Hey guys, CDTVProductions here and today in Best Verses we will be looking at Joyner Lucas.
I’ve been meaning to do this one for a long time, it was just difficult to narrow it down
to a few choices, especially when Joyner is one of my favourite rappers, but now I feel
like I’ve got a good list ready.
So with that being said, this is CDTVProductions, you can follow my social media accounts under
that name, and let’s look at Joyner Lucas’s best verses.
Happy Birthday (Verse 3):
Here we have one of the rawest and most emotional verses from Joyner.
The song kicks off with 2 verses of Joyner just berating what we assume to be his son,
saying that he wishes his son was never born and that he doesn’t want to be a part of
his life with some really harsh lines.
It’s really brutal and taps into a dark subject that some people might actually relate
to, whether they express it or not.
But in the third verse, he reveals why he actually feels this way.
He says that he initially wanted to be a father, and was looking forward to having a son, but
the twist is that he found out his son actually wasn’t his.
This explains his anger towards his son throughout the track, as his son acts as a constant reminder
that his wife or girlfriend cheated on him.
It’s a fictional story, but it’s definitely possible that it’s fueled by his real life
experiences, as he revealed in the song Forever he wasn’t happy initially when his son was
born and he may have injected some of that into this song.
Speaking of that song...
Forever (Verse 4):
So like I said before, we can assume this track is all
true as opposed to Happy Birthday.
On this song, Joyner talks to his son about how he wasn’t happy at first when he found
out he was going to be a dad.
It’s delivered in quite a soft tone over a beat that for the most part doesn’t have
any drums during the verse, and he even talks about crying at his sons baby shower because
he just didn’t feel like he was ready to be a father.
However, the 4th verse makes sure this story has a happy ending, as Joyner talks about
how regretful he is of those feelings, and that he’s grown to love his son more than
anything else in the world, which could be seen on his Instagram before he deleted all
his posts.
This is an honest and heartfelt song, and it’s great that it ends with Joyner being
thankful for his son.
Who Got the Yayo (Verse 3):
Moving away from his more emotional verses for a second, this verse is just really intense
and energetic.
The whole concept of the song is Joyner questioning what he’s gonna do with his life if rapping
doesn’t work out for him, wondering if he’ll have to sell drugs to get by.
The way the beat breaks down during this third verse is amazing, it adds even more to the
intensity of the verse and Joyner makes sure to match this with his tone of voice.
I also love how his flow really build up as the verse goes on, really picking up towards
the last few lines.
It’s so great and I love the passion behind it.
Words With Friends (Verse 1):
I just thought this verse had nice bits of wordplay and it’s a cool idea for a song
as a whole.
Basically the idea is Joyner’s friends throw different words at him, and Joyner expands
on those words or just takes them and goes on a rapping tangent focusing on those words,
pretty much a word association game in the form of a rap song.
It’s a very cool idea, and he executes it really well, even managing to throw his thoughts
about politics in there.
It’s nice to see how he takes the ideas and runs
with them
Keep It 100 (Verse 3):
Like almost every Joyner song, this one has an inventive concept, essentially chronicling
the journey of a single hundred dollar bill, showing all the different types of people
and activities a single note can pass through.
As with a lot of Joyner songs, the last verse is where it takes a bit of a tragic turn.
It starts off great, as a homeless man finds the one hundred dollar bill, and gets excited
at the thought of all the stuff he could buy with it.
However, unfortunately the homeless man goes to the exact same store which this specific
hundred dollar bill was stolen from, and the bill is easy to identify because it’s got
a phone number written on it in red marker.
This is expertly set up earlier in the song, and the payoff is that the innocent homeless
man either gets killed or arrested because people thought he robbed the store due to
that hundred dollar bill.
This song is a clinic in storytelling from start to finish.
Don’t Shoot (Verse 2):
This is up there with the hardest hitting verses that Joyner has written.
This was fuelled by his outrage and anger at the repeated cases of innocent black men
being killed in America, and he handles the whole situation in a really realistic way.
Obviously, this is something that I can never fully relate to, as you can probably tell
by my voice I’m neither black nor American, but I think that’s what makes songs like
these important, it spreads that message worldwide even to people who can’t relate and instead
helps them empathise.
There’s some brutally honest lyrics here as well, such as Joyner saying “if I got
my hoodie up then I’m a criminal, if I got my hands up that means I probably got a weapon”,
and it’s sad to hear stuff like that cause it really does relate to some real life events.
It’s a very real verse, but it’s definitely one that’s important too.
Frozen (Verse 2):
This is another emotional storytelling song by Joyner, where he focuses on 3 people that
get involved with car accidents, talking about a different person in each verse.
The first one was great, but I feel like the child who got hit by a car calling the driver
of the car a “stupid b***h” really broke my immersion with the song for a second, so
I instead chose the second verse for this.
It’s genuinely heartbreaking, its told from the perspective of a married pregnant woman
who died in a car crash after being driven home by a drunk friend.
Joyner starts off by painting a picture of the crash scene, then details all the stuff
that this woman is gonna lose out on now that she isn’t alive anymore.
It’s incredibly sad, and again really relates to real word issues such as drink driving,
making it all the more chilling.
It’s an incredibly touching song, I’d highly recommend it.
I’m Sorry (Verse 2):
And of course I had to include this song on this list, it’s another one that is so incredibly
sad, and this one really hit me when I first heard it.
The first verse is told from the perspective of a suicidal person, who by the end of it,
takes their own life.
Joyner being the artist he is didn’t leave it there, and in the second verse, he switches
it around to look at how this suicide affects the family and friends close to the person
that died.
Joyner always likes to look at multiple angles when it comes to complex issues like this,
and I think he handled this one really well.
He raps from the perspective of someone really close to the suicide victim, talking about
how much he misses him and even delves into his frustration at his friends taking his
own life.
It’s a sensitive subject, but I like the way Joyner tackles it, and his ability to
put himself in someone else’s shoes is incredible.
Great verse and song as a whole.
(Outro)