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Music

Jay IDK, Michael Christmas, Saba, and Jimi Tents Breathe Life Into the Posse Cut with "My Wallet"

The DC up-and-comer teams with rappers from Boston, Chicago, and New York for a fun, funny, and smart track off the upcoming tape 'The Empty Bank.'

Photo by Dan Prakopcyk, courtesy of Jay IDK

There was a time, before people spent all day bullshitting on Twitter about who would make the MOST FIRE COLLAB with Drake, when the posse cut was more than just a headline-grabbing way to optimize a bunch of artists' brands. In its ideal form, a rap track with four rappers going in should involve plenty of good-natured cutting up, a little bit of one-upsmanship, and, overall, a sense that the whole thing is just routine fun. If DC up-and-comer Jay IDK's new track "My Wallet" doesn't fit that bill, I don't know what does.

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The song, which features Boston's Michael Christmas, Chicago's Saba, and New York's Jimi Tents, unites four rappers from different cities in the shared pursuit of fun as hell bars, and it pays off completely. Jay kicks things off with a spirited verse that leans on his own cadences as much as the rhymes, where he spits "Reach in my pocket and pull out my new wallet / I just got it Louis Vuitton it's too poppin' / but too often people will judge it's too awkward / I don't give a flying fuck, I'm too ostrich." His growling exclamation of "what up bitch!" a moment later deserves an award all on its own.

But what really makes the track pop as a posse cut hinges on Michael Christmas's verse: "My wallet cost five hundred it's filled with seven ones and a dusty condom I got from robbing my brother's pockets," he quips, prompting Jimi Tents to later rap "Michael Christmas wallet is on my wish list." That is how it is done, folks. The absolutely bananas electric funk beat from Phil Jackson of The WatcherZ doesn't hurt, either. Of course, there's a more sincere side to the song, too.

"'My Wallet' is about me realizing how people start to look at me when the notice I have an expensive wallet," Jay IDK explained over email. "Women go crazy, because they think I have money. Friends and family become lazy and rely on me for the same reasons, and at the end of the day, it seems to make more sense to just have a black wallet without a logo." That theme plays into the arc of Jay's upcoming mixtape The Empty Bank, which comes out next Thursday, as well.

"The Empty Bank is a metaphor for seeing something or a person from the outside and believing it has more value than in really does," he added. "I chose to make an album inspired by money because as my rap career began to advance, I started to realize money was a much deeper thing than I had initially thought. It made me see money in a different light. In rap, money is a staple and symbol of status, the more you flaunt, the higher the perception. Money is what makes everything in rap possible. The more money that's presented, the more we are motivated."

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