Tapestry of Trap Ted Talks: The Epitome tackles the rap game from every angle

Photo Courtesy of Glenn Robinson

Rapper Glenn Robinson—AKA The Epitome—knows how to flow. In the past, his lyrics walked the line between profane and nerdy, with tracks like “Scott Summers” referencing the titular X-Man, or the absolute entirety of the 2021 NNT2 EP, but, over the past year, Robinson has been branching out to explore new things. Case in point: his TikTok and Instagram reels for Hood Dude Food Reviews.

It started out with Robinson reviewing gas station snacks on Facebook years ago, but those weren’t well-received. He then transitioned to taking crazy food creations from TikTok and recreating them in his kitchen. Then, his friend, Corn, who had done all the video work, passed away from COVID, and the material was lost.

“I’m like, ‘Goodness gracious, am I not just meant to do this? Maybe this isn’t my call,’” Robinson reflects.

Despite feeling like he’d been slapped in the face by fate, Robinson remembered just how enthusiastic his friend had been about the food reviews. So, in 2023, he made a conscious decision to maintain consistency in all of his endeavors.

“This is going to sound crazy, but it’s true,” Robinson begins. “Last year, I locked in with the studio, and we had, not including Trap Ted Talk, 50 songs. Instead of worrying about shows, instead of worrying about all the other things, I locked in on the food reviews, and I locked in on the studio.”

You may recall from our 2021 feature on The Epitome that Trap Ted Talk, the release that initially began conversations between Robinson and I nearly five years ago, was due out soon. He promises that it’s finally coming in the spring of 2025, and we promise that it’ll be worth the wait. Trust. But back to how Hood Dude Food Reviews became the sensation it now is.

Robinson was, and still is, editing his own videos, but when they first came out, they were not the one-minute blasts of enthusiasm and fun they are now.

“All my friends were looking at the videos like, ‘There’s a lot of potential here, but you really sucked,’” Robinson says. “They actually sat down with me and showed me how to start pointing the camera—just small things, so I can improve because the team believed in me.”

As he puts it, his village just stood up and it really helped Robinson to propel Hood Dude Food Reviews to the next level. The videos started off with the rapper and reviewer doing one every now and then, but now, your feed is graced with two or three a week.

“It’s just like took off to have a life of its own,” Robinson says. “I get stopped in the street. No exaggeration man, probably like five times in a week.”

Robinson imitates how folks will walk up to him and recite the opening to all his food reviews—a deep, breathy, “We’re back…”—and it just blows his mind. It’s a true reflection of how much better the rapper has gotten with promotion—something which he admits he used to never take seriously, and was a necessary tool to have in his back pocket if he wanted to take a serious shot at trying to have a career in music.

“I’ll get started on something and then it’s just like, ‘Well, that was fun,’” explains Robinson of his past approach to promotion. “I dropped the project, I put a visual out, and now we’re done.”

The food reviews helped teach Robinson how to get better with social media marketing and become the best hype man for his projects, such as Boujie Type Beat earlier this year, which the rapper explains as being an experiment for him to get ready for his latest, Boujie in Venice, which is out this month.

Now, as opposed to just dropping the release on Spotify, putting out a video, and moving on, Robinson and his team have full rollouts for all these projects. Robinson says, the food, long story short, built him up to be able to be more effective with marketing in general, as well as helping him realize that he needed to put more of himself into his branding.

“It used to just be, ‘ski mask,’” Robinson says, referring to the past imagery fans most associate with The Epitome persona. “Here’s a bunch of stuff that didn’t really ever expose the person behind the mask, and the food reviews help people see a bit more of the character.”

With that more personal touch, Robinson now feels like he’s been a lot more playful with the music that he’s been making because he’s just trying to have the most fun possible, and it shows. Boujie Type Beat is absolutely fun as hell, and it feels like you’re getting to listen to The Epitome create in the studio as the tape rolls, and that’s exactly what it was, says Robinson. Slaps by Infinity would make the beat and Robinson did all the songs right then and there.

“He would make the beats, and however I would rap them to the beat is how we would end up finishing it,” Robinson says. “Almost all those songs, other than maybe one, that’s the order that I rapped it in. Then, we just added stuff to it at the end like, ‘Maybe we’ll put a second hook here.’ That’s why everything is one verse, all the way throughout the whole thing. I would record it all the way through, and then it’s just like, ‘Alright man, we’re done, let’s move on to the next song.’”

Boujie in Venice, however, is a more proper album, and it’s maybe the most thoughtful project we’ve ever heard from The Epitome. While he’s talked about some emotional stuff in the past, this new EP is very raw, but also very real, more than anything else heretofore.

“I feel, with this project, I was able to really tap into the personal side of life,” Robinson says. “I usually just talk about women in the way that they are with me. This project, I wanted to delve a little deeper into what I feel about women—Not just how they make me feel, but how I feel.”

A perfect example is the second single from Boujie in Venice, “What Are We.” It’s an emotionally open re-telling of a conversation between two grown folks, with both openly sharing their feelings, but it’s not angry or cruel to either party. The video by Viewpoint Visuals, directed by Melo Mike, plays like a real conversation, back and forth between Robinson and Tianna Dejae, who plays the woman in question. Unlike anything you’ve heard or seen from The Epitome, it’s low-key but, again, it’s raw and real.

“That’s one of my favorite songs of the project,” says Robinson. “Just because I don’t think people are used to hearing that side.”

While we hate referring to it as content, all the new music, food reviews, and music videos over the last year or so mean we’re getting to see all of the different sides of Robinson, and as he said, it’s refreshing and fun.

“I didn’t know that I would have such a side to myself,” Robinson admits. “Because it’s been very much, this amount. What I think the food and the other things help is, it helped me to show who I am without exposing everything.”

Robinson continues on to say that one of the things he was worried about with the internet was how much of himself he had to give his fans and the public at large, because he tends to be a private person, and the internet is not private at all.

“With the food and all these other ways, I found to insert myself into content,” Robinson says. “It made me realize that there actually is hope for me to be able to give them pieces of me and not give them everything.”

The Epitome’s Boujie in Venice hits all streaming platforms on Friday, Sept. 6.