And while we might not know the particulars, the story is an old one: two rappers, both at their peaks, coming from the same place, each convinced that he’s the man. There’s a lot on the song about having sex with Gotti’s baby’s mother, and there’s even more about Gotti not properly representing Memphis: “You make the city look bad, and that’s the truth / Fuck nigga, I be in North Memphis more than you.” (Dolph is from South Memphis.) Gotti will doubtless have his own version of the story, and I imagine that we’ll hear it soon. Dolph had been sick of Gotti, but he’d been laying off him, seeing as how they were from the same city and everything. He’s been jealous of Dolph for years, sliding little sneak-disses into his songs. Those of us who don’t come from Memphis probably aren’t going to know the backstory of the whole Gotti/Dolph issue, at least beyond what Dolph tells us on his inflammatory anti-Gotti anthem “Play Wit Yo Bitch.” To hear Dolph tell it, Gotti once wanted to sign Dolph but didn’t have enough money to do it. His punchlines can land hard: “They can teach you how to hate, I’ma show you how to get paid / I put 20K dirty money in the collection plate.” But he sells them by emphasizing just the right words at just the right time: “At Pappadeaux eating alligator / My favorite app is the calculator.” (If you can hear him deliver that line without shouting the word “calculator” along with him, you aren’t listening to rap music right.) But as good as Gelato is, there’s only one thing about it that’s really in the conversation right now: the absolutely savage verbal beating that Dolph lays on his fellow Memphis rap star Yo Gotti.

But Dolph himself sounds like a more relaxed, less dad-jokey version of 2 Chainz. You listen to him because you like to hear an enormously confident man describe all the ways he’s getting money, all the ways he’s better than you.ĭolph, like so many people making great rap music right now, came up under Gucci Mane the two recorded the East Atlanta Memphis mixtape together in 2013. You don’t go to Dolph for introspection or innovation. It’s supremely consistent shit-talk with big, slow, synthy beats and absolutely no sense of introspection or innovation. Dolph’s new mixtape, Gelato, is a ridiculously solid piece of trap music. Young Dolph just released the best non-Migos rap album I’ve heard in 2017.

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