Was talking to a friend about Starlito for awhile today, and spent much of this week driving around listening to his latest mixtape, Funerals & Court Dates, so he’s been on my mind. He’s probably my favorite rapper rapping right now. Most certainly in the top five, and yet, he continues to just sort of hover in this weird space of being liked by a certain contingent rap Internet to the point that he’s already taken for granted, but just not breaking through to enough people, really. That’s probably because he’s hard to pin down. He’s a stoner joker like Lil Wayne was almost a decade ago, and he’s responsible for some of the most devastating and well-wrought emotional rap music being made right now, like Lil Wayne almost a decade ago. He’s in this Gucci Mane from 2007-2009 (or Curren$y in 2010-2011) zone where he can do no wrong, but he doesn’t make a show of it much at all. He made a 24-minute rap musical called For My Foes. He kept teasing the tape Mental WARfare, then finally released it on April Fool’s Day and set the Bandcamp price at $100.00. He took over Kanye’s “Cold” to boast about how the past three books he’s read are by Charles Duhigg, Doctor Seuss, and Freud. He interpolated the late Donna Summer with Yo Gotti and Young Buck. He brayed out a rap soaked in auto-tune and flanger with Don Trip and Danny Brown. He sounded incredible over plenty of Burn One beats. He made “Nortriptyline,” a Tyler Perry-meets-Donald Goines cautionary tale. He squawked out “LITO!” a few dozen times. Below is an hour of my favorite Starlito songs and guest appearances from 2012. Click on the photo or the all caps title to download. Enjoy.
