xaviersobased might be an offspring of Lil B, but he’s too nonchalant to make anything as gooey-sincere and wordy as “Beat the Odds.” The SoundCloud-kid-turned-major-label-wunderkind’s version of a look-how-far-I’ve-come anthem is “Struggle Gang.” This is a monster truck of a track: It doesn’t make sense if you break it down to its janky scrap parts. You have to let it toss you around.
But let’s break it down anyway. There’s a bunch of different types of Xavier songs: the accessible, razor-sharp sing-raps (“Special,” “love hate”); the lowend-fueled exercises in coarse texture (“On My Own,” “worth it”); the zooted dreams (“Linda,” “vibrator”) and nightmares (“fix my mind”); the fried Martian moans (“choir,” “far,” “u dk how 2 hoop”). “Struggle Gang” spams every impulse at once. The first verse’s ominous piano and percussive buzz set off the haunted adrenaline, as a faded-sounding Xav swats away unwanted eyes and flexes without really flexing.
On the hook, the buzz turns into a locust swarm and plaintive synths wail like shadow hands. Xavier sends out an SOS call from the soul and stagger-steps between emotional registers: He’s begging a woman to treat him right then asking her to twerk on him, rhyming the porn website “Camsoda” with “Yoda.” He delivers some funny pubic-hair opinions that are even funnier because the beat is like a gothic Castlevania OST, and, finally, he shouts out his mom. “I could tell you horror stories, that’ll take a while,” he mumbles, knowing that he can convey more in these ambivalent musical ellipses. He works best in this mode: It’s silly, desperate, and lost, the sound of a guy grinning with an ache under the surface.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
