[Opinion] Logic’s New Single “Flexicution” Is Actually a Huge Disappointment

It’s 2 am somewhere in New York, and I am up finishing these opinion pieces and scrolling through Twitter the notifications come in that Logic’s newest single "Flexicution" is about to drop. My head was still wrapped up in XXL and their eye-roll inducing hashtag #eyecandy, but it was nice to get a break from patriarchy’s handiwork to indulge in one of, if not my most favorite emerging rapper.

I didn’t climb on board fully with Logic until Under Pressure dropped. I had heard about the MC who some said had lackluster bars and other say Logic was like coming up for the air for the first time in the hip-hop. When I heard his single “Buried Alive” I was sold—the mending range of voices, descending synth rhythms, and variation of rapid rhymes paired with well-timed down tempo—Logic had a vision and I was excited to see what the former XXL Freshmen would give his listeners next. I watched interviews in which Logic talks about being bi-racial, his estranged relationship from his mother, dropping out of school and working shitty jobs to keep himself afloat, and his co-dependency on “Nikki” which he explores in Under Pressure. Logic for me was a real person, he felt like a rapper who was someone I could have grown up with; his remarkable ability to tell stories through well-crafted bars made his music that much more engaging.

Logic, for his nearly immeasurable talent for fast-paced rapping, I began to notice (finally) how some of his lyrics he likes to rap about rapping. An example of this is in “Upgrade” off The Incredible True Story:

Aye, let me just rap
 I've upgraded while they've waited 
Will they love it, will they hate it 
Never faded I evade it 
Cause I never really want to complicate it 
Think I've made it, yes I did 
I'm giving them bars like a bid 
Let me rewind it like a vid 
"Did he just say that?" Yes, I did

And in some variation or another a line in which he talks about how “bad his bitch is” finds its way into a song or two of us (see: “I’m Gone” “Upgrade”).

Between the first album when Logic said on “Till The End” “Okay, last verse I gotta make it count / Won't speak on my bank account / So many commas I'd have to pause and I can't afford to just waste the bars” to some of the minor jabs made at women, I was very willing to overlook it because Logic wrote the fuck out of “Lord Willin’”, “Upgrade”, “Metropolis”, “I’m Gone”, and none of this is including his mixtape days.

I knew in the back of my heart that this day was coming when I would listen to a Logic single and just shrug my shoulders, feeling as though I have already heard it from him before. I was lenient with “Under Pressure” because it was a beautiful first project. The Incredible True Story, in my eyes, survived the ‘sophomore slump’.

Barely.

I love this second project, but still, lyrically Logic doesn’t really make it above what Under Pressure was going. He talks about money, how crazy his flow is, and how amazing this song is. I don’t like being spoon-fed or being told why the song is fire. Flexicution is juvenile for what Logic is capable of doing. In this very single says “This that type of shit they said they really wanted. So I gave them this. Now go get blunted”. I worry Logic is a one trick horse. You can only rap about rapping for so long before the rap has to end. I want mixtape and Under Pressure Logic to improve; Not morph into this rapper who does tricks for fans.

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