Despite the increasingly melodic nature of each subsequent XXL Freshman Class, the importance of tradition remains: the Freestyle must go on. Even if a rapper isn’t even remotely concerned about the bars, they still come through to give it their best effort as a good Freshman should. Luckily, Polo G‘s pen game is rather solid, and while his flow tends to veer toward the melodic side, he can still hold his own in a cypher. And that’s exactly what he’s done in this latest clip from XXL, setting things off with one minute of acapella bars.

Polo G

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“Summertime out there slaving, we exhausted from the heat / better get a ride home cause ain’t no walking when it’s beef,” he raps in his opening lines, melody creeping into his voice. “They only want to know a story when they chalk him in the street/burials, you die inside when that coffin getting deep / twenty-five is just an age that we don’t often get to see.” Standing up as a voice of the people, Polo G’s reflections on his environment have made him one of the rap game’s most esteemed young writers — and one that many have been quick to praise as the most promising of the entire Freshman Class.

Should you count yourself in that particular camp, be sure to check out Polo G’s official Freshman freestyle below. Given how he performed here, it should be interesting to see him holding it down alongside his peers, proving his worth as a lyricist under the spotlight.