Protect: “RIP Takeoff”The saying used to be that rappers wish they were basketball players and basketball players wish they were rappers, but I think I’ve found an update: Rappers wish they were Twitch streamers and Twitch streamers wish they were rappers. Enter Protect, who isn’t a streamer, though he is the first signee of a popular one named BruceDropEmOff who I won’t pretend to know anything about. (His most recent video uploaded to YouTube is a reaction to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, naturally.)Considering that streamers have already become rap’s newest and most corrupted gatekeepers, the backstory made me want to check out before I had even heard anything, but I didn’t and now a bunch of breezy, melodic Protect songs have fallen into my rotation, such as “RIP Takeoff.” It’s nothing groundbreaking, just easy-listening flexing in the style of the post-Pi’erre rappers orbiting beatmakers TDF and Perc40. As always, the beat makes it all go. Here, it’s producer mayday’s rumbling drums and synths that bring to mind a UFO invasion. It sounds cool enough that I’m willing to put up with a hell of a lot more streamers finding entry ways into rap.With artists releasing songs at a fast and furious pace, it’s difficult for the average hip-hop head to keep track of it all—no matter how tapped in they are. That’s why we created The Ones, a daily post to highlight the song you need to hear.Check out previous Ones, and listen to new rap from Protect and more on our Spotify playlist.
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