Aye, what if I was to start my shit out like this:

I'm usually homeboys with the same niggas I'm writing with, but this is hiphop, and these niggas should know what time it is. And that goes for Andrew Matson, Mike Ramos, Dave Segal, Charles Mudede, Clayton Holman, Todd Hamm—I got love for you all, but I'm trying to murder you niggas, trying to make your core readership act like they never heard of you niggas.

See, somebody out there would probably be tripping like, Oh, El just went in. I didn't, though. I just named some names—the easiest way to get the fickle peanut gallery trippin'—and said I was coming for their necks. It should be obvious that I'm making a totally hackneyed swipe at Kendrick Lamar's verse on Big Sean's "Control"—the biggest news in hiphop since everybody forgot about Trayvon Martin and a million other tragedies.

Anyway, did you hear it? He named names. He called himself the King of New York. He told everybody that he's coming for their necks. That's a lyrical wet dream if you're the kind of person who frequently instagrams selfies like "IN THE STUDIO" or (re)tweets inspirational "RISE & GRIND" messages, or ones about how you're doing some amazing shit right now, you just can't talk about it, but this is your year. Or generally wastes breath telling the fucking world what you're about to do—well, shit, man, then that verse must've been fucking amazing for you to hear, five mics, book of Christ and Latter-day Saints. A virtual rallying cry for the culture of running your fucking jib. What happened to "Bad boys move in silence"? (Or even "Real Gs move in silence like lasagna"?) The big homie told you already: "If you talk about it, it's a show—if you move about it, it's a go."

Because really, dude couldn't have been serious. The illest cats in the game, the elite, the ones he wants to murder: 2013 Pusha T? Post-2009 Jay Electronica? Any-time-in-the-history-of-mankind Wale? Man, I know some of y'all must think the same thing about me—but I swear we aren't listening to the same shit. I guess Kendrick didn't feel like naming, off the top of my head, Danny Brown, Roc Marciano, or even his patna Ab-Soul. Kendrick's list of greats-to-beat read to me like some crowd-sourced, old-rapper-crew, PR-envisioned-ass "safe" list. I guess a "new nigga" like Earl Sweatshirt couldn't make the cut—interesting since his new album, Doris, is about a million times better for hiphop's renewal than any calculated hype over a fucking Big Sean song. This is a 19-year-old rapping his ass off—raw, weird, and not giving a fuck about the nonexistent, media-driven hierarchy of relevant rappers that a nation of cornballs sync their shallow lives to. This is not Hiphop™—the shit that they took from you, freeze-dried, then sold back to you at markup. This is some fucking rap music, the shit that is supposed to confuse and infuriate anybody 15 years older than those who made the shit.