Comments (0) Best one-off fluke in NYC rap history - 2007
"This Is Why I'm Hot"
A mere half-year after its meteoric ascendancy, the memory's already nearly faded, hasn't it? "I'm hot 'cause I'm fly/You ain't 'cause you not"? "I could sell a mil' sayin' nothin' on a track"? Hello? Anyone? Have you forgotten? That "This Is Why I'm Hot" seemed to instantly lapse into ancient history (after rising to prominence in, y'know, February) says more about our amnesiac, ADD-afflicted modern society than it does about Washington Heights rapper Mims's absolutely brilliant debut single (and, history sadly suggests, swan song). With its eerie, infectious beat (stolen wholesale from the Southern rap/snap music playbook, ironically the entity most responsible for New York rap's steadily dwindling influence) and ingeniously ludicrous lyrics—half knuckleheaded playground boast, half illuminating Zen koan—"This Is Why I'm Hot" was almost too good for us anyway. It cut deep, though it didn't linger long, rendered prehistoric by subsequent vacuous jams like "Umbrella" and "Throw Some D's" that make Mims (who would never write anything so gauche as "Every freak should have a picture of my dick on they wall") sound like Proust by comparison. May he parlay his brief moment in the sun into a sweet gig on a VH1 reality series. Go kick Kevin Federline's ass in a celebrity boxing match, buddy.
