I distinctly remember when I discovered the rapper Teejayx6.

I associate the rapper Teejayx6 with the period of my life that I first discovered him.

With what I’d been on during that period.

It was 1.5 years ago and I’d just pulled up to NYC. To Harlem.

Had emptied out the bank account for first last security. Recklessly.

Banking on being able to start scrapping, stacking, the minute I pulled up. 

I remember listening to that shit pulling up to the first job I got, as motivation. Sparking a string of gigs over a month, August 2019, in which I’d make the same amount of money I made the entire previous year living in the hood, in Philly, doing bike deliveries for Postmates (~$6K).

.

.

My homie Randall put me on to the rapper Teejayx6.

I remember Randall, who is from the greater Detroit area, where Teejayx6 is from, had sent me his shit—the video for ‘Dark Web,’ the one that would go viral, in which he talkin high level scamming techniques, how to download VPNs, Tor browsers, in another vid that vid linked me to physically doin credit card fraud. 

Randall sent me this vid that today, 31 January 2021, has 4.2M views, when it had like 300K. 

The OG scam rapper. 

Or—the usherer of scam rap into the mainstream. 

The mouthpiece, to the masses, of the message scam rap OGs had been pushing, but localized, for a minute. 

.

.

What Teejayx6 was on was, he was on that nonviolent flex. 

Like look—y’all gon box us young boys unfit for your schooling, your free markets, out the game? 

With your linguistic classism, your fetishization of state-sponsored academia?

We gon get it. 

We gon fkn ball, bruh. 

Gon find a way, somehow some way. 

And hitting licks, robbing mfers. Sure. 

We been doin that, and . . . 

That’s a wave.

But this scamming shit?

With this scamming shit, no one dies. 

Here’s how, says Teejayx6.

Download this browser. 

Get these fake gift cards. 

Here’s a step by step of how I scammed Walmart. 

The iPhone store. 

Be like me. 

Ball…..nonviolently!

Do exactly like the bankers, the elites do. 

.

.

Flow-wise, my guy got that urgency.

How he be speeding up the bars, end of every bar.

Over these frantic beats that feel too fast. 

Sounding like he got this shit he just jotted, that he now must get off his chest.

He jotted it, so he gon say that shit.

Say it however quickly he must to get it all said.

Fuck syncopation.

Adhering to a system so simple so rudimentary as syncopation an affront to the urgency of what he has to say.

The information he feels it’s his duty to impart.

And how he be diving into his shit.

‘Lemme tell y’all about this one time in Verizon…’

‘Lemme tell you about this one time at Walmart….’

This some autofiction shit.

Presented as, in the tone and framing of, someone reporting it straight.

Ripping it real.

.

.

It’s also lowkey on some self-help.

Participates in the self-help literary tradition.

Bordering on the ‘manual’ form. 

Talkin like, vehicular owner’s manuals.

Or like, furniture assembly instructions.

Employing the, what would it be called, direct-address command form.

Do this; do that. 

In this order.

PAY ATTENTION.

Here’s a detailed step by step. 

Ain’t no fkn choruses bruh.

No hooks.

This some other shit.

On a different type vector.

.

.

And it’s pretty radical, really, who he implicitly knocking.

First off: corporations.

Scamming Verizon, Apple, Walmart. While employing the same sneaky loopholes they employ. 

Finding loopholes in social medias. Scamming mfs via Facebook, Instagram.

Clowning mfs for moving reckless, exposing themselves on social medias.

But then simultaneously clear-eyed about the degree to which societal belonging contingent on presentation. 

Knocking mfs for moving reckless, employing archaic flex techniques. Violent techniques.

This n——a must miss jail man, Why are you sagging? 

Like how Jay-Z clowned mfs for doing money phones on the gram, not investing, but not patronizing, paternalistic.

Teejayx6’s vibe is like Bro—What are you doooing?

Like What are thooose? but towards basic mfs flexing reckless, self-snitching, misunderstanding the rules of the game.

This game takes prudence.

Rolling incognito.

On Swipe Story: I scammed the same Walmart 50 times, I gotta play it smart.

Like Y’all out here smashing windows bruh?

Some childish shit.

Fkn basic.

.

.

I heard in an interview that he writes his bars and then rips em one after another, but one at a time. Pausing the track till he gets each subsequent bar right.

This precision.

This precision is interesting bc, in one sense, his flow is BasedGod adjacent, or BasedGod influenced, in that he be rapping all fast off-beat, or slightly faster than the beat. 

But this isn’t a performance of artistic liberation.

He not out here riffing, showing how funny and random he can be just bc he can.

Shit’s too real for that now.

Too urgent.

This shit cold.

His shit sharp.

My guy doing cold-ass shit.

His shit says, Stop playing, bro.

VIGILANCE.

THIS AINT A GAME.

NOTHING ABOUT THIS IS A GAME.

Everything I’m singing real bruh—you ain’t gotta believe me! 

It’s almost, backhandedly, a warning against the digitization of money, the takeover of tech companies.

All y’all mfs encouraging your own oppression, lockdowns, expediting this process.

Y’all fkn wilding—is what, I feel, this shit sorta backhandedly says.

Bc this digitization/corporatization of everything.

That shit ain’t it.

I got this crazy ass method, I could get your house foreclosed, Teejayx6 brags in a way that, considering the above, sounds less like a brag than a warning.

Like a message delivered by an unwilling messenger, telling you how it is.

How, if we continue like we’re going, it will be.

.

.

But ultimately, Teejayx6’s contribution is humor.

Lil inside jokes he be doing throughout his songs.

Like why this mfer always talking about scamming pro athletes bro.

‘Ran off on Tom Brady from the NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS!’ 

‘My tenth nba player—I just scammed Carmelo!’ (Blackmail)

And always describing how mfs look by comparing em to celebrities. 

‘Robbed my own personal chef he look like Chris Breezy!’

Like the root of this shit, the American ethic of stack endlessly bunker up achieve elevated status by any means necessary is founded in our fetishization of celebrity.

Like he only sees things through the lens of celebrity.

Bc we fkn do bruh. We all do.

Hating on mfs ‘higher up’ than you, mad that they ‘made it.’

As if there’s any ‘making it.’

Lol.

And then. Bruh. On Website Scam:

Broke n——a on the side of the road tryna panhandle

They thought I opened up a website, but it’s just all a scandal

Cuz soon as you click the link I get your information

He ordered a tee shirt three years ago and he’s still waiting!

Bro this mfer tahm bout scamming his own fans! 

I’m fkn dead.

.

.

#

This essay was simultaneously published at http://1storyhaus.com.