Okay. All right. Okay. All righty. Okay. All righty. Oh, yes. Yes. All right. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Oh, my God. Hi, everyone. Bigthony Laughtano here, Internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you're doing well. It's Vindication Tuesday over here on the @fantano channel. It doesn't matter what day this video drops. It's always Vindication Tuesday.

We are talking about one Mr. ian, a rap copycat extraordinaire. The boy really rode in on a huge wave of hype, writing a sound that sounded like an awful combination of a lot of trendy stuff to come immediately before him, be it some Playboi Carti or Future or Yeat. Just a very trippy, aggressive distorted trap music with mumbly vocals, tons of auto-tune to a certain inflection about it that feels Lil Baby-influenced as well, too, at points.

Look, ian's sound and style, for those who are not initiated, is a very mediocre combination of a lot of different things. A guy making rap music who seemingly doesn't really have much of a grasp of the genre outside of whatever has happened within it in the past several years, and that's it. When your context for a genre and a style is that shallow and that thin, of course, the music you're going to be making is going to come out pretty piss poor.

Piss poor is pretty much about how I would describe every major project he has released up until this point. But you know what? Look, I'm not the only person who has been voicing these criticisms of ian's music. There recently was a pretty notorious interview featuring one Tyler, the Creator, where without naming his name specifically, he did pretty much single ian out because how he was describing the artist in question, he was talking about, pretty much only ian could have fit that bill.

"This white kid, regular Caucasian man, and he's like, mocking Future and Gucci Mane rap music. I'm looking at it and something about it don't even sit well with me in comparison to someone like a Mac Miller or Eminem who it didn't seem like they was mocking it. They had a genuine love for it, and they were still just being genuine." - Tyler, The Creator

As you can imagine, this caused quite a rift in the fandom of both artists, respected collectively of the hip hop community at large, because honestly, asking terminally online white children to choose between Tyler, The Creator, and a mediocre white guy who they can project themselves onto, that's a tough one.

When this interview came out and this discourse was discoursing through our veins collectively, ian, to his credit, just kept his head down and continued to do his thing, didn't really respond, didn't really bring it up. However, he recently did this little new Lyrical Lemonade Lunch Break freestyle thing a day ago, and he does address the whole Tyler, the Creator thing, among some other stuff in this freestyle here. So let's check it out and see what exactly is going on.

"Just started my day with a blunt / I don't know if that's fucked up feel like it is / I'm really starting to hate these motherfuckers for not letting us act like kids / What if I never had that idea? What if I never went and signed a deal? / What if Bhad Bhabie skipped Dr. Phil? What if Ray J never fucked Kim?" - ian

Okay, off the bat, without really getting into anything too deep, we have ian here launching a defense saying like, 'Hey, Man, I'm so upset. These people out here, they won't allow us to just be kids. Why can't kids be kids?' You are 19, sir. You are a 19-year-old legal adult, okay?

Two, I'm not exactly sure if Bhad Bhabie is as famous and successful as Bhad Bhabie is. Is she really in a position that anybody's envious of? No real personal issue with Bhad Bhabie, but am I sitting here thinking like, 'Oh, man, we got to really go for it like Bhad Bhabie did when she went on Dr. Phil. She was a minor at the time. I don't know if she was completely in control of that weird-ass situation. So might not be the best example to cite.

As well as, Ray J making a porn with Kim Kardashian, which, to my knowledge, was unconsensually shared with the world, and neither of them in that video were kids. So again, I'm just not really seeing the follow-through on this awful-ass argument here.

And again, in recent weeks, this has been propped up as the defense of ian in light of criticisms that he is essentially just like a random white kid copying the style of more popular and prevalent black artists and doing them a disservice in the process because his interpretation of their sound is quite mediocre, shitty, and lazy.

Already off the bat on this track through his delivery, his mannerisms, his inflections, he does come across that one white kid that you know that spends too much fucking time on Instagram and Twitter and is in people's comments being like, 'Oh, Unc. What's Unc doing? Oh, man, you're making a stupid Unc comment.' As prevalent as that guy is in every single goddamn social media comment section that we see today, nobody fucking likes that guy. That guy sucks. Don't voluntarily be that guy.

"I don't even got a reason for these thoughts. I'm beating up real demons. Where's God? Do it matter if 2hollis likes guys?" - ian

Yeah, I'm beating up demons, where's God? Yeah, even in the best moments of this freestyle, while. He just sounds like a poor man's Jack Harlow. And I mean, yeah, true. It doesn't really matter if 2hollis likes guys. That's fine. Right message, wrong messenger, because who wants to hear it from this guy.

"Shit, I was fucked up one day and why I do it? / Bitch dropped to her knees like Hallelujah / All I motherfucking needed was, 'How you doing?' / Back then, I really love Odd Future / I ain't never sat down trying to mock Future / I ain't want to show no disrespect, so I kept my mouth shut, and that's not human" - ian

Okay, so there he is responding in part to the Tyler, The Creator, criticisms there, telling us at first like, 'Yeah, I used to really be into Odd Future.' Okay, listen, you're a white child on the internet who is into hip hop. We know you're into odd future. Believe me, we understand that.

Then he goes on to say that he never meant to mock Future, which, look, I get maybe that part of the Tyler criticism wasn't the most accurate per se. Because there is an argument to be made that ian might have been coming to copying Future from a place of reverence. Still, the way ian markets himself a lot of the time is, 'Hey, isn't it quirky that I'm making this music and doing this stuff, but I'm like, a white guy?' And maybe Tyler might have slept up with his words just a touch. And instead of saying, mocking Future, maybe he meant like, mimicking in a really tasteless, horrific way, which yeah, Ian has also done in his music.

Either way, you want to cut it or display it. It's not a good look, and it doesn't make for a good project or good songs. Sure, while, again, maybe ian wasn't genuinely feeling like he intentionally was locking Future's vibe and sound with his music. What are the other criticisms and observations about who he is, what he does, and how he's operating in the wider world of hip hop right now? Those are going to be just ignored? I guess so. As ian pretty much continues to leave the weird white presence he brings to this particular style of rap music, completely unanalyzed, as he rides this very crunchy, very plotting, horrendous beat with a generic ass flow.

"I ain't ever ever folding up, shit not working / It's going to start working soon / Shit, I know I'm geeked, but can y'all tell? / Hop back on both feet. Last week, I was stressing out about a hoe."

Oh. my god. The more he goes on, the more I just feel like I'm just watching an awful... How can I put this? What's the nicest way I can put this? I would say watching this feels like the equivalent of eating that really cheap store brand-style cereal that comes in the bag as opposed to the box. But even sometimes that cereal hits. You have to have had experience in a certain income bracket to have consumed that cereal.

No, you know what? What is actually more like is when you go into the shi shi foo foo organic cereal section of the store, and you see one of the cereals there, and it has like marshmallows in it. And it's forced upon you because you really want Lucky Charms, but instead, you're having this healthier version of it hoisted upon you instead. And it tastes like crap because nothing is going to taste like those Lucky Charms or even the rip off of the Lucky Charms.

But yeah, this is a sorry state of affairs right here. This is a sorry state of affairs, which honestly, I think I'm going to leave right there. Let me know in the comments what you think about all of this.

Anthony Fantano. ian. Forever.