BrooklynVegan's 30 Best Rap Albums of 2022

When Kendrick Lamar popped up on two tracks from Baby Keem’s *The Melodic Blue* (“range brothers” and “family ties”), it felt like one of hip-hop’s prophets had descended a mountain to deliver scripture. His verses were stellar, to be sure, but it also just felt like way too much time had passed since we’d heard his voice. He’d helmed 2018’s *Black Panther* compilation/soundtrack, but his last proper release was 2017’s *DAMN.* That kind of scarcity in hip-hop can only serve to deify an artist as beloved as Lamar. But if the Compton MC is broadcasting anything across his fifth proper album *Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers*, it’s that he’s only human. The project is split into two parts, each comprising nine songs, all of which serve to illuminate Lamar’s continually evolving worldview. Central to Lamar’s thesis is accountability. The MC has painstakingly itemized his shortcomings, assessing his relationships with money (“United in Grief”), white women (“Worldwide Steppers”), his father (“Father Time”), the limits of his loyalty (“Rich Spirit”), love in the context of heteronormative relationships (“We Cry Together,” “Purple Hearts”), motivation (“Count Me Out”), responsibility (“Crown”), gender (“Auntie Diaries”), and generational trauma (“Mother I Sober”). It’s a dense and heavy listen. But just as sure as Kendrick Lamar is human like the rest of us, he’s also a Pulitzer Prize winner, one of the most thoughtful MCs alive, and someone whose honesty across *Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers* could help us understand why any of us are the way we are.

The Maryland rapper/producer dropped *learn 2 swim* on his 18th birthday, which explains the preoccupation with the bittersweetness of growing up: “Sit and watch my youth wash away/Wish that I could say that I know things will be okay,” goes the hazy hook on “shoulder.” But redveil thrives in the liminal space of teenage uncertainty, translating it through searching bars and dreamy homemade sample collages. His sound feels fully realized already—not quite a throwback, but warm and rich and lived in (probably because he’s been doing this since he was 11, banging out Fruity Loops beats and studying the craft of fellow old soul Earl Sweatshirt). redveil doesn’t pretend he’s got all the answers just yet; like he suggests on the jazzy, breezy “diving board,” the best way to figure it out is to jump in headfirst.

It can be unwise to play favorites in the music biz, but maybe nobody told that to The Alchemist. “I really made an album with my favorite rapper and it drops tonight at midnight,” the producer tweeted ahead of the release of his and Roc Marciano’s *The Elephant Man’s Bones*. “I’m tripping.” Hempstead, Long Island-originating Marciano is no stranger to peer adulation, however. His time as a recording artist dates at least as far back as a stint with Busta Rhymes’ late-’90s Flipmode Squad collective, but the name he has today was made from the string of gritty and impressive solo projects he released across the 2010s. You do need a specific kind of ear to fully appreciate the MC. Roc Marciano raps in the kind of street code that reveals itself to be genius to those who can grasp its nuances. Take this couplet from *The Elephant Man’s Bones*’ “Daddy Kane”: “I been getting off that soft white long before shorties was rocking Off-White/Water-colored ice, I call it Walter White/Walk with me like a dog might, I got 44 bulldogs, you ain’t got a dog in the fight.” The bars themselves are less complex than they are both slimy and razor-sharp. These are raps to be heeded and, maybe more importantly, enjoyed at a safe distance. Unless, of course, you’re The Alchemist—or album guests Action Bronson, Boldy James, Ice-T, or Knowledge the Pirate—in which case you can’t wait to add some of your own ingredients to Marciano’s cauldron.

To call Conway the Machine’s raps gritty is akin to calling summer in Arizona hot. Take this passage from “Piano Love,” off *God Don’t Make Mistakes*: “We don\'t play fair, drive-bys right in front of the daycare/We spray hairpin triggers, that FN on the waist here/Yeah, garbage bags wrapped around the Ks here/Told you it\'s spooky, my n\*\*\*a, it\'s Camp Crystal Lake here.” He’s long had a way with words, but in 2022, with well over 20 projects to his name, the Buffalo-hailing MC is opening up in a way hasn’t before. Too many lines on *God Don’t Make Mistakes* were likely painful to record. “Not too long after my cousin hung his self/I never told nobody, but I lost a son myself/Imagine bein\' in the hospital, holdin\' your dead baby/And he look just like you, you tryna keep from goin\' crazy,” he raps on “Stressed.” “You don\'t know the feeling of never seein\' your kid again/And it\'s a Russell Wilson-type n\*\*\*a raisin\' your lil\' man/Real shit, I know the feeling, ain\'t seen my son in a minute/BM don\'t answer for me, so fuck her, I\'m in my feelings,” he says on “Tear Gas.” A single like the Daringer- and Kill-produced “John Woo Flick,” with its claims of Conway having “enough shooters on my team to embarrass the Pistons” and a “door on my bedroom thick as a vault,” likely delivered plenty of new ears when it was released in advance of the album. But if it succeeded in bringing listeners all the way through *God Don’t Make Mistakes*, they’ll be leaving knowing as much about the Machine’s life—if not more—as those who’ve heard everything before it.

Thebe Kgositsile emerged in 2010 as the most mysterious member of rap’s weirdest new collective, Odd Future—a gifted teen turned anarchist, spitting shock-rap provocations from his exile in a Samoan reform school. In the 12 years since, he’s repaired his famously fraught relationship with his mother, lost his father, and become a father himself, all the while carving out a solo lane as a serious MC, a student of the game. Earl’s fourth album finds the guy who once titled an album *I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside*, well, going outside, and kinda liking it; on opener “Old Friend,” he’s hacking through thickets, camping out in Catskills rainstorms. There’s a sonic clarity here that stands apart from the obscure, sludgy sounds of his recent records, executed in part by Young Guru, JAY-Z’s longtime engineer. Beats from The Alchemist and Black Noi$e snap, crackle, and bounce, buoying Earl’s slippery, open-ended thoughts on family, writing, religion, the pandemic. Is he happy now, the kid we’ve watched become a man? It’s hard to say, but in any case, as he raps on “Fire in the Hole”: “It’s no rewinding/For the umpteenth time, it’s only forward.”

The multi-faceted Maryland rapper’s been pumping out mixtapes since she was in high school. Since then, it’s been a thrill to watch her self-proclaimed “sugar trap” evolve into a sound that’s hard to describe in a nutshell; sometimes she’s a nu-metal scream queen, sometimes a hyperpop raver, and other times she’s straight-up spitting. On *Las Ruinas*, she’s all of those things at once—plus a grunge wallflower (on “Easy”), an East Coast boom-bapper (on “Gotsta Get Paid,” whose production credits include 100 gecs), and a London junglist circa 1994 (“Intrusive”). There’s a bit of contention over whether it’s her second album or her umpteenth mixtape, but *Las Ruinas* might make even more sense considered as a DJ set of Rico’s new material—an uncontainable, indefinable, throw-it-at-the-wall mix of aggression and vulnerability like only Rico can do it, preferably played in a dank basement with a fog machine.

“Money made me numb,” Vince Staples repeats over and over again on “THE BLUES,” from his fifth full-length studio album. It’s not the song’s chorus and you can picture him saying it in the mirror, attempting to reckon with a truth he clearly understands but also maybe doesn’t quite know what to do with. At the time of *RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART*’s release, the Long Beach, California, MC was more popular and financially successful than he’s ever been. So, he chose—beginning with 2021’s *Vince Staples*—to release some of the most affecting and autobiographical music of his career. The decision sounds, across the album, much less a professional risk than a personal one, Staples utilizing production from Mustard, Cardo, and Coop the Truth, among others, to expose his innermost thoughts about turf politics, romantic relationships, and the ways money may or may not be changing him. More than anything else, he aims to honor those who have in some way contributed to his survival, often calling them out by name, holding especially close the memories of those no longer in his orbit. “Tryna make it to the top, we can’t take everybody with us,” he sings on “THE BEACH.” There are few artists who come off as comfortable as Staples does regarding their contributions to music culture at large, but what *RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART* makes abundantly clear is that few things mean as much to Staples’ art as the neighborhood that made him.

Mobile, Alabama-hailing MC Flo Milli was here for any and all of the smoke upon release of her 2020 debut mixtape *Ho, why is you here ?*. If the title of that project\'s follow-up—*You Still Here, Ho?*—tells us anything about the MC today, it’s that the two years that passed between those efforts did little to soften her resolve. Milli spends the large majority of *You Still Here, Ho?* reminding other MCs that they cannot compete where they don\'t compare. The whole thing is a collection of anthems of affirmation, songs with titles like “Hottie,” “Conceited,” and “Big Steppa” that allude to the kind of confidence Milli wishes for fans. For her competitors, though, she’s got little more than secondhand embarrassment, a feeling that stems from Milli’s own ability to write hip-pop songs in the vein of admitted influence Nicki Minaj (“Pretty Girls,” “Pay Day”) and then purer rap anthems like “F.N.G.M.,” which contains an interpolation of Junior M.A.F.I.A.\'s golden-era classic “Get Money.”

From his formative days associating with Raider Klan through his revealing solo projects *TA13OO* and *ZUU*, Denzel Curry has never been shy about speaking his mind. For *Melt My Eyez See Your Future*, the Florida native tackles some of the toughest topics of his MC career, sharing his existential notes on being Black and male in these volatile times. The album opens on a bold note with “Melt Session #1,” a vulnerable and emotional cut given further weight by jazz giant Robert Glasper’s plaintive piano. That hefty tone leads into a series of deeply personal and mindfully radical songs that explore modern crises and mental health with both thematic gravity and lyrical dexterity, including “Worst Comes to Worst” and the trap subversion “X-Wing.” Systemic violence leaves him reeling and righteous on “John Wayne,” while “The Smell of Death” skillfully mixes metaphors over a phenomenally fat funk groove. He draws overt and subtle parallels to jazz’s sociopolitical history, imagining himself in Freddie Hubbard’s hard-bop era on “Mental” and tapping into boom bap’s affinity for the genre on “The Ills.” Guests like T-Pain, Rico Nasty, and 6LACK help to fill out his vision, yielding some of the album’s highest highs.

Melt My Eyez See Your Future arrives as Denzel Curry’s most mature and ambitious album to date. Recorded over the course of the pandemic, Denzel shows his growth as both an artist and person. Born from a wealth of influences, the tracks highlight his versatility and broad tastes, taking in everything from drum’n’bass to trap. To support this vision and show the breadth of his artistry, Denzel has enlisted a wide range of collaborators and firmly plants his flag in the ground as one of the most groundbreaking rappers in the game.

*NO THANK YOU*—the follow-up to 2021’s Mercury Prize-winning *Sometimes I Might Be Introvert*—emphatically deepens Little Simz’s connection with producer Inflo, and provides further confirmation of the Islington rapper’s generational abilities. The initials of the title of her soul-searching fourth LP spelled out her first name, and the name of its surprise follow-up also hints at a purposeful double meaning. Perhaps a kindly expression of gratitude for the flowers given since *SIMBI*’s success? More likely an act of defiance. Either way, within this trademark ambiguity Simz gets her shine on across 10 sumptuous tracks. BRIT Awards Producer Of The Year 2022 Dean Josiah Cover—aka Inflo—taps into the rich, bluesy elements of his enigmatic Sault music for urgent dispatches from Simbi Ajikawo. It’s a rich sonic seam: A returning undercurrent of gospel-rooted R&B reinforces lines with spiritual resonance. From tone-setting opener “Angel” (dedicated to the model Harry Uzoka, who died in January 2018), soft choral flourishes and dreamy Cleo Sol vocals help Simz pick up where she left off in 2021. “Revoke access, I’m running it back, yes/Missing opportunities, I wish I was that pressed.” Building on a deep-rooted synergy, Simz and Inflo go the whole length on the gut feeling that has made their partnership so prolific. For Simz, an artist who’s always operated to her own set of standards, an equally clear-sighted collaborator (Inflo is also across the keys, chords, and strings) finds her at her most compassionate and precise, tackling family trauma and the emotional isolation of success. Within the streams of sharp, self-analyzing rhymes, scattered samples, and prolonged orchestral sections—“Sideways” and “Control”—lies the sound of a winning combo firmly in the groove. As Simz continues to soar, she’s evidently still clearing house. By facing down the dark reaches of the mind and the tests of her daily environment, emotional and soulful highs and lows are wonderfully bared across her tightest lyrical offering to date.

Wiki teams up with New Jersey producer Subjxct 5 on new mixtape Cold Cuts. The collaborative tape sees 18 tracks of hard hitting hip hop that pays homage to the free-form mixtape era, with loud DJ ad-libs over underground classics, and a focus on lyrical ability, style and flow. Produced entirely by Subjxct 5, and serves as the follow up to Wiki’s 2021 album Half God. There’s also guest features from Navy Blue, Papo2004, YL, DJ Lucas, Afrikillz, Big Ouee, Slicky, Reed & Hunnaloe.

Black Thought may be best-known as part of The Roots, performing night after late night for Jimmy Fallon’s TV audience, yet the Philadelphia native concurrently boasts a staggering reputation as a stand-alone rapper. Though he’s earned GOAT nods from listeners for earth-shaking features alongside Big Pun, Eminem, and Rapsody, his solo catalog long remained relatively modest in size. Meanwhile, Danger Mouse had a short yet monumental run in the 2000s that made him one of that decade’s most beloved and respected producers. His discography from that period contains no shortage of microphone dynamos, most notably MF DOOM (as DANGERDOOM) and Goodie Mob’s CeeLo Green (as Gnarls Barkley). Uniting these low-key hip-hop powerhouses is the stuff of hip-hop dreams, the kind of fantasy-league-style draft you’d encounter on rap message boards. Yet *Cheat Codes* is real—perhaps realer than real. Danger Mouse’s penchant for quirkily cinematic, subtly soulful soundscapes remains from the old days, but the growth from his 2010s work with the likes of composer Daniele Luppi gives “Aquamarine” and “Sometimes” undeniable big-screen energy. Black Thought luxuriates over these luxurious beats, his lyrical lexicon put to excellent use over the feverish funk of “No Gold Teeth” and the rollicking blues of “Close to Famous.” As if their team-up wasn’t enough, an intergenerational cabal of rapper guests bless the proceedings. From living legend Raekwon to A$AP Rocky to Conway the Machine, New York artists play a pivotal role here. A lost DOOM verse, apparently from *The Mouse and the Mask* sessions, makes its way onto the sauntering and sunny “Belize,” another gift for the fans.

Megan Thee Stallion wastes no time getting to the heart of the matter on *Traumazine*, the long-awaited follow-up to the Houston MC’s 2020 album, *Good News*. “I ain’t perfect/But anything I did to any of you n\*\*\*\*s, y’all deserved it!” she raps at the outset of album opener “NDA.” Indeed, Thee Stallion, who’s unwittingly made more headlines over the past two years for her role as a victim of a high-profile shooting than she has for the hits she continues to deliver, is not here to apologize. In fact, she’s here to remind both well-wishers and detractors alike that she’s going to win regardless, because that’s just how she’s built. “Fuck it, bitch, I’m not nice/I’m the shit/I’m done with being humble/’Cause I know that I’m that bitch,” she declares on “Not Nice.” Now, that’s “real hot girl shit.” And you’ll find it in abundance across *Traumazine*, Meg making time to address “fake-ass, snake-ass, backstabbing, hating-ass, no-money-getting-ass bitches” (“Ungrateful”), fair-weather friends (“Flip Flop”), and even her own mental health struggles (“Anxiety”). She’s having plenty of fun here, too, mostly in describing what sounds like really amazing sex (“Ms. Nasty,” “Who Me,” “Red Wine”), but also on a four-on-the-floor house jam (“Her”), a high-energy duet with Future (“Pressurelicious”), and an ode to her H-Town roots (“Southside Royalty Freestyle”). Thee Stallion draws power here from surviving fame as she knows it, basking in her own greatness on “Star” as she proclaims, “I’m a motherfuckin’ superstar.”

The thing about Freddie Gibbs’ music is that you know it when you hear it but can imagine him almost anywhere: alongside DJ Paul on some throwback Southern trap (“PYS”) or over a lounge-y Alchemist beat (“Blackest in the Room”), next to newcomers like Moneybagg Yo (“Too Much”) or pioneers like Raekwon (“Feel No Pain”). Were his voice weaker or his writing less sharp, his workingman’s kingpin persona might get washed out, but they aren’t. And over the course of 45 minutes, he confirms that his stylistic flexibility isn’t creative indecision so much as proof of his gift for bridging hip-hop’s past with its ever-evolving present. After 2019’s underground-leaning Madlib collaboration *Bandana* and the self-consciously classic sound of 2020’s Alchemist-produced *Alfredo*, *$oul $old $eparately* sounds like Gibbs locking in his niche: the rapper’s rapper that a general audience can understand.

Each installment of Benny the Butcher’s celebrated *Tana Talk* mixtape series lifted his star just a little bit higher, and the Buffalo-hailing MC went into the release of *Tana Talk 4* expecting nothing less. “*Tana Talk* 1, I took over the hood,” he told Apple Music’s Ebro Darden. “I was on some mixtape, neighborhood…*Tana Talk 2*, I was still in the hood. I took over the city, though. *Tana Talk 3*, I took over the underground. *Tana Talk 4*, I feel like I\'m taking over the world, honestly.” The Butcher’s profile has never been higher (and his jewelry never brighter), as the MC has spent the past half decade helping to build the Griselda Records brand—alongside cohorts Westside Gunn and Conway the Machine—into the industry standard for streetwise lyricism. *Tana Talk 4*, which fulfills any and all contractual obligations with the Griselda label, sets the table for the MC’s forthcoming Def Jam debut in a way that only the 2022 version of Benny the Butcher could have done. “I\'ve been rapping since I was 16, professionally,” Benny says. “So I had war stories, but I don\'t got the stories I got now. Who knew I\'d be on songs, naming them after my girl, India? Who knew I\'d be on songs talking about going through a divorce, talking about a daughter, or saying I got a stepdaughter? Just grown-people shit. That just comes with age. And I feel my listeners make me feel comfortable to talk like that.” But if there’s anything Benny does, it’s keep it real, and he does that continuously over production provided by Daringer and The Alchemist, comparing himself in one instance to the movie character Scarface, Death Row Records cofounder and cocaine kingpin Harry-O, and Joe Pesci (“Guerrero”); lamenting the time he spent in a wheelchair after being shot (“Bust a Brick Nick”); and then also claiming on the J. Cole collaboration “Johnny P’s Caddy” that he “can never leave the scene without checkin\' \[his\] mirrors visually.” “I got three felonies, I\'ve been to state prison, been to federal prison—this is my life,” Benny says. “My daughter spent her first birthday when I was in the feds. My brother passed away. I\'m one of them guys! So the most I could do—or the least I could do—is just, in my music, let them know both sides to this.”

“You can’t come get this work until it’s dry. I made this album while the streets were closed during the pandemic. Made entirely with the greatest producers of all time—Pharrell and Ye. ONLY I can get the best out of these guys. ENJOY!!” —Pusha T, in an exclusive message provided to Apple Music

Alongside Moor Mother’s 2021 album, *Black Encyclopedia of the Air*, *Jazz Codes* explores the question of how accessible a generally inaccessible artist can get without sacrificing the density of their ideas. It isn’t to say it’s easy music (45 tightly collaged minutes of spoken word, free jazz, electronic loops, and fragmentary hip-hop)—only that it makes space for the listener in ways she hasn’t always in the past. Given the album’s subject matter—jazz history, the nature and place of Black art—it’s easy to hear the shift as one from personal expression to stewardship and communication: She wants you to understand where she’s coming from as a gesture of respect to those who came before, whether Woody Shaw (“WOODY SHAW”), Mary Lou Williams (“ODE TO MARY”), or Joe McPhee (“JOE MCPHEE NATION TIME”). Her fellow travelers—multi-hyphenate Black artists like AKAI SOLO and Melanie Charles—show you she isn’t alone. And while the difficulty lingers, it gets explicit purpose, courtesy of professor, artist, and activist Thomas Stanley on the outro: “Ultimately, perhaps, it is good that people abandoned jazz/Replaced it with musical products better-suited to capitalism’s designs/Now jazz jumps up like Lazarus if we allow it, to rediscover itself as a living music.”

Called “the poet laureate of the apocalypse” by Pitchfork, Moor Mother is announcing ‘Jazz Codes'. Coming out on July 1, it is her second album for ANTI- and a companion to her celebrated 2021 release ’Black Encyclopedia of the Air‘. ’Jazz Codes’ uses poetry as a starting point, but the collection moves toward more melody, more singing voices, more choruses and more complexity. In its warm, densely layered course through jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, ’Jazz Codes’ sets the ear blissfully adrift and unhitches the mind from habit. Through her work, Ayewa illuminates the principles of her interdisciplinary collaborative practice Black Quantum Futurism, a theoretical framework for creating counter-chronologies and envisioning Black quantum womanist futures that rupture exclusionary versions of history and future through art, writing, music, and performance. Moor Mother - aka the songwriter, composer, vocalist, poet, and visual artist Camae Ayewa – is also a professor at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music. She released her debut album Fetish Bones in 2016 and has since put out an abundance of acclaimed music, both as a solo artist and in collaboration with other musicians who share her drive to dig up the untold. She is a member of many other groups including the free jazz group Irreversible Entanglements, 700 bliss and moor jewelry. She has also toured and recorded with The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Nicole Mitchell.

Early adopters of Memphis spitter and recent CMG signee GloRilla will recognize the title of the MC’s debut EP, *Anyways, Life’s Great...*, as a quip from her breakout hit “F.N.F (Let’s Go).” But if the bars on the rest of the EP are any indication of what the woman born Gloria Hallelujah Woods has in store for fans, she’ll have project titles until her dying days, and plenty of demand for them. Woods, who was still riding high from the success of “F.N.F (Let’s Go)” as well as the Cardi B collaboration “Tomorrow 2” upon the release of *Anyways, Life’s Great...*, has a gruff rhyme style that strikes a perfect balance between bravado and relatability, something she attributes to taking the time to develop who she was on the mic. “My normal voice, it ain\'t all soft and stuff, like a normal female voice,” she tells Apple Music. “So when I first started rapping, I used to try to sound girly. I really just had to find myself, find my voice and how I rap. And I really got a Memphis sound, too.” For the well-informed, that much is apparent from her accent and the way she punctuates some of her statements with “mane,” as she does frequently across the EP. What she also does is tell fair-weather fans about themselves (“No More Love”), take disappointing sexual partners to task (“Nut Quick”), celebrate how far she’s come as an artist (“Blessed”), and take off her cool to get vulnerable (“Out Loud Thinking”). Runaway success like the kind GloRilla first encountered with “F.N.F (Let’s Go)” has been the downfall of plenty a promising MC, but to let her tell it, having a hit right out of the gate only gave her a blueprint for success. “I learned to rap how I feel and to keep putting out that real authentic shit,” she says of “F.N.F”\'s reception. “And to continue to smoke weed, because I was high as a motherfucker when I wrote that song.” Below, GloRilla sheds even more light on a few key tracks from *Anyways, Life’s Great...*. **“PHATNALL”** “Out here in Memphis—a lot of people do this all over the world—when people die, they get their names tatted on their face. So I’m like, my ex is really dead to me. They so dead to me, I might get their name tatted on my face.” **“Tomorrow 2” (feat. Cardi B)** “My team was tryna surprise me \[with a Cardi guest verse\], but I ended up finding out because I was texting her to get on another song and she ended up telling me! She sent me the verse and I was like, ‘Oh my god! She killed this.’\" **“Blessed”** “I made ‘Blessed’ after I had linked with \[CMG founder Yo\] Gotti. We was in New York—this was before we had went public about the signing—and I was just feeling super blessed. Like that was a time when everything was just happening for me. My life was changing. And that’s just how I came up with that. Just in the studio, high, smoking weed.” **“Nut Quick”** “There\'s a lot of dudes out here that nut quick. They be cool and all, they just got sexual problems. I know a lot of females feeling me. Like, you cool, but you just nut quick.” **“F.N.F (Let’s Go)”** “A lot of times I record something and I’ll be like, ‘Ooh, this the one.’ I say that about a lot of my songs. ‘F.N.F,’ it just really happened to be *the one*. So when that song blew up—when I first posted the trailer—I started seeing a change then.” **“Out Loud Thinking”** “I was going through a really rough time in my life when I recorded this song. I remember I was in line at the drive-through at Taco Bell mixed with KFC. I was just playing a beat and I shed a couple tears and thought of writing that song.”

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The New Yorker has finally gotten his flowers as one of the finest MCs in the contemporary underground after a cool couple decades grinding it out with his label, Backwoodz Studioz; 2021’s *Haram*, from Woods’ Armand Hammer duo with E L U C I D, felt like a high watermark for a new NY scene. On *Aethiopes*, Woods’ first solo album since 2019, he recruits producer Preservation, a fellow NY scene veteran known for his work with Yasiin Bey and Ka; his haunted beats set an unsettling scene for Woods’ evocative stories, which span childhood bedrooms and Egyptian deserts. The guest list doubles as a who’s who of underground rap—EL-P, Boldy James, E L U C I D—but Woods holds his own at the center of it all. As he spits on the stunningly skeletal “Remorseless”: “Anything you want on this cursed earth/Probably better off getting it yourself, see what it’s worth.”

DIGITAL VERSION OF THE ALBUM DROPS ON APRIL 8, 2022. Aethiopes is billy woods’ first album since 2019’s double feature of Hiding Places and Terror Management. The project is fully produced by Preservation (Dr Yen Lo, Yasiin Bey), who delivered a suite of tracks on Terror Management, including the riveting single “Blood Thinner”. The two collaborated again on Preservation’s 2020’s LP Eastern Medicine, Western Illness, which featured a memorable billy woods appearance on the song “Lemon Rinds”, as well as the B-side “Snow Globe”.