“I wish the city paid me in cash / Y’all made me an ass,” a rapper named Mike sneers near the end of “Butter Fingers,” just two minutes after it starts. The proposition is easy to imagine coming from a scrappy seventeen-year-old, kicking rocks through the Bronx and bummed out about boring summer jobs, yet it resonates all the way down here in FiDi. New York can seem to deal exclusively in credit: the vague assurance that, eventually, you’ll get your due, if you wait it out for long enough. Rappers and punks are among the only folks getting paid in cash these days, anyway: scant amounts handed off in full, ahead of the set, no matter whether the cops shut the show down or not.
As “Butter Fingers” blooms, a sample of the Italian reggae artist Alborosie talking down an accosting police officer is stretched into a pitched-down wail. “Mi just ah walk, mi nuh look fi no trouble, in New York City,” he sings through thick patois before a rattle of drums kicks off the phlegmy centerpiece to Mike’s July album, “Longest Day, Shortest Night.” The track is exemplary of the teen-age rapper’s best features: odd-angled flows shaped by his childhood in England; skittish, lo-fi production that cherishes nineties analog while blending fusion loops and drum-and-bass into an original texture; and a narrative slant that pares huge ideas down to a curbside perspective. It’s an adolescent statement record, a time capsule for “shitty days,” and a bright spot in the city’s bustling D.I.Y. moment. You can pay Mike in cash via his Bandcamp page.
