Some Pulp: Rio Da Yung Og's 'The World Is Yours'

The TikTokification of popular culture has a certain reciprocal quality. In addition to making brand new consumable bits of entertainment native to these addictive apps, there's also this aggressive extracting of outside reference points inwards into easily digestible chunks.

Nowhere is the latter part of this social parasitism more evident than in the form of clips, a sticky subgenre of content that recycles movies and television shows we've largely already seen into short scenes or compilations of scenes. The volume of this stuff that shows up on our feeds and FYPs is so substantial and invasive that, after a night of doomscrolling, one has to wonder if they were better off just watching a whole film or a few choice episodes.

Among the countless programs siphoned into the Instagram ecosystem is The Sopranos, the prestige crime drama a lot of you dutifully rewatched at the height of the pandemic. Even stripped of their original context, pieces centering everyone from Tony and Carmela Soprano to secondary/tertiary characters like Artie Bucco and Finn DeTrolio serve as fleeting reminders of our collective enjoyment of the show, ensuring that we all spend more time in-app than advisable.

One such clip that infects my feed and earns repeat viewing more so than I'd like to admit is the perhaps infamous "some pulp" conversation from "Second Opinion" [S3E7], in which Tony grouses over the quantity of fibrous vesicles found in the orange juice container Carmela procured for the family. This minor though memorable spat, indicative of the tumultuous relationship between the married couple, invariably leads me to consider my own personal preferences in liquid citrus consistencies.

But there is a sensationalism to that clip, one oddly more jarring than the show's murderous mobster politics and fish-induced mental health crises. Looking back, it counts among The Sopranos' most relatable moments, for one, recalling the petty exchanges many if not most of us have partaken in during some relationship or another. As a parallel, it's not entirely unlike a particularly well executed rapper punchline, where an understandable reference point gets used to impressive effect in lyrical form.

Rio Da Yung Og happens to be really fucking good at that.

A weaponized hip-hop amalgam of menace, comedy, and pathos, the frog-throated Michigan rapper never held back with explicit bars on his pre-carceral projects. Yet since his first day out the Feds in 2024, as evidenced by the homegrown outing F.L.I.N.T. (Feeling Like I'm Not Through) and its ~50% bigger deluxe companion STILL F.L.I.N.T., he's taken that approach to near super-villainous levels. The rising tide of outlandish filth and fury spewed on croaky cuts like "Ghetto Love Story" and "Naked Party" are truly worth marveling at. And what makes Rio's seemingly offhand remarks about his bedroom conquests so jarring is that he nests pornographic punchlines between lyrical bouts of violence and vengeance, ejaculating just to blow off steam between executions, not unlike the philandering Tony with his comare (read: goomar).

Now admittedly, quite a few contemporary rappers play their hand this way, but none with the poker-faced fortitude possessed by Rio. Nowhere is this clearer than on his most recent album, The World Is Yours, its titular Scarface invocation a marker of depravity for the direct-to-Tubi set.

I sometimes wonder if rappers who draw upon the story of Tony–Montana, not Soprano–actually watched the movie all the way to the end. Though his wet-foot-dry-foot transition from ethically slippery Cuban refugee to ice-cold international crime boss includes plenty to envy in the Money-Power-Respect department, he effectively loses his humanity over a series of ruthless decisions and rage-blind errors that leaves him utterly alone in anti-heroic death.

Rio, however, seems to understand and, perhaps, identify with that process, mirroring an unapologetic propensity for brutality alongside drug-and-sex-seeking behaviors in his lyrics. The hunger for more, so to speak, reverberates on "100% Alcohol" and "Milwaukee Bucks," running through an inventory of weaponry and getting increasingly conspiratorial about his operations. You can practically hear the lean bottle rattle on the Veeze-aided "Superstar," the syrup coating his throat on "Lost My Voice."

Even so, it's the raunchy stuff that, again, really sets him apart. If you recall how Kool Keith quintessentially characterized the paradigmatic NYC-bred rap perv on his mid-to-late 1990s albums, Rio does so here as a proud Michigander. With "Finna Drop (Tour)" and "Okay Wit Dat," he replicates and refines the previously cited formula, couching his coital exploits in an utterly macabre milieu befitting a yellowing pulp paperback. Imagine, if you will, Samuel L. Jackson's vicious gun-runner Ordell Robbie from Jackie Brown with fewer apparent social graces and you'll get the idea.

To be clear, none of this is meant even remotely as an insult. As in conveniently clip-able crime stories, larger-than-life, cunning, quite possibly IRL dangerous types are arguably vital components of the hip-hop landscape, giving listeners safe distance proximity to base impulses that they might not otherwise indulge for fear of consequence. Some rappers do this as a character, while others come across as the proverbial real deal. And listening to Rio chomp through the rock-oriented "Douche Bag" and "Kinda Anxious," as well as knowing what he went to prison over, it's safe to say he's The Real Deal.

Three new tracks to snack on...

Aesop Rock & Blockhead, "Trouble Trouble"

DeevoDaGenius, "KNOWLEDGGOD (feat. Kil The Artist)"

Big Moochie Grape & Zaytoven, "Big Deposits (feat. Bally Baby)"