Pitchfork writer Alphonse Pierre’s rap column covers songs, mixtapes, albums, Instagram freestyles, memes, weird tweets, fashion trends—and anything else that catches his attention.
Attempting to cook Lil Gotit’s hot lemon pepper wings recipe
Over the weekend, a box randomly appeared at my front door. Inside was a small cookbook with 15 recipes allegedly penned by Lil Gotit and intended to be paired with the Atlanta rapper’s new album, Top Chef Gotit. Usually, I wouldn’t allow myself to enjoy such blatant promotional material, since I can’t help but assume that it is the brainchild of some hungry exec in the marketing department. But I’m only human, and food has a way of making all of us a little less uptight.
Lil Gotit is one of the countless disciples of Young Thug. He falls somewhere in the middle of the pack: He has yet to make anything as memorable as Gunna’s Drip Season 3 or his older brother Lil Keed’s Long Live Mexico, but he is a cut above one of those crooners who is seemingly blackmailing Thug for a spot on a Slime Language mixtape. Top Chef Gotit is fun enough. The centerpiece of the mixtape is the hypnotic “Get N Dere Gang,” which I could see holding a permanent place on DJ sets throughout the summer.
Now that you know who Lil Gotit is, let’s get cooking. Each of the cookbook’s recipes is inspired by a line from one of Top Chef Gotit’s tracks, and some of the connections between the lyrics and the recipes are more obvious than others. On “Toosie,” he raps, “Respect all my elders, I’m fucking a cougar,” which is paired with garlic mashed potatoes; maybe the older woman Gotit is involved with cooks him the meal when he comes over (and yes, I know that sounds like a strange relationship, but also this is not a dating advice column). On “Burnt N Turnt,” he coos, “Shorty get hungry, my dick she gon’ munch/Pinky ring pissy, I pop pills for lunch,” which is paired with a fried chicken technique (and I’m afraid to dig any deeper to find out why).
But the one I wanted to recreate was based on a line from “Get N Dere Gang”: “Pull up I get in dere then I get outta dere/YSL they are not hot as us,” he raps, leading us to a recipe for hot lemon pepper wings. Atlanta rappers often speak about lemon pepper wings like a contestant on Top Chef might talk about a perfectly cooked risotto. The local fandom for the wing flavor is so intense that Donald Glover made it a plot point in an episode of Atlanta, and Waka Flocka Flame once said, “If you eat chicken and never had a lemon pepper wing, smack the shit out of yourself.” Since I have never set foot in the city, the only time I’ve had the dish was during an underwhelming trip to Wingstop. For years, I’ve been left to wonder what is so special about it. Finally, here was my chance to recreate the magic.
First, I needed to collect Gotit’s list of ingredients: garlic powder, onion powder, lemon pepper seasoning, hot wing sauce, and olive oil. (Important note: A basic lemon pepper wing wouldn’t normally include hot sauce, but Gotit’s personal touch was, if you recall, to make hot lemon pepper wings, based on him rapping the word “hot” in that one line.) Next, I went to my local grocery store to pick up a package of chicken wings. I stood in the meat aisle for 10 minutes contemplating if I was really about to spend $13 on a pack of wings that might not even turn out well, but I shrugged and figured I would just send big Condé Nast the bill.
Once I brought the wings home I cleaned them thoroughly and, in a separate bowl, began to mix my sauce, following Lil Gotit’s direction to “stir that hoe real good.” Then I drowned the raw chicken in the sauce and covered the bowl with plastic so it could marinate for the designated 20 minutes. (In the cookbook, Gotit makes a joke about how it should probably sit for longer, but I didn’t find that funny because I have to actually eat this.)
Then, to my surprise, I wasn’t directed to start frying. Gotit must have been hanging around Styles P and Jadakiss’ juice bar or something, because we’re taking the healthy alternative and baking these wings. This is where the recipe really let me down. Next it says to roast the wings for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees and eat them with ranch dressing. That’s it! No suggestion to flip the wings. No comment in parentheses that says, “Depending on your oven…” Not even an asterisk that says to open the oven and check on them. Just pull them out after 20 minutes and eat them no matter what they look like! Julia Child he is not!
After 22 minutes the chicken looked sad and pale, and hadn’t cooked all the way through. I left it in for another 10 minutes and then slid them in the broiler to add some color. Sadly, the finished product wasn’t nearly saucy or crispy enough. But I plated them with a side of ranch and dug in. They were... fine. After all, it’s hard to completely ruin a chicken wing. But I still don’t feel like I’ve had a genuine lemon pepper experience. Based on this recipe, it seems like Lil Gotit has either never actually made chicken wings or should have spent more time workshopping the specifics. Then again, this is what I deserve for paying any attention to Lil Gotit’s excuse to blow through his marketing budget.
What is A$AP Rocky’s new documentary really about?
There are two core ideas floating through Stockholm Syndrome, a new documentary about A$AP Rocky and the weeks he spent fighting an unjust Swedish legal system after an altercation with some locals in 2019. The first is that racism and discrimination don’t give a shit about your bank account. Halfway through the 105-minute movie, Rocky says he wasn’t initially stressed by the international incident because he figured he would make bail. That was until he learned the Swedish system didn’t operate that way.
Instead, he spent weeks barred from the outside world, spending 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, only allowed a small allotted time in the morning to walk on the roof of the prison. On that roof, Rocky began to notice that the other inmates looked a lot like him. It caused him to reflect on his own past: the first time he experienced overt racism at an elementary school in Pennsylvania, the gang life he almost got caught up in before his late older brother changed his course, the brainless statements he once made about the Ferguson uprising and the Black Lives Matter movement, which he admitted were wrong.
The other idea channeling through the way-too-long doc is that A$AP Rocky is pretty cool. He is seen looking through racks of overpriced clothes when he isn’t telling us how many famous friends he has. There’s even a Rick Rubin studio session at the end for absolutely no reason, and the mass-incarceration commentary is largely handled by Kim Kardashian and Naomi Campbell! At least these grating celebrity cameos are balanced out by moments that are sort of sweet. Like when A$AP Lou plays Tyler, the Creator’s Funk Flex freestyle over the phone for a cackling Rocky. Or when Rocky is criticizing the conditions of solitary confinement: “I got no fucking hair products, I can’t clean my face,” he says, joking but at the same time deadly serious. “No fucking cologne, this chapstick tastes like deodorant.”
The most disappointing aspect of the documentary is that Rocky’s music feels like a footnote. In the very beginning, there are mentions of breakout songs like “Purple Swag” and “Peso,” and the end is pretty much a trailer for his next album, but aside from that more time could have been spent breaking down why so many people will always care about Rocky as a rapper. A good chunk of the back half is instead about Donald Trump’s involvement with his Sweden case, which isn’t really that interesting unless you work for TMZ or CNN. The documentary could have struck a better balance between the larger statements it was trying to make about the racist Swedish justice system and A$AP Rocky as a pop culture icon, even if it was just all gassing him up. It also needed much more of his Swedish lawyer, who looks like he could have been one of Alan Rickman’s henchmen in Die Hard.
Salimata: “Mock Me”
Salimata just needs a moment to vent on “Mock Me.” All of the Brooklyn rapper’s frustrations are poured into a dismissive verse that addresses anyone who has gotten on her nerves lately: “Yo mans don’t got no fuckin’ drip/You never left yo momma crib/You always steal yo momma shit.” Though the track sounds roughly recorded, and Salimata steps on a few of her words, none of this affects her momentum. Since the song feels like it was made in one take off the dome, the emotions come across as real. Sometimes you just want to hear someone talk shit.
Why are PnB Rock features still a thing?
Whenever I hear the name PnB Rock my mind immediately rushes back to three memories: 1) That one summer when his remix of French Montana’s “Unforgettable” played so much on New York City radio airwaves that the only explanation could have been payola; 2) The time he jumped Lil B, with the help of A Boogie, at Rolling Loud, and everyone on social media made fun of him; and 3) In early 2020, when I attended a Brooklyn drill showcase in Flatbush, and the crowd expected Pop Smoke to close the show, but instead it was PnB Rock, and everyone left. Still, through it all, the Philly rapper who usually sings like a whimpering dog is a go-to feature for rising rappers looking to crossover fast.
It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. There has never been a time when a rapper’s profile was raised because of a PnB Rock feature. If anything, it’s the other way around. Usually the tracks turn out like Bizzy Banks’ new single, “Adore You,” which is an Auto-Tuned love song that doesn’t fit the burgeoning Brooklyn drill star whatsoever. You might say, “Alphonse, you’re just not the target audience for PnB Rock.” My rebuttal would be, “Who is?” Are his lovestruck anthems supposed to be for high schoolers daydreaming in the back of the classroom? I doubt they want to hear a damn near 30-year-old complain about his dating troubles. But somebody up high must have spreadsheets that I don’t have access to, because it looks like we’re in for more radio mixes featuring this man’s whiny ballads.
Tony Shhnow: “Privacy”
Tony Shhnow’s new mixtape Authentic Goods is produced entirely by SenseiATL, an underappreciated Atlanta beatmaker who has the ability to adjust his style to fit whoever he is working with. Whether it’s the electric guitar suited for an Earth, Wind, and Fire record on “Penthouse” or the twinkling percussion of “Right Now,” the sounds he laces Tony with on this tape are smooth enough to have once played on Quiet Storm radio. “Privacy” is an early favorite. The background melody brings mind to Zaytoven at his weirdest, the drums lightly tap, and the funk guitar is mesmerizing (Mike Dean, take notes). And Tony, as usual, has no issue gliding on Sensei’s groove: “I don’t even feel no more, some days I just want privacy.”
Headline of the week: “Rick Ross Explains Why He Continues to Mow His Own Lawn”
Ross trying to tell us that he spends five hours mowing a 200-acre lawn might be a more egregious lie than the time he claimed former Panama dictator Manuel Noriega owed him some favors on “Hustlin’.”
9ina and Pimpin Pat: “Robbing Givens”
When 9ina and Pimpin Pat unite, it’s like they’re having a conversation at 3 a.m. after taking a bong rip. On February’s “I’m Da Type,” 9ina rapped, “I can’t get corona if he only give me head, right?” followed by Pat saying, “Shit, I don’t know, still might.” Ultimately, 9ina decides to play it safe and just rob the dude instead.
The Columbus, Ohio rappers have a similarly malicious back-and-forth on their latest, “Robbing Givens.” Usually it’s pretty fun, like when 9ina threatens, “I turn to Lisa Leslie every time I spark a bitch.” Though I sometimes get stuck trying to understand their thought process: “Niggas raised by they mommas they be bitch made,” raps Pat. I’m unsure if this is directed at a specific few, but if it’s targeted at every single person raised by their mom, well, that’s a large group to call out. But even as they make groundless observations about most of humanity, their chemistry never falters.
