Vakill: "Serpent & The Rainbow"

Vakill's second shot was missed by too many in 2006; it should have cast him as the next great Chicago figurehead to stack next to Kanye and Common, but it seems Lupe Fiasco landed the '06 role with his drop shouldered hipster cache of street smarts. It's a shame they both didn't get the same push, as Vakill matches Lupe's lyrical dexterity and beat-cresting bravado, albeit with a more fatalistic take on life at kerb level. "Serpent & The Rainbow" is perhaps the finest run in the snow caps of Worst Fears Confirmed (2006), set stone solid on a shimmering golden production foundation by Moleman, which weighs a cascading fountain of Philly soul strings over a deft, loping beat chassis. Vakill cuts into this idyllic '70s dream with a rhyme set totally at odds with the cooing P.I. charged beat, locking it into harsh realities and constant struggle: "When three assailants with chrome / Triple team jests / And three clapped his brain / Still breathin' when that white sheet wrapped his frame / So vividly I recap the pain / Cops caught the three cats that flamed / Now that's four niggas total that these traps done claimed."

But Vakill, knowing he can't sour the strings, provides an undertow that sucks everything under the mesmerizing beat, selling the rhymes on a thick slip-n-slide mix of street violence and sharp dipped couture, making out like a contemporary riff on Bobby Womack's pimp strut social reportage. When he drops the lines, "My mentality is wish sandwich / Nothing goes between me and the bread," it never feels like empty rhetoric. There's unshakeable self-belief forming like pavement cracks all the way uptown.