Like any writing partnership or wrestling tag-team, rap duos are tacit strategic agreements as much as they are a genuine collaboration. An 8Ball & MJG or Method Man & Redman is once-in-a-generation; it can be hard not to focus exclusively on yourself in an industry that’s so often driven and defined by individualist hustle. When Young Dolph and Key Glock united for 2019’s Dum and Dummer—more of a rigorous sparring match than the goofball antics its titular nod to Harry & Lloyd might indicate—it could have just been a one-off affair, a notch in the belt of a trap veteran and a boost to the resumé of an upstart, but its sequel, Dum and Dummer 2, solidifies the Memphis rappers as one of the most in-sync alliances in the genre today.
Young Dolph cut his teeth during the peak of DatPiff and LiveMixtapes, DJ Holliday and Trap-A-Holics, when physical street mixtapes were still a somewhat substantial economy for Southern rappers—an affiliate of the 1017 universe, Dolph owed more to Gucci Mane than Three 6 Mafia or other mainstream Memphis artists. His persona is both dealer and consumer, a single-minded distributor of product and mover of weight who is also an unapologetic stoner, minus the drug-rug, bongwater-soaked corniness of a Wiz Khalifa. Dolph is slick, sarcastic, and charismatic, a consummate professional who could blow dense clouds but still keep a clear head, like Gordon Gekko if he got down with grass. Over time, he’s developed not just as a business executive but as a frequently heartfelt songwriter and social commentator, like on 2018’s “Black Queen,” a piano ballad about his mother.
On “Somethin’ Else,” Dolph compares his reign in Memphis to the rule of the controversial revolutionary and political theorist Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Most famously the inspiration for the moniker of New York MC Tragedy Khadafi, he’s even something of a thought leader—when XXXTentacion died, Waka Flocka Flame posted a screenshot of their final text exchanges, which included Waka texting X a PDF of Qaddafi’s Mao-inspired The Green Book. Like so many revolutionaries of the Global South, Qaddafi was despised in the West and eventually deposed because he fought to build a nation that could support itself instead of being subject to an empire. It may seem a stretch, but the comparison isn’t entirely unearned; while pretty much every other rapper of Dolph’s stature and weight class is a vassal of the major label machine, the self-crowned King of Memphis runs his own Paper Route Empire on independent terms.