Denver-born and Des Moines-based emcee Teller Bank$ brandishes a bit of verbal gunplay at the tail end of The Pride & Glory, the latest collaborative album with producer Ed Glorious, that reminded me of the movie John Wick. Not because of any overt references to the Keanu Reeves-led franchise, though Bank$ liberally peppers his raps with other crime movie references, (Pulp Fiction and The Godfather, to name a couple). No, it was a rare instance of the actual wordplay itself reminding me of another media.
The line in question: “I know you n— really not / spank a n— like it’s pops / pop-pop-pop-pop, got 11 shots left, who the next to get knocked?”
With his “pops” onomatopoeia, Bank$ references the exact number of rounds in a typical 9MM handgun. The first Wick movie fastidiously stuck to realistic bullet counts; you can follow when the protagonist has to reload in real time. Believe me, I rewound and counted along with the movie, which is the very same thing I did with “Van Goh,” the track on The Pride & Glory that got me down this gun-fu rabbit hole.
This is all to say that Teller Bank$ is that rare breed of rapper that slangs dope and gun rhymes with heady intricacy usually reserved for backpack rappers. The closest emcee comparison, content-wise (and just a smidge on vocal similarities), is a hungry Lil’ Wayne in his heyday. On flow and delivery, Bank$ brandishes a fervent energy that never lets up across this LP’s 18 tracks. The result reminded me, oddly, of an early Acid-Rap-era Chance the Rapper. Though the contents of their rhymes are nothing alike they both possess a frenetic energy that radiates through their verses.
You can actually hear the strain through which Bank$ pushes his vocals over the course of opening track “VVVVV.” I’d bet good money that he did a version of getting in the booth and letting his verses fly like the rip of a pull-cord. Dude is rapping his ass off. Full stop. Check the track “9 to 5” for another example of this. By its end, Bank$ exhausts his verbal onslaught and has to literally catch his breath before ending with “Y’all n— done pissed me off, boy.”
There is a rawness here that is juxtaposed with the beautifully lush production at the hands of collaborator Ed Glorious. The soulful loops and sample chops Glorious delivers on this project could fit among the best examples of post-aughts, post-boom-bap maximalist production work. I’m talking early Kanye or, to be even more brazen in my comparison, the best of 9th Wonder’s work with Murs or Little Brother. It’s hard to pinpoint a favorite beat, but look to “Shoulda Been Signed Twice” or “Black and Whites” for a pair of tracks that got me bobbing my head on every re-listen.
The story goes that the Bank$ and Glorious collaboration was supposed to be a one-off, but their creative synergy led them to release a trio of albums. The Pride & Glory is the album after those three projects which, hopefully, indicates that the two will continue to drop projects that push the boundaries of what rap has to offer in our region, and beyond.
