No. 7: Rich Boy’s On The Marquee But Polow Da Don Brings The Real Heat

Because we could listen to damn near anyone rap over No. 7.

For all the blog jawing and Fader-profiling and whatnot earlier in the year about producer Polow Da Don being the second coming of your world-changing boardsman of choice (and a commercial menace to boot), his bottom-line-minding taste in collaborators and his variable strike rate do give me pause, despite Don-produced ’07 highlights like the thuggish ruggish oompah of Young Buck’s “Get Buck.” (Plus my unabashed love for “London Bridge,” which exhibits all Polow’s worst traits, from the person on the mic to recycling whatever trends are lying around the charts, and still trumps.) But we’ll always have Polow making it rain bleep and bass on “Throw Some D’s,” if not the best beat of the year^* then certainly Top 5, his (and co-producer Butta’s) glass-shattering deep soul stabs two-stepping with low-riding techno synths, with Polow the rapper out-nimbling (and out-LOL’ing) his benefactor on his own dime. Hence why I’m not counting him out just yet.

Rich Boy feat. Polow Da Don – “Throw Some D’s” [YouTube] Idolator’s 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness

^* Before someone pops up going “hey, this was released fourth quarter of ’06!”: In my partial defense, I claim the usual the “it blew up biggest in ’07” year-end list caveat. (Hey, Rolling Stone got away with it. Way down at No. 37!) And for those salty over my release-date flaunting or who think that Rich Boy is mumbling through a first-draft here, feel free to substitute Lil Wayne’s Drought 3 freestyle over the track, which contains the most awe-inspiring admission of celebrity laziness in the face of fornication I’ve ever heard: “I just feed ’em drugs and watch ’em fuck each other.” Later to recycle his observations into freestyle over a yet-to-be-released High School Musical 3 instrumental, presumably.