Benny The Butcher - The Plugs I Met 2 Review

Kick back but pay attention while listening to the lessons laid down by one of the few OGs left in the game. The Plugs I Met 2 is Benny coming to terms with the fact that ultimately either side of a smoking gun leads to anguish, and he executes that sentiment beautifully. 

Despite a prolific year, Benny The Butcher just won’t let up and, only months after taking a bullet in an attempted armed robbery, keeps his foot on the neck of current hip-hop with yet another killer release. The New York rapper emerges from a triumphant 2020 guns blazing with a project that is lean, gritty and determined. A follow-up from 2019 release The Plugs I Met, The Plugs I Met 2 is a focused laser-beam of purposeful lyricism thrown out over nostalgic beats from La Musica de Harry Fraud.

Throughout the nine-track triumph produced by New York prodigy Harry Fraud, Benny takes us all on a trip down memory lane as he admonishes us on the ways of the streets. Despite the wild nature of the subject matter, there is little regret on display here, yet Benny’s verses do cast back forlornly, weighing risks and consequences like someone who has narrowly avoided a wreck on the highway. On one of many standout tracks, ‘Survivor’s Remorse’, he reflects on his divergence with an old partner: “I thought about this rap shit and had to stick to the business/Changed my mind, he didn’t, now he doin’ 20 in Clinton”. This honest, cold analysis of the true risks taken in the drug trade underscores the realism Benny pushes and places him in clear contrast to many of his peers who rap about dealing narcotics with a languid simplicity. The world Benny portrays is one where there are clear stakes and a cause-and-effect narrative. You are pulled into the raw reality of the life of a drug dealer, and you are left eager to hear more tales of callous close calls, ruthless backstabbing and major payoffs. Over the course of the album, these endless reports from the front-line build into something like a manifesto: “Close my eyes and the voice in my eardrums tell me, ‘fore the feds come/To turn these breadcrumbs to a hedge fund”, he rhymes prophetically on intro, ‘When Tony Met Sosa’. In The Plugs I Met 2, Benny rolls out a sonic guide to hold close to the heart as you traverse the tricky tracks of trapping.

From its commencement, the project screams New York, with Fraud’s boom-bap beats stirring up nostalgia for the glory days of the home of hip-hop. Adding to that hardened allure the big city shoulders is the boastful roster of NY veterans laying down features, including Coke Boys founder French Montana, Dipset legend Jim Jones and even a posthumous verse from the late Queens hustler, Chinx, which is a huge highlight — “I'm well-connected, ghetto accepted, very respected/These ignorant motherfuckers measure you by your necklace”. The inclusion of a verse from the deceased rapper, who was pronounced dead after taking bullet wounds to the torso in Queens back in 2015, is a haunting reinforcement of the cautionary tale that is The Plugs I Met 2. Beware the pitfalls of gangsta living. 

All features sit perfectly on Fraud’s production, which walks the line between soulful jams and a wistful 80s cop movie score. His sticky samples contrast beautifully with Benny’s melancholy content, and with spacious production and subtle beat changes the producer composes an optimal backdrop for Benny and his accomplices to scintillate over. Fraud’s production paired with Benny’s hard-hitting truths alongside his assemblage of features merges into a syrupy soundscape that commands close attention from the project's opening. All coalesce compellingly, except Fat Joe’s uncomfortable verse in ‘Talkin’ Back’. The Bronx rapper seems to awkwardly crowbar in controversy, unnecessarily throwing out references to “Weinstein” and the “Wuhan-virus” in lines that expose his thoughtless and out-of-touch penmanship. This tactlessness almost drags the rugged and nostalgic project into an unpolished and hackneyed milieu but, ultimately, the slight dent from the former Terror Squad member does nothing to diminish the record and the album unloads a full clip of lyrical highs, almost all of which are fired from the lips of Benny The Butcher. “Y’all talk the street shit with no receipts/But thank God for the coca leaf and the flow that woke the streets”. 

From tales of wearing a UPS disguise to commit a house robbery and claiming to have a clip “long enough to do a drive-by for two blocks straight”, to kids getting caught in crossfire and organising the execution of a judge, this album swings from comedic and exaggerated to grounded, raw and heartbreaking, lurking mostly in the latter — “I still got flaws, a few relationships I got wrong/I been stabbed in the back, I got scars”. There is no doubt that Benny’s reformed hustler tone commands the project as he exposes an emotional vulnerability, touching on heavy subjects like guilt and paranoia — issues that are often left in the shade amongst the glitz and sheen of hip-hop front. It is clear that this artist has truly suffered and, to Benny, it is paramount that those he lectures take note as he doesn’t want them to make the same mistakes he did. Check the slow-burning ‘No Instructions’, where Benny cautions his listeners over a bawling horn and tempered drums. “Okay, I see, y'all believe these rappers if you want, my nigga/Let 'em convince you to do what they never done, my nigga/They just tryna sell records, it's all a front, my nigga” — underscoring the fact that he is representing the exact reverse of clout chasing. The message is straightforward, and this album is nearing a cautioning cry of desperation, attempting to salvage others from the hardship that has earned him fortune at the cost of scars.

This album tells the story of a hustler who has achieved prosperity but acknowledges the fragility of the world he has built around him. Benny completely flips the script on typical drug-talk glorification. This is a project that schools those who may rack up higher streams, but lack that hardened ruthlessness Benny effortlessly breathes into life. True trials and tribulations of a gangsta repenting are evident here. Kick back but pay attention while listening to the lessons laid down by one of the few OGs left in the game. Where we may have become familiar with his hostile, savage approach, The Plugs I Met 2 is Benny coming to terms with the fact that ultimately either side of a smoking gun leads to anguish, and he executes that sentiment beautifully.