A Dog’s Chance

Atlanta producer-rapper FearDorian first asked to join the NYC hip-hop collective Surf Gang six years ago. It didn’t work out—Dorian was then just 12 years old—but the young artist was undeterred, steadily racking up internet collaborations with everyone from digicore wunderkind d0llywood1 to skater-turned-lyricist Na-Kel Smith. Along the way, he co-produced tracks with Surf Gang triumvir Harrison and began sending beats to one of the collective’s OG members, Polo Perks.

Perks and Dorian make a sensible combination on paper, drawing equally from the 2020s SoundCloud underground and mid-2000s Warped Tour-adjacent detritus even as their music moves in different directions. Their union with Milwaukee lowend upstart AyooLii is less intuitive: The 23-year-old rapper’s songs tend to be simpler, better suited for moving asses on dancefloors than solitary listening. But like Polo Perks, AyooLii has never met a sample that scared him, and all three members of the trio work fast. Their new collaborative album is charged with this improvisatory spirit: a brief blast of unruly energy that bounces between 5G towers in New York, Atlanta, Milwaukee, and beyond.

On the freewheeling and frenetic A Dog’s Chance, familiar samples twist into endearingly bizarre shapes. Here, a warped fragment of chiptune band Anamanaguchi; there, a snippet of Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. Our intrepid protagonists barrel recklessly through these landscapes, rarely hitting a dead end. Thanks to FearDorian’s steady hand behind the boards, A Dog’s Chance manages to zig on even the zaggiest beats. The lowend drums on “BackPack” are layered over a wisp of melancholic guitar; “Skatepark” scans as straightforward sample drill for three seconds until weaving snares snap that anticipation in half. Dorian’s production here cribs heavily from Milwaukee, setting the BPM via 1-and-3 handclaps, and moderately from Surf Gang’s hazy vision of New York drill, pulling just enough from his collaborators’ home turfs to ensure they feel at ease.

Yet the defining rhythms of A Dog’s Chance come from nu-jerk, the zany, burgeoning wing of the Gen Z underground that counts Xaviersobased, YhapoJJ, and FearDorian himself among its pioneers. Nu-jerk ostensibly retrofits the drum patterns of mid-2000s California jerkin’ music to modern synth loops—albeit with glitchier snares and blown-out 808s—and Dorian crushes these drums up against unusual palettes and patterns. The lowend/jerk hybrid “They Love Ayoolii” splits open to reveal a Jersey club style break, while Current Joys collab “Rockband Tees 08 Denims” treats Nick Rattigan’s sampled vocals and Polo Perks’ verses with equal respect, a nearly unintelligible mishmash that miraculously gels.

A Dog’s Chance stumbles where it retreads ideas. The maudlin “Carissa’s Weird” aims for catharsis, but its fusion of jerk drums and rock sample pales next to the stoic “Breeshwrld.” Oklou-sampling “BackPack” sounds watered down rather than wavy, especially when the atmospheric “Alicia Keys” arrives two tracks later. These songs aren’t bad, but they drag down the trio’s batting average.

FearDorian’s idiosyncratic flair is perhaps best understood through the highly recognizable samples heard on “PaperPlanesSoulja” and “Benice2me.” On the former, Dorian twists Diplo and Switch’s flip of the Clash’s “Straight to Hell” into endless rising action, building and building without release; on the latter, Dorian and Quinn chop and screw a fragment of Bladee into a stop-start shuffle. These “cheat code” samples feel tonally distinct from Jack Harlow singing Fergie or Kanye invoking the Backstreet Boys: less concerned with triggering nostalgia than with bringing their source material into the now.

The capricious production leavens AyooLii and Polo Perks’ raps, which stray just far enough from their solo work to avoid feeling static. Perks is the more grounded, his fine-grit bark loping forward with metered precision. “Yeah that nigga broke, he get no bread/How you wanna, uh, nigga go head,” he sighs on “Answers,” before craniometrically deducing a woman has good pussy. By comparison, AyooLii’s pinched yelps zip forward like a terrier with the zoomies. “This Glock’ll paint a picture, I’m an art director! Need a bitch with a booty like Ari Fletcher!” he crows on “Pinky.”

When playing against each other, as on lead single “Ricky Eats Acid,” Perks and AyooLii find a delirious synergy; on the brief occasions FearDorian steps in front of the mic, his slightly more melodic approach splits the difference between his teammates’ salt-of-the-earth raps and more aerodynamic Auto-Tune flows. And although closer “Left Right” leaves ample room for Dorian and Perks to get in their feelings, most of the tape is sunny and chipper, as if AyooLii burst into the studio and told them to stop dwelling on Midwest emo and touch grass at the skatepark instead. The net result is a breezy celebration of all the small wins along the path of regional semi-stardom. With friends like these, there’s no need to rush.