Facebook's only valuable purpose is keeping tabs on people you went to high school with that you would otherwise actively avoid in real life. Your news feed is a deluge of mundane updates about their lives that makes it easy to neatly pigeonhole them into one of three categories: success, failure, or engaged. For a while, it was the only way I'd learn about what my former classmates were up to, until a bunch of them started getting Internet Famous. There's the dude who designs clothing for Lady Gaga—we had P.E. together a few times, he was pretty chill. The #1 Etsy Thug used to write a column for our school newspaper. Everyone's favorite teen fashion media baroness is admittedly way younger than me and so I graduated when she was still in middle school, but a bunch of my friends had her dad as an AP English teacher (and I did cop that Rookie Yearbook regardless). A girl who I ended up going to college with as well models for Playboy now. Some other kind of famous people went to my high school too, I guess. The newest addition to this list is Iman Shumpert, who's a shooting guard for the New York Knicks, and now also a rapper who goes by 2wo 1ne.His debut mixtape Th3 #Post90s dropped last month. Surprisingly, it's nostalgic and 90's-referential without being derivative. Title track "Post 90s" fully interpolates Arrested Development's "Tennessee," but Shumpert's self-deprecation prevents it from becoming clichéd: "I been doing songs wrong/ since when Sisqo had recorded Thong Song/ I'm long gone." "Th3 Connect" is virtually identical to Run DMC's "My Adidas" but it's refreshing to hear new cadence and lyrical structure over such a timeworn beat. In an era where imitation is the overwhelmingly preferred form of flattery among internet-era rappers, Shumpert's awareness of this trend puts him a step ahead most of his contemporaries who often mimic their aesthetic influences without acknowledging them. "Post-90s, doing what they did with a twist/ Post-90s, making up for everything I missed," he raps on Cut Throat. Shumpert is an eager student of the decade he reveres.The standout track on Th3 #Post90s is the de facto single" #anarchy episode VII," featuring PhlyyB (Another rapper from my high school! What a coincidence!). In the video, PhlyyB and 2wo 1ne communicate in Japanese using a pizza-to-sneaker phone, which is easily the greatest (non)invention since the original telephone. PhlyyB's bed is also apparently a pool table. The two rappers decide to go rapping together in Midtown, PhlyyB donning a leopard jacket and 2wo 1ne in a Carmelo Anthony jersey worn backwards, Kriss-Kross style. Shumpert compares his high-top fade to Johnny Bravo's, and wears one of his shoes like a hat (Get it? He's a sneakerhead!). It's an entertaining, high-spirited track with a great video, and a few more like it will propel Shumpert from Internet Famous to IRL Famous, although I guess being in the NBA might help with that too. Either way, I look forward to being like "Yo, I went to high school with that dude!" when it happens.Shumpert's second tape Lyrics and Jump Shots, a joint effort with Billionz, dropped last week. Stream it below.Download Mixtape | Free Mixtapes Powered by DatPiff.comGabriel Herrera pays attention to the Rap Internet so hard he could have balled for the L.A. Leakers. He's on Twitter - @gabrielherrera
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