Did you know that Brooklyn rapper Joey Bada$$ co-wrote Post Malone’s gigantic hit “Rockstar”? I just found that out. Here’s some other weird stuff: A couple of weeks ago, embattled New York mayor Eric Adams declared December 20 Joey Bada$$ Day, and Bada$$ will be an artist scholar in residence at Columbia University’s Teachers College Gordon Institute this year. If you think too hard about any of that stuff, you might walk around in a fog all day. Fortunately, Joey Bada$$ has some new music out, and you don’t have to think too hard about that.

The last Joey Bada$$ album was called 2000, and it came out in 2022. Last year, Bada$$ released “Passports & Suitcases” with KayCyy and “Vertino” with Conway The Machine. Yesterday, he dropped “The Ruler’s Back,” a strong piece of classicist New York head-slap music. Over a hard soul-sample beat from producer Conductor Williams, Joey talks his shit: “I stand tall in this rap thing like Yao Ming/ And won’t stop till the crowd sing when I’m crowned king/ My aura scream, and my style ring/ This ain’t boom bap, n***a, this that boom-bow-bing.”

There’s one line on “The Ruler’s Back” that kicked off a lot of discussion online when the song came out yesterday: “Too much West Coast dick-lickin’.” That’s an old Jay-Z quote that could be read as a shot at Kendrick Lamar. I don’t think Joey Bada$$ would say something like that unless he had some very purposeful music in store. Watch the Waqas Ghani-directed video below.