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Watch Bandhunta Izzy Practice Lyrical Gymnastics In His “Poppin Shit” Video

The standout West Baltimore rapper drops a loose track just in time for summer.

West Baltimore rapper Bandhunta Izzy started 2018 off by dropping Code Blue, the first mixtape to place him in the minds of people outside of his hometown. The tape was a more polished version of the drill-inspired loosies and beat-jackings that made him one the city’s most promising torchbearers since the death of Lor Scoota in 2016. Izzy’s content—which rarely deviates from recounting the typically dark details from his time in the streets—isn’t necessarily what will hold you. It’s the 21-year-old rapper's ability to make acrobatic flips of words, regardless of what kind of production he’s going over. That skillset is one of the primary reasons he’s been able to get on the radar of peers and predecessors like Cuban Doll, Gucci Mane, Project Pat, and more who’ve either collaborated with or publicly praised him. This summer he’ll be a supporting act on Florida rapper Ski Mask The Slump God’s tour.

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Since Code Blue, Izzy has been teasing and dropping individual songs (some of the best haven’t been released in full) on social media. At the top of June he released three tracks on SoundCloud to hold fans over until his next project. Of the three, “Poppin Shit,” produced by Baltimore’s Pyrexturnmeup, stood out the most for its stripped down beat and Izzy’s switches from double-time to stop-and-start flows. Last night, he shared a video for the track which shows his bouncing around with friends in front of a local gas station—not an unlikely scene for anywhere in Maryland from Baltimore to PG County. Hopefully there’s a tape somewhere in the vaults that this one will be included on. Watch the video above.