Detroit and the Bay Area are two rap meccas that are forever intertwined. Some believe the link goes back to the early days of the Great Migration, when some auto factories moved from Detroit to Oakland. others claim the bonds were built through generations of hustle. Payroll Giovanni, a modern-day icon of Detroit rap, saw synchronicity in full bloom in hip-hop when influential local crew Street Lord'z teamed up with Bay Area stars like E-40, Spice 1 and Too $hort in the late '90s and early 2000s. For his part, Too $hort said, “Detroit, it's like Oakland/It's a black thing and I'm black.” (Hey, sometimes it really is that simple.) If Too $hort's Detroit proposal was the proposal, then Street Lord'z's 1999 debut mixtape was the wedding day.
Which explains why Detroit's JUS and Oakland's Squadda B sound like they share the same brain on their first joint album, 3rd Shift. On the mic is JUS, a longtime engineer and producer with Bruiser Brigade, the Danny Brown-led crew of old shit. In recent years, he has turned his attention to elegant, autobiographical rhymes. Behind the boards is Squadda, formerly one half of the rap duo Main Attrakionz, who released one of the great mixtapes of the early 2010s with 808s & Dark Grapes II.
Together 3rd Shift it's a relaxed, cute riot. JUS's narrative is personal and funny: a lifetime of balancing the position of Detroit player and more mundane responsibilities has worn him out. “I'm on the road doing shows don't miss my bitch/She be hat,” say I'm old, I should quit,” he raps on “Da Best Out,” sounding just as dated. Lethal weaponby Roger Murtaugh. Squadda underlines the mood with a hearty beat that could appear in a spaghetti western, a genre full of old gunslingers clinging to their dreams. Squadda's instrumentals are wonderfully sultry and unusual: He sounds like he's been off the internet for half a decade, which makes the beats seem fresh and unpredictable.
No surprises with the Bruiser Brigade: The gang has created a world rooted in regional scenes—Detroit, specifically—while working at its own nonchalant pace. JUS does that 3rd shiftwhich leans into the characteristics of its booming-sounding city: Sticky paths and images so strange they must be rooted in some kind of truth. I could imagine Cash Money's bars on “Nascar” matching the fancy stripes of Peezy and Babyface Ray. I could hear his smoothly rapped verse on “We Outside”—with references to his order of chicken wings and gator shoes—in a cutaway pose with the sharp-witted Kings of Flint. The shift is from the Detroit Hustler who talks like a little king to the Detroit Hustler who sounds pressed in need of a vacation, rapping where you can tell he's lived a hundred lives and has plenty of stories to tell about each one. In “Cheese Cheese Cheese,” his experience creates a darker mood as his struggles and insecurities pile up. On “6K” he approaches the endless horror with a relentless sense of humor: “I got a mortgage, I got habits, I got freaks that I owe few.” Everyday headaches are still the biggest source of hip-hop comedy.
