Fat Tony Grows Up On California Fresh New LP Double Dragon
Things are different. Like, REAL DIFFERENT. Except some things are the same, mostly. 
The last time Fat Tony released an album, it was 2010. He'd become a beloved underground performer -- cool, clever, handsome, fun to watch perform, etc. -- but his arms hadn't yet extended out too much further than the Beltway. He was Houston's own, but only because he was still owned by Houston.
Last year, Overweight Anthony moved. He packed up his African-y windbreakers and "I Am Third Ward" T-shirt and traveled west, landing in L.A. with producer/rapper cohort Tom Cruz (who was responsible for creating debut album RABDARGAB's soundscape).
For a lot of people, things weren't much different. He was still very visible on Twitter and on the spaces that covered him before he left and on the shows he's played before. The only thing that seemed evidence of his new Zip code was the dwindling frequency of his performances, which in retrospect had already begun to taper off months prior to his exit.
But then he released Double Dragon. And holy fuck. It could not be more different.
There are similarities between DD and RABDARGAB, but they're almost all incidentally (technically, it's still the same guy; he's probably wearing the same kind of shoes; things like that).
Where RABDARGAB opted to float around in the cosmos, to rattle around in the base of your brain, DD announces its presence with a noticeable confidence, frontal lobe flexing.
A million things will be said about the album's 8-Bit bite, and with good reason; it is utilized as creatively as any rapper ever has. But the reason DD is so enjoyable, so undeniably smart, is because there are no fundamental compromises made for creativity's sake.
He unironically raps the bar, "I'm a fetus/ Damn, I can't believe this/ Came from the nuts right out my daddy's penis," showing off a polished, more effective version of that droning, stream-of-conscious flow that earned him seemingly unanimous praise.
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