Benny The Butcher is going for it. Over the last few years, the Buffalo rap hardass has been climbing up in the world. Today, Benny has announced the impending release of Tana Talk 4, the latest in a long-running series of projects. (Tana Talk 3, the last installment, came out in 2018.) As with last year’s Harry Fraud collaboration The Plugs I Met 2, Tana Talk 2 is a team-up with a single producer, and that producer is the Alchemist. Whenever the Alchemist produces an entire album, you have to pay attention. For lead single “Johnny P’s Caddy,” Benny has teamed up with J. Cole, one of the biggest rap stars in the world.
Benny The Butcher and J. Cole are radically different rappers who rap about radically different things, but they also make sense together. They’re both rooted in ’90s New York fundamentals, and they’re both old enough to remember when those ’90s New York records were new. (They’re both 37.) On “Johnny P’s Caddy,” both of them absolutely attack the hard-but-contemplative Alchemist beat, and both of them go hard.
Benny’s opening bars on “Johnny P’s Caddy” are pretty epic: “This ain’t my story ’bout rags to riches, more ’bout how I mastered physics/ In the game, I used to train like Rocky, catchin’ chickens/ I was nice, but they was right when they told me that rap a business/ I had ten bands in my stash when I passed over half a million.” Cole isn’t exactly modest, either: “On God, the best rapper alive/ Headshot! Now go and ask the best rappers that died/ They tell you he never lied.” Watch Benny and Cole get together in the video below.
Tana Talk 4 is coming soon from Griselda/Empire.
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