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I'm a little disappointed that the Guys didn't include "Taxes" on their first mixtape since forming seven months ago, IG: We the Guys (it's actually styled "IG:WeTheGuys_" to match their Instagram account). "Taxes" is a strong track, but it would've been a good fit because the mixtape came out Friday, just days before tax day. Still, even without the track I've dug it on a few cursory listens. It's got the first track of theirs to catch my ear last year, "Flee," a pulsating bop tune with a steel-drum melody played at a tempo approaching footwork's speed, but what's got my attention on this mixtape is a track called "Jessie White."
I e-mailed the Guys and they say the track name referrers to the Jesse White Tumblers, the acrobatics organization designed to help at-risk youth founded by the current Illinois Secretary of State in 1959; the Guys tell me the song title doesn't directly reference "the person Jessie [sic] White and/or his actions in any way." Still I'm not sure White would go for the way the Guys use the Tumblers' acrobatics as a metaphor for the kind of unsavory "flipping" described on the track, but it works well—every so often the line "Jessie White / I be selling dope like every night" will get lodged in my brain. Take a listen to IG: We the Guys and watch the video for "Taxes" below.
Leor Galil writes about hip-hop every Wednesday.
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