Bruiser Wolf on the Lyrics That Changed His Life

Words Matter is an interview series where songwriters whose work means a lot to us talk about the lyrics that mean a lot to them—the ones that helped shape their style, made them jealous, or left them awestruck.

The first thing you’re likely to notice about Bruiser Wolf is his voice, a helium-tinged yawp that sounds as fit for Looney Tunes as it does a Detroit street rapper. Wolf’s vocal tone draws you in close, which makes it all the more fun to pick apart his wordplay-heavy bars. On his 2021 breakout, Dope Game Stupid, he smash-cut jokes and metaphors with harrowing bits of autobiography. Sometimes, like on the closer “Momma Was A Dope Fiend,” the former college football prospect-turned-drug dealer would jettison the jokes entirely, instead looking back on the streets and his relationship with his late mother. She was plagued by an addiction to the very drugs he was selling at the time.

Wolf’s third album Potluck, released this past May, continues to refine that dance between joke and trauma, how lessons learned in the mud follow you long after you’ve gotten clean. He’ll occasionally turn back the clock to make this point, like he does on the first verse of the F1lthy-produced “Offer I Couldn’t Refuse.” “How did I get here? I had a scholarship / I played ball, now it’s a 8-ball in my pocket,” he says, mildly bemused by the product he has to move before shrugging and moving on: “Fuck it, drop it, let’s switch the subject / Take cocaine and make derivatives like a suffix.” Other times, he’ll toast to his good fortune, blowing weed clouds “that look like ‘Pow!’ in a comic” on “Fancy.” He’s a bottomless well of stories, references, and old-fashioned Detroit bravado. “I can make a man OD, ask Meth,” he says on “Whippin,” deconstructing the Wu-Tang member’s name with an audible grin. 

Bruiser Wolf is even more fun off the mic. Our call trailed off into tangents, examining corners of his childhood, favorite movies, and parenting choices. Wolf is sincere, but his stories are fast and swift, like he’s a standup comic doing crowd work. About a third of our conversation consisted of him reciting large chunks of the songs he chose. Rap is as natural as breathing to him, and he uses it to impart jokes, wisdom, and mistakes like your favorite uncle (“the rich one,” as he calls himself on “Beat The Charge”). Here are some of the artists, lyrics, and songs that have inspired one of the most singular voices in Detroit hip-hop.      

Nas: “Rewind”

Bruiser Wolf: Nas is one of the elite ones, one of the founding fathers of this shit. When I first heard “Rewind,” I was heading to college, it was my first summer playing college football. On my 10-12 hour ride to Atlanta, I played Stillmatic a lot. I had always fucked with Nas, but when he made “Rewind,” dawg, it was so creative, it made you listen, like you say they listening to me. The replay value of that song? You had to keep playing it back. 

“Listen up gangstas and honeys with you hair done / Pull up a chair, hon, put one in the air, son / Dawg, whatever they call you, God, just listen / I spit a story backwards, it starts at the ending / The bullet goes back in the gun / The bullet holes close in the chest of a nigga, now he back to square one / Screaming ‘shoot don’t please.’” Shoot don’t please?? I really wish I could’ve been a fly on the wall watching him create this shit. Like, what the fuck was you thinking? 

Were there any songs on Potluck where you were trying to channel that specific vibe? 

You got “Write or Wrong.” You know [Nas] put detail in that verse, but the whole way I go about writing my songs, I wanna give my songs that kind of detail as much as I can. That’s why you hear bar after bar after bar. When I used to do that, I would always ask myself: ‘What if I’m doing too much?’ I come from that perspective on all of them, but “Write or Wrong” and “Say No More” are special. Even with the F1lthy song, “Offer I Couldn’t Refuse,” it ain’t like “Rewind,” but I did have to rewind my life a bit to see wha the fuck I was thinking about: ‘Me and bro had to split an egg like twins / We been scrambling ever since.’ That shit for real.       

Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg: “Ain’t Nuthin’ But A G Thang”

Oh my God, “Nuthin’ But A G Thang.” People may not know this, but Snoop Dogg is my favorite rapper of all time. I don’t know if it’s because his roots come from Detroit, but jumping in that Coupe Deville Cadillac with my daddy going to school, and my daddy would play the shit outta the song. ‘Run that shit back, Wolf. Run it back!’ So now you got a single father raising two boys and he would be using music to teach us. 

Is there anything you’re playing your kids that you hope will impact them like “Nuthin’ But A G Thang” affected you?

The other day, my daughter lied to me about some school shit. She got in trouble and didn’t tell me the truth, and our relationship is based on truth. I said, ‘I can’t fuck with you no more if you’re not gonna be truthful,’ so I played DMX’s “We Don’t Give A Fuck.” The shit X and them sayin’ on that bitch is about loyalty, and she was like, ‘Dad, you doin’ too much.’ [laughs]

My son is so into drill music. He’s only seven, eight years old, but he’s really into King Von and NLE Choppa and shit, so I be breakin’ that shit down for him. Because he listens to my shit, too, he knows all my shit. He said, ‘Daddy, you must love pets ‘cause you always talkin’ about birds.’ I try to break it down to him about drill music and how those guys have families too, and how that ain’t no shit to follow. It ain’t Wrestlemania, you can’t just grab a gun and go shoot motherfuckers. It ain’t cool to be talkin’ about the dead and all that.    

2Pac: “Dear Mama”

The writing, the vulnerability of Pac on that one. All that gangsta shit Pac was on during that time? And he made “Dear Mama.” He had to perform “Dear Mama” after “Hit ‘Em Up,” and you could tell it was real. And go do your research on his mama. 

It goes back to my father, because my father had a great mother. She was a hustler, she was kicked off a slave plantation because she was a slavemaster’s daughter. When my daddy heard “Dear Mama,” he played the shit outta that. He was probably thinking about my mama and us when he did, because he never told us about her. He always kept that a secret, didn’t want us looking at our mama like that. I never really thought about her like that until I got older and I started noticing shit. So when I made “Momma Was A Dopefiend,” I told everyone at the beginning of the track that I love my momma. I say it clearly. I don’t care what nobody say: my momma was a dope fiend, and I had to go take care of her when she was sick. I found a lot of her skeletons. I had to take a lot on the chin from people who don’t believe she hid it from me, but the people who knew, knew. When I wrote “Momma Was A Dopefiend,” it definitely came from Pac. To this day, I can’t perform that song without crying.

Run-DMC: “My Adidas” 

We used to have a VCR, and my cousins would play [the 1985 musical dramedy] Krush Groove. To us, Rum-DMC was like wrestlers, like Hulk Hogan or Isaiah Thomas. They was heroes, they was rappin’. People probably look at me with all my Adidas and think Nigga, you think you DMC, but that was the first thing I knew about rap: Run-DMC. They crossed so many genres, from rock to shoe deals. It’s so funny when I think about it now because I thought Run was the illest. Run is ill for sure, but DMC was ill, dawg. 

Can you remember the first pair of Adidas you owned? Were they shell toes?  

Yeah, they were shell toes because I ain’t like forms. I thought shell toes was the sweetest shit—the white and blacks. Then my daddy bought me the black ones and said, ‘Y’all hard on shoes, get the black ones.” So he got us some Top 10s. Dawg, this is crazy: One time, he took us to see New Edition and we had Adidas tracksuits and Top 10s on. I’ll never forget it, the red, white, and blues. 

That’s incredible. How old were you? 

Shit, we was five or six. Couldn’t tell us shit about Ralph Tresvant. I think we was at the Pontiac Silverdome. Like my daddy would say, that was a classic!

The Notorious B.I.G: “Ten Crack Commandments”

If you’re me, you’re a Tupac and Snoop Dogg fan, and now here comes Biggie. Biggie made a way for the fat, unattractive motherfuckers that was fly as hell—I feel like I’m one of them. Biggie will make you challenge your insecurities, man. I said “Ten Crack Commandments” because he was adept and everything he hit was accurate. It was serious, but it was funny too. “You think a crackhead payin’ you back? Shit, forget it.” But he broke it down—he broke it all the way down. When you husting for real, but you gon’ always be able to listen to “Ten Crack Commandments,” especially if you’re just starting off. It’s the Bible, damn near. The uniqueness of it, the flow was clever; he was on his street shit. My kids, our grandkids, gon’ be listening to that the way we listen to the Temptations and the O’Jays.

Mac: “We Don’t Love ‘Em”

That was the No Limit era. Mac was my favorite No Limit rapper, bro. At that point, I’m in high school and dealing with puberty and just thinking like, “Girls ain’t no better than us. We the dogs!” But when I heard this song, it just gave me a different life. If I were to use him as far as my pen, he influenced the way I look at women now. It’s good women, it’s some women that just ain’t right, and it’s women too damn good for you. Mac was an animal for that song. He made me look at women in all categories. And I’m not judging, because God bless all women, but they judge us, too.

I also used to listen to Mac while getting ready to play football. I’m tryna earn a scholarship and I’m in a dark room listening to [Mac’s 1998 album] Shell Shocked. I used to play that shit non-stop, go into school with my chest out. I carry that, you know what I’m sayin’? You not better than me because you’re some gorgeous woman—you mean, too. Everybody gets so wrapped up about how they look, but really, it’s what’s inside that’s important.