Joey Bada$$ has had a riveting career. Throughout his decade-long run as a mainstream rapper, the boy-turned-man started during the blog era with a decidedly old-school take on hip-hop with his Pro Era collective.
Together the group turned heads with their execution of Golden Era hip-hop aesthetics, hellbent on killing every verse and cypher. The traditionalist approach had already long lost its stronghold, with the culture moving further away from its birthplace to Atlanta and its trap-influenced sounds.
While the group featured a wide array of talented emcees across the board – drawing comparisons to legends like Wu-Tang Clan and their contemporaries, Odd Future – Joey appeared as the face of the East Coast movement alongside fellow upstarts like A$AP Rocky and the late Capital STEEZ.
This time in his life, especially his friendship with STEEZ, is a key plot point explored across 2000. Given that it’s fast approaching a decade since the passing of his Pro Era compatriot, Joey seems to come to terms with the death of his friend across the album, most directly on the standout track “Survivor’s Guilt”.
The album has an air of triumph, with legendary New York figures like Diddy and Nas interspersed across interludes. Joey is an artist who has arrived and joined the pantheon of great Brooklyn rap artists at this point in his career; his pen is also sharp as ever, often choosing more mature and reflective lyrics over showy lyricism.
Tracks like “Written in the Stars” see him admit that he’s now a veteran and that “we all fighting the wars, hiding invisible scars” – a rare type of empathy sometimes lacking in people who made it as early as he did in life. The beautiful live instrumental sees Diddy reassuring us that “it’s all right now”, calling Bada$$ a little brother as opposed to a son, showing just how far the latter has come.
Elsewhere across the album, telling bars of this development meet us, with Joey, now a father, lamenting the opportunities and privileges his child will now have as opposed to when he first started on tracks like “Where I Belong”.
On the album opener, “The Baddest” (featuring Diddy), he’s brash and confident, positioning himself among greats like Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole as the Holy Trinity of rap in this era. While the claim may come off as a bit of a reach, Joey’s unique charisma and Brooklyn-bred confidence allow him to land this and other questionable bars to slide.
Some of the worst offences in this regard are the bad habits he has carried over from earlier days. There are lapses in precision with loose rhymes and pointless wordplay; see: “Swimmin’ mainstream like a hungry hip-hop-potamus” bar on “Eulogy”, which is, otherwise, a top-tier rap song.
Despite these slips, there are also moments where he showcases transcendence in the glory of Westside Gunn-assisted “Brand New 911”, the pomp of Kirk Knight-produced “Zipcodes”, or the Neruda-esque romantic reflection of “Show Me”.
Joey has grown exponentially in the past decade, and there are enough moments that demonstrate this, making 2000 a compelling album.
