Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

Rap Beefs and Bullpens

Happy Friday Chicago!

Born too late to explore the earth, born to early to explore space. Born just in time to take deep dives into Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s rap beef on my lunch break.

When your parents have a freezer stacked to the brim with organic dog food, it’s generally taboo to be spouting off about hip hip disputes publicly. And that can be a lonely place for a 28-year-old with a 9-5 desk job who just wants to explore the ins and outs of the Kendrick-Drake showdown with whoever will listen.

I’ve got to stop blowing up the phones of grown men out to dinner with their girlfriends, explaining why I think Drake took a misstep here, or which songs in the battle sequence I think will stand the test of time. I know.

After the third blue text left on read, it’s time to take a walk around the block.

My takes on the NBA playoffs and this rapper duel are leaks in my apartment just drip, drip, dripping. Once I get to the end of the week, I need to dump those collection buckets out, pronto.

I’m just dying to tell someone that Kyrie Irving is still a ZERO on defense, man. No one cares, but when has that stopped me before? I got to let them know the similarities between the Drake-Pusha T spat in 2018 and this one.

You can’t be making fun of people for talking about their own sports bets, and then stick your juicy future in their face when DraftKings wants you to cash out. (Timberwolves +5000 to win the NBA Finals…)

And I learned this week you generally can’t call your boy on a Tuesday and expect him to ready to talk shop about The Rap Game. He’s got a meeting in the morning that could lead to a promotion, but I got a few notes here that could sway his opinion on this latest Drake track.

So, as usual, if no one else will listen elsewhere, the thoughts are filed here with my editor — me.

The overarching takeaway I have from Drake vs. Kendrick is not anything about hip hop, or even who won the beef, though.

Generally, part of the joy of hip hop is listening and repeating lyrics that are so unfamiliar to your own personal life that it’s amusing.

But pit two hip hop artists against each other, and you’ll realize they’re just like us. Sure, there’s a lot that goes into these back-and-forths, but the double entendres and beat switches distract you from the fact that they settle disagreements like disagreements have been settled for hundreds — and arguably thousands — of years, namely by teenagers.

You’ll have hip hop personalities breaking this down like the Zapruder film, and I promise you that’s unnecessary.

What it really boils down to is a bunch of rappers calling each other short, fat and gay, almost as if they’re putting their school clothes back on after a heated gym class in freshman year of high school.

That’s basically all you need to know about 90% of this one.

Accusing someone of being on Ozempic was certainly new to the rap war lexicon, but making fun of someone’s small shoe size is a joke that came long before us and will last long after us.

Lest I forget, too, there’s telling someone that their girlfriend, wife or baby mother had sex with someone else before them. The horror… what a revelation!

The thing about calling a short man short, though, or a definitely-not-gay man gay, though, or a fat man fat, is that they may just end up calling you a pedophile.

And that’s where this one ends, folks! The schoolyard fun is over.

Because either that assertion is true and horrific, or it’s not true and the accusation seems like a little much, even for the COLD, HARD rap world where “all is fair in love and war” is subscribed to, and you throw inclusion to the side to suggest another man may swing the other way.

After that, it was time for me to get back to the day-to-day. Like turning on live television to ground yourself after watching a spooky movie, I needed to get emails back to the top of my recipients’ inboxes. You will not find me dissecting whether or not a rapper liked a girl’s Instagram post before she turned 18. (Who the hell is Millie Bobby Brown?)

In the end, from my vantage point, Drake is sort of the Dominos of hip hop.

You’re supposed to like Kendrick Lamar more because of his lyrical talent and the substance of his music, but god dammit, sometimes you just want to house a medium pepperoni pie in the corner rather than go to the new Michelin-rated French place downtown.

Both have their place, though. And it looks like making fun of someone for things they cannot change did not stop with Melania Trump’s anti-bullying campaign.

The United States is a resilient country, and so are the core tenants of its insults.

Onward!

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ON THIS DAY

To ease the transition between hip hop and Chicago sports, it’s time for me to admit I was toying around with the name O-B Thrice (inspired by the rapper Obie Trice) after Onulrap Bitim hit like two three-pointers in his first Bulls game this year. That one remained in the drafts.

The only thing that can raise the senses of a Bulls fan at this time of the year is an ON THIS DAY post. Those are becoming ancient themselves, though, as Derrick Rose’s game winner against the Cavaliers in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals in 2015 is now over nine years old.

That’s a reminder that the Bulls have won three postseason games since then: two against the Celtics with Wade, Rondo and Butler in 2017 and one against Milwaukee in 2022 before losing in five.

Over the last few years, we’ve become accustomed to Jimmy Butler dancing on our graves as he hauled lesser teams deep into the NBA playoffs, years and years after the Bulls decided they could not do exactly that with him.

This year, it’s Tom Thibodeau and the Knicks making a run that the Bulls could feasibly have made with or without Thibs. But it’s especially painful to see a coach the Bulls front office ran out of town with tiki torches do exactly what he did for us in early 2010s, which have now become a fucked-up version of the Jordan 90s for Bulls fans under 30.

Amid the Knicks run, there’s the Timberwolves emergence, too. The other day I was listening to Bill Simmons’ meandering thoughts on the best NBA defenses in the NBA over the last two decades, and it made me think of those Thibs-coached Bulls teams.

I think at this point, those defenses have actually become underrated. They weren’t the 2004 Pistons, to be certain, but that’s also the point: they didn’t have even close to the defensive personell that the Pistons did, or the early 90s Bulls did, and they still dominated for years.

When Thibs got to Chicago, the Bulls were fresh off two 41-41, 8-seed seasons. They had the 27th-best offense in the NBA 09-10, and the 11th-best defense. The following year, their over/under for wins under Thibs was 46.5, and they won 62 games — the first 60-win Bulls team since Jordan and the last since then. They were first in defensive rating and 11th in offensive rating. They allowed 91.3 points per game.

The following year, they allowed 88.3 points per game. The year after that, they allowed 92.9 points per game.

Of course, in Thibs last year — the front office said it would be his last year even if he won the NBA championship! — the Bulls won their last playoff series. They beat the Bucks 120-66 in the first-round clincher.

The point of this is to bring shame to the Bulls, to remember those awesome teams, but also to acknowledge that the Bulls could be doing everything the Knicks are currently doing.

They could be the center of the basketball world with a roster built shrewdly, without a ton of talent. They could have Chicago-born celebrities courtside, mixed in with ex-players coming back for a better reason than a Ring of Honor ceremony where fans boo a widow.

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Right now, here are the Cubs pitchers that have started five or more games:

Shota Imanaga: 1.08 ERA, 0.81 WHIP

Javier Assad: 1.66 ERA, 1.0 WHIP

Jameson Taillon: 1.13 ERA, 0.87 WHIP

Hayden Wesneski: 1.59 ERA, 0.88 WHIP

Ben Brown: 4.26 ERA, 1.26 WHIP

Kyle Hendricks: 12 ERA, 4.0 WHIP

It’s the bullpen, stupid.

Justin Steele returned with a 0-run 4 and two thirds this week, only for Richard Lovelady and Daniel Palencia to give up three runs each, digging the Cubs into a 6-0 hole that ended up being insurmountable.

I still believe that the bullpen will improve when injuries (hopefully) subside. Not injuries just in the bullpen, either, but injuries in the starting staff that allow some of these more capable guys to take on innings in the bullpen.

The biggest surprise is Adbert Alzolay, who has completely fallen off after being one of the more reliable closers in baseball for 95% of last season. He hasn’t quite recovered, it appears, from his late-season missteps.

He has a 4.7 ERA in 15.1 innings, and it feels worse. That’s because it is. His FIP (fielding-independent pitching) is far worse, suggesting he has lucked into an ERA that good. That FIP number is noteworthy here at 7.14.

It’s also useful in Hector Neris’ case, who — by some miracle — has a 3.21 ERA. Compare that with his 5.37 FIP, and his 1.71 WHIP. It’s a shock at this point if Neris is pitching and there are no men in scoring position.

The bullpen was the issue in the first Padres game this week, but not in the latter two.

But the two Padre losses cannot overshadow the one win. Imanaga had yet another stellar start, and after a two-run homer ended his night, the Cubs came back from a 2-1 deficit to win on a Michael Busch walk-off homer in the ninth.

It was pure pandemonium in the stadium as a beautiful night turned into a torrential downpour right before the Cubs walked it off. I was shaking my hips and belting out every word to Go Cubs Go so the haters could see.

A one-hit game the next day was a sobering comedown, but I’m not going to throw the baby out with the bath water here.

What’s important now is that the Cubs rock this cocky sonofagun Paul Skenes on Saturday, who is making his debut for the Pirates. He’ll also be facing Justin Steele, making Saturday’s matchup feel like a little bit more than regular season divisional game.

The Cubs are finally getting healthy. Bellinger is back, and Seiya is on his way. For all that is holy, can we send Ian Happ anywhere but to the plate for the next couple of weeks until he figures out whether he wants to play Major League Baseball?

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Have a good weekend, everyone. Thanks for referring your friends to Still Gotta Come Through Chicago, I very much appreciate it. Comment below!