The title of Smoke DZA’s 2012 mixtape K.O.N.Y. stood for “King of New York,” so it’s somewhat surprising that the Harlem native never formally clapped back after-- maybe you haven’t heard about this-- Kendrick Lamar claimed the city’s sovereignty for himself in “Control (HOF)”. Consider “City of Dreams” an indirect response, then, since DZA only alludes to Kendrick’s verse here (“Fuck your feelings/ Like 'New York been soft since another Cali nigga came and crushed the buildings'”), but he nonetheless defends the Big Apple handily on the strength of a dense, teeth-grinding East Coast flow. “No matter where I’m at, it’s 9/11 shit regardless,” he warns over Buda Da Future and Grandz Muzik’s beat, straight boom-bap in theory but falling closer to Ka’s smeary, Scorsese-ian template in practice.