HELL CAN WAIT MOVIE
On “Screen Door” he balks at the popularity of imaginary gangsters, asserting that his own home was rawer than any Hollywood adaptation: “Bobby Johnson ain’t my OG/ This ain’t no movie role/ Pops was off the OE/ Tripping, getting his Tookie on.” “Niggas from my home ain’t enrolled in the colleges/ Fuck a class, junkies hitting glass, get the money long,” Vince snarls on “65 Hunnid”. There’s no wide-eyed good kid narrating the disorder in Staples' city, just a realist making do with the available options. It’s bleak and maybe exasperating, but the reality of the street is that babies gotta eat, jobs are scarce, and some people have to resort to tactics that risk death and imprisonment to make it through the day. Hell Can Wait is a reminder that living is another word for cheating death. At his peppiest-the chorus of “Feelin’ the Love”, perhaps, the closer on his just-released retail debut Hell Can Wait-he’s still waving at death: “Is you feelin’ amazing? Yeah I’m feelin’ the love/ Hope I get to take it with me when my living is done.” “There’s a way to do it where it’s listenable and likable, but it shouldn’t just be some happy stuff.” Staples’ own body of work rests on a nervous axis between expressive, imagistic wordplay and somber cynicism. “If you listen to shit about niggas being in a position where they have no hope, there should be nothing at peace about that,” he said in a recent interview with Pitchfork. Long Beach rapper Vince Staples is sick of cheery street rap. revels in a renewed commercial relevance. The lesson of good kid-that you could make radio without catering to it-seems lost as L.A. good kid’s unblinking austerity went missing, though, as the infectious levity of Mustard’s airtight party anthems went national, inspiring even Kendrick to inch over to the sunny side with his studiously motivational comeback single “i”. West Coast gangsta rap has enjoyed a lasting revival in the wake of Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city, with albums by Schoolboy Q, YG, DJ Mustard and others following its lead in advancing the quality and chart traction of narrative-intensive gang-life dispatches.