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“Mo Bamba” is One of the Worst Songs Ever Made
Published:
The Sixers signed Mo Bamba to a one-year deal for the league minimum.
Maybe you’ve seen him play or maybe not, but you’ve likely heard the eponymous song, written by a shitty rapper named Sheck Wes, which now has 413 million views on YouTube:
lol
It’s so bad. I can’t believe the kids listen to this stuff. You whippersnappers.
Let’s start with the “beat,” which is four repeating key strokes over a ubiquitous trap pattern. You could have placed a blindfolded cat in front of a MIDI controller and it would have coughed up a hairball that landed on the keys and created something more interesting.
What about the lyrics then? Well Sheck Wes delivers profound and intriguing bars like this:
“Young Sheck Wes and I’m getting really rich (ching-ching)See how I caught it ’cause I’m really with the shits (bang-bang)See me in the streets and I be really with a (cling, cling), with aBad bitch (bitch), n*ggas straight rocking (rock)”
Oh man! Some of the deepest and most creative lines in hip hop history! Those four lines could give Inspectah Deck a run for his money.
What about the delivery though? Does Sheck Wes flow? Well yes, if you like the contemporary sing-songy stuff with autotune on the back end. It’s not Lil Uzi Vert, but it’s bad enough. This current epoch of hip hop delivers a hideous amalgam of rapping, mumbling, and singing with heavy post-production that sanitizes the audio and takes anything raw and authentic out of the equation.
But anyway, it’s often said that music is a matter of a taste, and that’s certainly true. Most people who listen to jazz aren’t listening to death metal, unless you’re an Imperial Triumphant fan. And each generation probably thinks the next generation’s music sucks, but at least when we shifted from 80s rock to grunge, for instance, guys like Jerry Cantrell and Dave Grohl had actual talent and played actual instruments. Music always changes and evolves, but creativity and effort and innovation do not, unless we’re talking about rap, which fell the further than any genre post-2010. We went from talented and authentic characters like Jay-Z and Nas to myriad mumble rap nobodies who only possess half the capability and skill. And this over-saturization of trash did a disservice to guys like Kendrick, Drake, and J Cole, who are bursting with talent and do not suck.
Aside from musical preferences that typically run along genre lines, things can objectively be ass. Mo Bamba is one of them. The beat is ass, the lyrics are ass, and the vocals are ass. But other than that it’s a great song.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com