dolled up to make her way into the city and wondered “why the fuck am I not going where she’s going” you can probably feel where eXquire is coming from.

The intro point to the world of Mr. Muthafuckin eXquire has to be the video for “Huzzah” which you’ll find at the top of this post. Over a Necro beat eX crafts a song about getting drunk and generally being a weirdo and creep. While a chick with an ass that makes me sad I was too young to attend Freaknik fries chicken, eX hangs out with his boys including a dude in a devil mask. It’s pretty much everything you could want from a rap video that cost about 40 dollars to make.

On one of his other new tracks “Galactus,” from his upcoming mixtape Lost In Translation eXquire describes his life as “the movie Heavy Metal, but, ghetto”, which succinctly lays out the appeal of dudes music. Its raw and grimey but at the same time there might be a couple of half naked chicks and a Pegasus involved. Metaphorically and literally that’s everything I like about New York and Mr. Muthafuckin eXquire.

- Behold the Destroyer