Despite this track being one of those "wow, both songs have the same word in their titles!" mashups, my skepticism was washed away by the top-shelf source material: the rapper Rick Ross's "Hustlin'" and French electro-house producer Simian Mobile Disco's "Hustler." Where the original SMD track raucously dilated on record store theft, Rick swaggered through a hard-knocks study of cocaine distribution. Moralities, of course, made an easy target. Cadence Weapon smartly assaults the atmosphere instead. Dragged through the mud of filthy, bubbling synths, "Hustlin' Hustler" trades garden-variety muscle for pure dystopian menace.

From the SMD song Cadence (full disclosure: he's former P4k writer Rollie Pemberton) scrounges a single hook, not before slowing it down and slicing it in half, leaving the line "I'm a hustler, baby" drained of pep and freed from the excuse: "That's what my dad has made me." The message: No one's asking for sympathy now. With Ross's story relocated from its posh haunted-house digs to a new shanty in the wasteland, you get the feeling you're gazing into a crystal ball, looking past the inner city's bleak present to its apocalyptic future. It's the feeling that you've fast-forwarded to the American endgame. Funny, Weapon's Canadian.

MP3: Rick Ross vs. Simian Mobile Disco: Hustlin' Hustler (Cadence Weapon Hi-Speed Edit)