Styles P & Dave East Are NY Giants From Different Eras. Bars Bridge Gaps (Audio)
LOX co-founder Styles P has been rapping for nearly 25 years, and his verses continue to impress. While some of the ’90s and early 2000s catalog ages like a fine Merlot, the artist shows he enjoys building bridges to those that he and his cohorts have influenced. The last five years alone have shown The Ghost has no intention of stopping, dropping projects with artists like New Orlean’s Curren$y and San Francisco’s Berner to prove he’s versatile with his bars, and he’s still got plenty to say.
One of those MCs Styles P seems to share a special connection with is Nas’ protege, Dave East. The Harlem MC has hooked up with Styles before, on tracks like “Welcome To NY,” and “Ghost Says,” in which the two trade off verses with such fluidity, you’d think East was a hidden member of D-Block. So it’s a no-brainer that the latest loosie from the couple, “Feels Good,” blurs the line between New York’s past and the present.
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On “Feels Good, the two rappers go toe-to-toe, delivering a set of four bars after another. Styles P rides his beat, dropping verbal threats over the beat’s dreamy keyboard loop: “Fly like we in a jet, let the iron fly like we interjects / Ignorant ni**as full of that intellect / Ni**as is food and my niggas didn’t get dinner yet / Hit ’em in the core with the four ’cause we in the ‘Vet.” East promptly follows up. “Been a threat, watch what you sayin’ like you can’t die today / Catch him while his family around him like it’s a holiday / Two Ninas, three-hundred bullets, just me and Holiday / Sellin’ green, I used to dream of makin’ the powder-play.” Bay Area singer Kehlani joins the duo to provide an anthemic hook.
Styles has been gliding through the year, having dropped his ninth studio album G-Host back in May, as well as his surprise EP, Nickel Bag. There have been other projects delivered from the prolific Yonkers, New York MC with a several juice bars. Def Jam’s secret weapon Dave East, on the other hand, saw the release of Karma 2 back in July, and P2 at the top of January. In the track’s Soundcloud description, Styles hints at a new project Beloved that may be dropping soon. If “Feels Good” is a sampler, The Ghost is solidifying 2018 as one of his best runs in a decade.
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#BonusBeat: This weekend, Styles also released “Morning Mourning” featuring Oswin Benjamin: