Over the past year, Dave Blunts has become one of the most consistently viral artists in hip-hop. It seems like every week there’s a new clip circulating of him in the hospital or even just standing up. In equal measure, he receives a lot of coverage for more controversial matters (use of the hard R, homophobic lyrics, faking his lean consumption, and being fat). If you actually take the time to dive into his music though, it’s a pleasant surprise for his hilarious wordplay and somehow angelic vocals.
Key to Dave Blunts’ comedy and lyrical immersion are the constant name drops, local references, and inside jokes that even his biggest fans might not fully understand. He’s like if The Game mentioned random dudes from his high school instead of A-list rappers. The result is both a surreal, mysterious element of hilarity in his lyrics, and an investment by the listeners built into Dave’s real life.
Take the opening bars of his most popular song, “The Cup“, for example:
Got kicked out of middle school ’cause of Mr. Garnica
They sent me to East Locust with all of the drug addicts
This very well might be the first lyric most people here from Dave Blunts, and you’re instantly curious about his background and how this guy got here. Most rappers would simply say they got kicked out of school and started smoking with sketchy new friends, but the amount of detail Dave goes out of his way to add makes his music so distinct.
To demonstrate this, we’ll take a look at another viral hit: “Crying in the Kitchen“.
- Madison: Likely based on a real girl, she’s the one Dave really seems to love, who has broken his heart and cheated. Throughout the song, he contemplates how to either get her back or move on. Not to be confused with the white bitch who cuts herself.
- Julian: The man who stole Madison from Dave. Surprisingly, Dave never shows any malice towards him, and is only hurt by Madison’s trifling ways.
- Seth Tobin: Supposedly a real person Dave knows from his hometown in Iowa, and an alleged pedo. Honestly, calling a real, random person a kid diddler and harmonizing it is an insane diss. Way different than “Not Like Us“. Every town has that 22 year old guy hanging out with high schoolers, but it’s both hilarious and so foul that Dave could tarnish his name nationally.
- Jesse Jones: Perhaps the most important character in the Dave Blunts connected-universe, Jesse Jones is Dave’s closest, lifelong friend. They’re rarely seen apart from each other, with Jesse even appearing in his freestyles, interviews, and album covers. On “Crying in the Kitchen”, Dave seeks Jesse’s advice and confidence for his girl problems, only for Jesse to make a joke of it. But that’s what friends do.
- Mary’s on 2nd: A notorious gay bar in Davenport Iowa. It’s left ambiguous whether Jesse is joking, or if he actually sees it as Heaven. Anyway – this is just another case of local landmarks that every city has getting turned into full on memes thanks to Dave Blunt’s attention to detail in his lyrics.
In a mere two minutes, Dave hints at so much real life lore that intertwines across his young discography, especially because he does this on damn near every song. You could make a whole Wiki on this dude just out of his lyrics, so he’s clearly so much more than a caricature of a fat rapper – would you have ever guessed he’s from Iowa by way of Utah? And that’s hardly even touching on his jarring autotune and whole, otherwise complex aesthetic. Sure, he might be a comedy rapper, but I think people could stand to give his music a fair shake outside of the memes.
Imagine if Fetty Wap was fat instead of missing an eyeball.