The world isn’t ready for “Something About Shirley”
thefader.comThere’s something in the water in New Jersey — a close-to-deadly concentration of wormwood, perhaps, or of fresh blood drained from an inexhaustible supply of sacrificial virgins.
Whatever it is, Fatboi Sharif and Roper Williams are drinking from the tap. Sharif and Williams first established their elite chemistry as a rapper-producer duo with 2020’s Gandhi Loves Children, further showing off their symbiotic bona fides on its 2021 deluxe edition.
An anachronistic endeavor in terms of Sharif’s byzantine rhyme schemes and Williams’s stark, menacing beats, the project had historical precedent; much of its tracklist would sound at home on a mid-’90s Wu-Tang solo record.
Even on 2023’s Planet Unfaithful, whose three drumless cuts are light years away from most contemporary hip-hop, Sharif and Williams stuck to a conventional format: six discrete tracks that, taken together, unmistakably comprise a rap tape.
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