"The this-is-how-they-get-down-in-my-city rap song doesn't ever get played out. It's the sorta audio neighborhood tour that's been grounding the autofiction of hip-hop storytelling since the early days of the genre. In my personal hall of fame: Master P's " Welcome to My City" where he describes New Orleans as a hotbed of gold teeth, crooked cops, and dudes running around with nicknames like Big Man; and Jay-Z's incredibly visual " Where I'm From," which brings his mythmaking down to Earth."
"J1, a drill rapper of sorts from Fort Myers, carries on that tradition. On his new mixtape, 1 IN A MILLION, he channels Jigga with a " Where Im From" of his own. Over triumphant trap-soul fit for a Nike commercial, the wick-rocking Floridian narrates the ongoings of his stomping grounds on the state's southwestern tip-known to me for their youth football culture;"
"With vivid clarity, he points out the local fashion, the importance of the city's Easter Day Parade, and spots where you can dine on a good breakfast or tear up an order of chicken wings, while at the same time describing a place where you're just as likely to run into a former NFL star (Sammy Watkins, Deion Sanders) as a middle school student carrying a gun."
J1, a drill rapper from Fort Myers, releases a mixtape called 1 IN A MILLION that channels Jay-Z's Where I'm From over triumphant trap-soul production. The mixtape maps Fort Myers through vivid, specific details—youth football culture, local fashion, the Easter Day Parade, breakfast spots, and chicken-wing joints—while noting encounters with former NFL stars alongside the danger of middle schoolers carrying guns. Geographic specificity personalizes drill-inspired clichés and deepens listener immersion. The tone shifts between deadly serious and lightly comic, exemplified by a track about a rival who works as an air-conditioner repairman, a job framed as regionally essential.
Read at Pitchfork
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