The two Chicago rappers form an alliance possibly out of convenience or shared circumstances, but their opposing styles meld into a project that can work surprisingly well.
For every national superstar born out of a regional rap scene, there are always dozens more MCs from that same community who fail to cross over. Brian Fresco & SD are not untalented, not entirely unsuccessful, but neither rapper has made it as far as some of their comrades from Chicago. Fresco came up earlier in the decade with the collective SaveMoney alongside members like Chance the Rapper & Vic Mensa, but he was soon eclipsed by their Kanye collaborations and Grammy nominations. SD was once counted among the most promising new stars of the city’s drill scene, a member of Chief Keef and Fredo Santana’s Glory Boyz Entertainment, but he maintained his independence and never really broke through because of it.
Now, two rappers who never really got their due have come together to form a new tag-team partnership: the Muddbruddas. It might be an alliance of convenience or shared circumstances, but it’s one that works surprisingly well. Brian Fresco and SD’s mutually shared lack of commercial success, at least relative to their peers, isn’t out of any lack of skill or style on their part. In some alternate timeline, Brian Fresco has an exclusive deal with Apple and SD is a critical darling and cult favorite on the level of Keef.
Fresco’s first impression of a mixtape, 2013’s Mafioso, dropped two weeks after Chance’s Acid Rap and included three separate features from The Rapper. On his debut, Fresco specialized in the same kind of soulful, slightly wonky sound that Chance cut his teeth on before becoming the rap game’s biggest wife guy. Like the rest of the SaveMoney collective’s releases, Fresco’s early work is relatively out of step with the rap movement his city was receiving the most acclaim for at that time; Mafioso is much more quiet storm than Chicago drill. So it’s fascinating to see him pair with an artist who embodies drill like few others; SD’s mid-decade releases are hallmarks of the subgenre. On mixtapes like Life of a Savage 3 and Truly Blessed, SD demonstrated that moshpit-ready ragers came as easily to him as melodic pop numbers—glittery ballads like “Big Things” and “Gossip” are still some of my favorite drill recordings.
Muddbruddas isn’t really drill, but it’s not acid rap either. Fresco brings the soul, SD the pop mentality, and the result is lowkey party rap, laidback and effortless. The synths are bright and bouncy, and the bass is plentiful. On the one hand, Muddbruddas goes for a blatantly commercial sound, drafting many of the biggest producers in rap today—808 Mafia on “Duckin,” Pi’erre Bourne on “Aretha,” CashmoneyAP on “Teef Gold”—but on the other, it’s a hard sell as a commercial prospect, with not a feature to speak of, just 30 minutes of 808s and bars.
The pair primarily operate as vocal foils to one another. On tracks like “Harley,” Fresco leans into his loose, sing-song flow that’s not too dissimilar from Chance, but SD’s presence pushes him into different flows, like “On It,” where he sounds much more frantic and leaned-forward in his voice, or “Pimp C,” on which he briefly shouts out and imitates the late Texas legend. SD’s flow has a grittier quality, not just in the gruffness of his voice but the pain it radiates—there’s a sadness to his voice that pushes against the overall jubilance of Muddbuddras, like on the more mournful “Bet On It.” When SD and Fresco meld their divergent sensibilities, the result approaches the sublime—“Bankroll” opens with SD spitting over a Clams Casino-type vocal loop courtesy of producer Mondamade da Beat, before an utterly triumphant horn hits and Brian Fresco takes charge for the chorus.
Fresco & SD have patterned themselves in the image of classic rap duos—the cover art pays homage to Clipse, and “Pimp C” is obviously something of a tribute to UGK. Though the result may not be as groundbreaking as either of those groups, by coming together as part of a tacit alliance, both members of Muddbruddas have proved their viability as artists outside their brief moment in the sun during rap’s blog years. Their project is a valuable reminder that every rap scene is so much more than its most successful stars.
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