For athletes of both the professional and amateur ranks, the time between seasons is an opportunity to recuperate and to sharpen their tool set for the next run. Superstar MC J. Cole, whose career has long been informed by both basketball metaphor and actual basketball playing (in May 2021, ESPN reported that Cole had joined the Basketball Africa League\'s Rwanda Patriots BBC), has crafted his *The Off-Season* mixtape in the same mold, affirming that if he’s done anything in the time since 2018’s *KOD* album, it’s get even better at what he does. The 12-track tape is at once a testament to his actual rhyme skill and the reverence he’s earned within hip-hop. He’s sourced production from Boi-1da, Timbaland, Jake One, and T-Minus, among others, and has words—but not verses—from Cam’ron, Damian Lillard, and a man he admits to having once had an actual physical alteration with, Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs. Though he takes time to shout out both Chief Keef and Dave East—conspicuously opposite forces in the realm of contemporary rap—proper features here come from fellow Fayetteville native Morray and “a lot” collaborator 21 Savage. Over the course of his career, Cole’s been known as something of a lone wolf—J CoLe wEnT pLaTiNuM WiTh nO fEaTuReS. But in the scope of the energy we get from him on *The Off-Season*, it’s less likely that he’s been avoiding other rappers than that he\'s just left them all behind.
Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak were already hard at work on what would become *An Evening With Silk Sonic* when the pandemic shut down live music in early 2020, but they weren’t going to let that stop them from delivering a concert experience to their fans. “All of a sudden, my shows get canceled, Andy\'s shows get canceled,” Mars told Ebro Darden during their R&B Now interview. “This fear of ‘we’ll never be able to play live again’ comes into play. And to take that away from guys like us, that\'s all we know. So we\'re thinking, all right, let\'s put an album together that sounds like a show.” It began with the project’s lead single, “Leave the Door Open,” a syrupy-sweet piece of retro soul that Mars considers something of a backbone for the project. After its completion, he and .Paak began building out the nine songs of *An Evening With Silk Sonic*, soliciting help, in the few instances where they needed it, from friends like Bootsy Collins, Thundercat, and even Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds. Their access to HOF-worthy firepower notwithstanding, the pair always understood that their own combined musicality was the real draw. “We just wanted it to feel special,” Mars says. “Instead of trying to get too cute with the concept, it\'s like, what\'s more special than Anderson .Paak behind a drum set singing a song and me having his back when it\'s my turn, you know? And the band moving in the same direction? It was just like a musician\'s dream.” Below, the pair talk through some of the tracks that make *An Evening With Silk Sonic* an experience fans won’t soon forget. **“Leave the Door Open”** Bruno Mars: “Me and Andy come from the school of performing and playing live instruments. We wrote ‘Leave the Door Open’ and it was just one of those songs like, dang, I can’t believe we a part of this, and we don\'t know what it\'s gonna do, we don\'t care that it\'s a ballad or a whatever you wanna call it—to us, this just feels right and it\'s important. So no matter what, if it hit No. 1 or it didn\'t, me and Andy both know that that was the best we could do. And we were cool with that.” **“Fly as Me”** Anderson .Paak: “‘Fly as Me’ is a joint hook \[Mars\] had for a minute. He was trying to figure out some verses for it, trying to figure out the groove, and we spent some time on that.” Mars: “Andy goes behind the drum set one day and says, ‘The groove gotta be like this,’ and starts playing his groove. D’Mile is on the bass, I\'m on the guitar. After all the grooves we tried, I don\'t know what it is, there\'s something about someone in the studio, someone that you trust, saying, \'It\'s gotta be like this.’ And the groove you hear him playing, which is not an easy groove to play, was what he showed me and D. And we just followed suit.” **“After Last Night” (with Thundercat & Bootsy Collins)** Mars: “That one got a lot of Bootsy on it. And my boy Thundercat came in and blessed us. It’s just one of them songs—everything was built to be played live, so that song is one of those we can keep going for 10 minutes.” **“Smokin Out the Window”** Mars: “‘Smokin Out the Window’ was an idea we started four or five years ago on tour. It didn\'t sound nothing like how it does now, but we just had the idea. On \[.Paak’s\] birthday, I called him over. He was hysterical that night. After every take he was like, \'I\'m the king of R&B! I’m the best! Tell me I’m not the hottest in the game!\' We were going back and forth with the lines and who can make who laugh, and we end up finishing that song and he was like, \'I’m out, what we doing tomorrow?\'” **“Put On a Smile”** Mars: “I had a song that I played for Andy and I said, ‘What do you think about this?’ and he said, ‘It sucks.’ I start singing it again and he gets behind the drums and that\'s when the magic happens. So we come up with this hook and these chords and that\'s when we start cooking, when everything starts moving in the studio. The song\'s starting to sound real good now. I don’t wanna mess it up, so I call Babyface. I only call Face to know if I got something good, you know, ’cause he’ll tell me too, \'This is wack.\' For all of us to finish that record together, that was one of my favorite experiences on this album.” **“Skate”** Mars: “It\'s hard to be mad on some rollerskates. So really, that\'s kinda the essence of this album: If me and Andy were to host a party, what would that feel like? Summertime. Outside. Set up the congas and the drums and amplifiers, and what would that sound like? And this is what our best effort was: \'Skate.\'”
A combination of toxic masculinity and acceptance of truth which is inevitably heartbreaking. Executive produced by me, Noah “40” Shebib, Oliver El-Khatib, and Noel Cadastre. Dedicated to Nadia Ntuli and Mercedes Morr. RIP 💖 —Drake
What does an MC from Las Vegas sound like? It’s a funny question to not have an obvious answer for in 2021, but one that seems that much sillier when you consider who it is that will likely become one of the city’s first reference points. Across his debut album *The Melodic Blue*, 20-year-old Vegas native Baby Keem sounds firstly like a combination of his biggest influences (Kanye West, Kid Cudi, Kendrick Lamar), but also, maybe more notably, like he could be from anywhere, because that’s what an emergent MC sounds like in 2021. What other emergent MCs don’t have, however, are Keem’s dedication to airing out multiple flows over the course of a single song, his gift for spellbinding non sequitur, or the fearlessness with which he approaches song-making. They likely aren’t cousins with Kendrick Lamar either, but if Lamar’s scarcity between projects tells us anything, it’s that he’s not stepping to the mic for just anybody. In fact, it is Lamar who sounds like he’s doing his best to keep up with Keem over the course of their *The Melodic Blue* collaborations (“range brothers,” “family ties”). But keeping up with Keem is no easy task. He’s hilarious, even when he’s trying to get a point across (“I must confess, I am a mess, I cannot fix it/Lil baby thick, Margiela sweats, look at my dick print,” he raps on “vent”), and he switches flows so often you’d think he had some kind of tic. The album’s only other guests are Travis Scott (“durag activity”) and Don Toliver (“cocoa”). Which just leaves that much more room for Keem to dance across octaves, drop into a whisper, deadpan, shift to double-time, and sing, all of which he does over the course of just “trademark usa.” One song into his debut and Keem has unloaded a display so excessive that a forward-thinking manager might ask him to save something for a deluxe version. But there’s not likely much you could say to someone tasked with putting Las Vegas back on the map.
Ahead of its release, Vince Staples told Apple Music\'s Zane Lowe that his eponymous album was a more personal work than those that came before. The Long Beach rapper has never shied away from bringing the fullness of his personality to his music—it\'s what makes him such a consistently entertaining listen—but *Vince Staples*, aided by Kenny Beats, who produced the project, is more clear-eyed than ever. Opener “ARE YOU WITH THAT?” is immediate: “Whenever I miss those days/Visit my Crips that lay/Under the ground, runnin\' around, we was them kids that played/All in the street, followin\' leads of n\*\*\*as who lost they ways,” he muses in the second verse, assessing the misguided aspirations that marked his childhood even as the threat of violence and death loomed. It\'s not that Staples hasn\'t broached these topics before—it\'s that he\'s rarely been this explicit regarding his own feelings about them. His sharp matter-of-factness and acerbic humor have often masked criticism in piercing barbs and commentary in unflinching bravado. Here, he\'s direct. The songs, like a series of vignettes that don\'t even reach the three-minute mark, feel intimately autobiographical. “SUNDOWN TOWN” reflects on the distrustful mentality that comes with taking losses and having the rug pulled out from under you one too many times (“When I see my fans, I\'m too paranoid to shake their hands”); “TAKE ME HOME” illuminates how the pull of the past, of “home,” can still linger even after you\'ve escaped it (“Been all across this atlas but keep coming back to this place \'cause it trapped us”). Some might call this an album of maturation, but it ultimately seems more like an invitation—Staples finally allowing his fans to know him just a bit more.
“I’ve had a lot of controversies in my short period being an artist,” slowthai tells Apple Music. “But I always try making a statement.” In 2019, there was the Northampton rapper’s establishment-rattling appearance at the Mercury Prize ceremony, hoisting of an effigy of Boris Johnson’s severed head. A few months later, sexualized comments he made to comedian Katherine Ryan at the 2020 NME Awards caused a fierce Twitter backlash and prompted the Record Store Day 2020 campaign to withdraw an invitation for slowthai to be its UK ambassador. Ryan labeled their exchange “pantomime” but it led to a confrontation with an audience member and slowthai’s apology for his “shameful actions.” Since releasing his 2019 debut *Nothing Great About Britain*, then, the artist born Tyron Frampton has known the unforgiving heat of public judgment. It’s helped forge *TYRON*, a follow-up demarcated into two seven-track sides. The first is brash, incendiary, and energized, continuing to draw a through line between punk and UK rap. The second is vulnerable and introspective, its beats more contemplative and searching. The overarching message is that there are two sides to every story, and even more to every human being. “We all have the side that we don’t show, and the side we show,” he says. “Living up to expectations—and then not giving a fuck and just being honest with yourself.” Featuring guests including Skepta, A$AP Rocky, James Blake, and Denzel Curry, these songs, he hopes, will offer help to others feeling penned in by judgment, stereotypes, or a lack of self-confidence. “I just want them to realize they’re not alone and can be themselves,” he says. “I know that when shit gets dark, you need a little bit of light.” Explore all of slowthai’s sides with his track-by-track guide. **45 SMOKE** “‘Rise and shine, let’s get it/Bumbaclart dickhead/Bumbaclart dickhead.’ It’s like the wake-up call for myself. It’s how you feel when you’re making constant mistakes, or you’re in a rut and you wake up like, ‘I really don’t want to wake up, I’d rather just sleep all day.’ It’s explaining where I’m from, and the same routine of doing this bullshit life that I don’t want to do—but I’m doing it just for the sake of doing it or because this is what’s expected of me.” **CANCELLED** “This song’s a fuck-you to the cancel culture, to people trying to tear you down and make it like you’re a bad person—because all I’ve done my whole life is try and escape that stereotype, and try and better myself. You can call me what you want, you can say what you think happened, but most of all I know myself. Through doing this, I’ve figured it out on a deeper level. When we made this, I was in a dark place because of everything going on. And Skep \[Skepta, co-MC on this track\] was guiding me out. He was saying, ‘Yo, man, this isn’t your defining moment. If anything, it pushes you to prove your point even more.’” **MAZZA** “Mazza is ‘mazzalean,’ which is my own word... It\'s just a mad thing. It’s for the people that have mad ADHD \[slowthai lives with the disorder\], ADD, and can’t focus on something—like how everything comes and it’s so quick, and it’s a rush. It’s where my head was at—be it that I was drinking a lot, or traveling a lot, and seeing a lot of things and doing a lot of dumb shit. Mad time. As soon as I made it, I FaceTimed \[A$AP\] Rocky because I was that gassed. We’d been working here and there, doing little bits. He was like, ‘This is hard. Come link up.’ He was in London and I went down there and \[we\] just patterned it out.” **VEX** “It’s just about being angry at social media, at the fakeness, how everyone’s trying to be someone they’re not and showing the good parts of their lives. You just end up feeling shit, because even if your life’s the best it could be, it just puts in your head that, ‘Ah, it could always be better.’ Most of these people aren’t even happy—that’s why they\'re looking for validation on the internet.” **WOT** “I met Pop Smoke, and that night I recorded this song. It was the night he passed. The next morning, I woke up at 6 am to go to the Disclosure video shoot \[for ‘My High’\] and saw the news. I was just mad overwhelmed. Initially, I’d linked up with Rocky, making another tune, but he didn’t finish his bit. \[slowthai’s part\] felt like it summed it up the energies—it was like \[Pop Smoke’s\] energy, just good vibes. I felt like I wouldn\'t make it any longer because it’s straight to the point. As soon as it starts, you know that it’s on.” **DEAD** “We say ‘That’s dead’ as in it’s not good, it’s shit. So I was like, ‘Yo, every one of these things is dead to me.’ There’s a line, ‘People change for money/What’s money with no time?’ That’s aimed at people saying I changed because I gained success. It’s not that I’ve changed, but I’ve grown or grown out of certain things. It’s not the money that changed me, it’s understanding that doing certain things is not making me any better. If I’m spending all my time working on bettering myself and trying to better my craft, the money’s irrelevant. I don’t even have the time to spend it. So it’s just like saying everything’s dead. I’m focusing on living forever through my music and my art.” **PLAY WITH FIRE** “Even though we want to move far away from situations and circumstances, we keep toying with the idea \[of them\]. It plays on your mind that you want to be in that position. ‘PLAY WITH FIRE’ is the letting go as well as trying to hold on to these things. When it goes into \[next track\] ‘i tried,’ it’s like, ‘I tried to do all these things, live up to these expectations and be this person, but it wasn’t working for me.’ And on the other foot, I *tried* all these things. I can’t die saying I didn’t. You have to love everything for how it is to understand it, and try and move on. You’ve got to understand something for the negative before you can really understand the positive.” **i tried** “‘Long road/Tumble down this black hole/Stuck in Sunday league/But I’m on levels with Ronaldo.’ It’s saying it’s been a struggle to get here. And even still, I feel like I’m traveling into a void. You feel like you’re sinking into yourself—be it through taking too many drugs or drinking too much and burying yourself in a hole, just being on autopilot. It’s coming to that understanding, and dealing with those problems. It’s \[about\] boosting my confidence and my true self: ‘Yo, man, you’re the best. If this was football, you’d be the Ballon d’Or winner.’ We always look at what we think we should be like. We never actually look at who we are, and what our qualities are. ‘I’ve got a sickness/And I’m dealing with it.’ I’m trying. I\'m trying every avenue, and with a bit of hope and a bit of luck, I can become who I want to be.” **focus** “From the beginning, even though I’m in this pocket of people and this way of life, I’ve always known to go against that grain. I didn’t ever want to end up in jail. You either get a trade or you end doing shit and potentially you end in jail. A lot of people around me, they’re still in that cycle. And this is me saying, ‘Focus on some other shit.’ I come from the shit, and I pushed and I got there. And it was through maintaining that focus.” **terms** “It’s the terms and conditions that come with popularity and...fame. I don’t like that word. I hate words like ‘fad’ and ‘fame.’ They make me cringe so much. Maybe I’ve got something against words that begin with F. But it’s just dealing with what comes with it and how it’s not what you expected it to be. The headache of being judged for being a human being. Once you get any recognition for your art, you’re no longer a human—you’re a product. Dominic \[Fike, guest vocalist\] sums it up beautifully in the hook.” **push** “‘Push’ is an acronym for ‘praying until something happens.’ When you’re in a corner, you’ve got to keep pushing. Even when you’re at your lowest. That’s all life is, right? It’s a push. Being pulled is the easy route, but when you’re pushing for something, the hard work conditions your mind, strengthens you physically and spiritually, and you come out on top. I used to be religious—when my brother passed, when I was young. I asked for a Bible for my birthday, which was some weird shit. Through this project…it’s not faith in God, but my faith in people, it’s been kind of restored, my faith in myself. Everyone I work with on this, they’re my friends, and they’re all people that have helped me through something. And Deb \[Never, guest vocalist\]—we call each other twins. She’s my sister that I’ve known my whole life but I haven’t known my whole life.” **nhs** “It’s all about appreciation. The NHS—something that’s been doing work for generations, to save people—it’s been so taken for granted. It’s a place where everyone’s equal and everyone’s treated the same. It takes this \[pandemic\] for us to applaud people who have been giving their lives to help others. They should have constant applause at the end of every shift. We’re out here complaining and always wanting more. I don’t know if it’s a human defect or just consumerism, but you get one thing and then you always want the next best thing. I do it a lot. And there’s never a best one, because there’s always another one. Just be happy with what you’ve got. You\'ll end up having an aneurysm.” **feel away** “Dom \[Maker, co-producer and one half of Mount Kimbie\] works with James \[Blake\] a lot. They record a bunch of stuff, chop it up and create loops. I was going through all these loops, and I was like, ‘This one’s the one.’ As soon as we played it, I had lyrics and recorded my bit. I’ve loved James from when I was a kid at school and was like, ‘We should get James.’ We sent it to him, and in my head, I was like, ‘Ah, he’s not going to record on it.’ But the next day, we had the tune. I was just so gassed. I dedicated it to my brother passing. But it’s about putting yourself in your partner’s shoes, because through experiences, be it from my mum or friends, I’ve learnt that in a lot of relationships, when a woman’s pregnant, the man tends to leave the woman. The woman usually is all alone to deal with all these problems. I wanted it to be the other way around—the woman leaves the man. He’s got to go through all that pain to get to the better side, the beauty of it.” **adhd** “When I was really young, my mum and people around me didn’t really believe in \[ADHD\]—like, ‘It’s a hyperactive kid, they just want attention.’ They didn’t ever see it as a disorder. And I think this is my way of summarizing the whole album: This is something that I’ve dealt with, and people around me have dealt with. It’s hard for people to understand because they don’t get why it’s the impulses, or how it might just be a reaction to something that you can’t control. You try to, but it’s embedded in you. It’s just my conclusion—like at the end of the book, when you get to the bit where everything starts making sense. I feel like this is the most connected I’ve been to a song. It’s the clearest depiction of what my voice naturally sounds like, without me pushing it out, or projecting it in any way, or being aggressive. It’s just softly spoken, and then it gets to that anger at the end. And then a kiss—just to sweeten it all up.”
While recording *Magic*, the late-December follow-up to August 2021’s *King’s Disease II*, the MC once known as Nasty Nas was clearly in the zone. “I told n\*\*\*as I was in rare form on the last album,” he says on “40-16 Building.” “I ain’t playing out here. It’s not a game.” What that means for *Magic*, then, is Nas sounding as comfortable in the booth as ever, rattling off observations about how ill he *still* is (“Speechless,” “Meet Joe Black”), the perils of street life (“Ugly”), and, in one instance, the snatch-and-grab retail robberies that have been making headlines as of late (“Dedicated”). Nas delivered *Magic* on Christmas Eve as a kind of nine-track stocking stuffer fans could enjoy over their holiday break, should they be so lucky to have one. And those that didn’t? Let them be motivated to grind by the impossibly smooth “Wu for the Children,” or the A$AP Rocky collaboration “Wave Gods,” which plays out like a backstage cipher between the two NYC style giants.
When *The Plugs I Met* dropped in June of 2019, Benny the Butcher was a promising if somewhat secondary member of the then-burgeoning Griselda Records empire. Upon the release of *The Plugs I Met 2*, composed with New York production stalwart Harry Fraud, he’s a certified star, so comfortable in his personal trajectory that’s he’s had the time—and resources—to launch BSF Records, a label comprising members of his Black Soprano Family crew. Save for Rick Hyde on “Survivor’s Remorse,” BSF is largely absent from *The Plugs I Met 2*, Benny having reserved the majority of the project’s guest spots for NYC rap legends French Montana, Fat Joe, Jim Jones, and the dearly departed Chinx. But no Griselda project is about the guests, and *The Plugs I Met 2* is no different in that regard, Benny painting vivid pictures of street life as he sees it. “For street n\*\*\*as I’m the new catalyst, but who fathomed it?/My heroes in federal sweatsuits and New Balances,” he raps on “When Tony Met Sosa.” The project on the whole is something akin to getting reps up in an empty gym: impressive, to be sure, but also exactly what we know he’s capable of.
If the first *King’s Disease* project was Nas reveling in the legacy he’d sown over three-plus decades in the game, its sequel—arriving just short of a year later—is the legendary MC settling that much further into what he thinks great rap should sound like in 2021. In this case, that’s another full-length project co-executive-produced by celebrated Fontana, California-hailing beatsmith Hit-Boy, this time featuring a handful of eyebrow-raising moments like the pairing of hip-hop legends EPMD and Eminem (“EPMD 2”), a revisitation of the static—and eventual reconciliation—he shared with 2Pac (“Death Row East”), and a brand-new rap verse from the illustrious Ms. Lauryn Hill (“Nobody”). Not unlike its predecessor, *King’s Disease II* features a small handful of guests, something Nas saw fit to acknowledge in rhyme on “Moments”: “My whole career I steered away from features/But I figured it’s perfect timing to embrace the leaders.” While that first statement is a bit of revisionist history, we won’t pretend that sharing airspace with the don hasn’t always been—and isn’t still—something of an honor, one he’s chosen to bestow here upon A Boogie wit da Hoodie, YG, and Hit-Boy. He contextualizes this particularly well toward that same song’s end, reminding us of his impact when he cites “moments you can’t relive/Like your first time bugging from something that Nas said.”
“Sometimes I’ll be in my own space, my own company, and that’s when I\'m really content,” Little Simz tells Apple Music. “It\'s all love, though. There’s nothing against anyone else; that\'s just how I am. I like doing my own thing and making my art.” The lockdowns of 2020, then, proved fruitful for the North London MC, singer, and actor. She wrestled writer’s block, revived her cult *Drop* EP series (explore the razor-sharp and diaristic *Drop 6* immediately), and laid grand plans for her fourth studio album. Songwriter/producer Inflo, co-architect of Simz’s 2019 Mercury-nominated, Ivor Novello Award-winning *GREY Area*, was tapped and the hard work began. “It was straight boot camp,” she says of the *Sometimes I Might Be Introvert* sessions in London and Los Angeles. “We got things done pronto, especially with the pace that me and Flo move at. We’re quite impulsive: When we\'re ready to go, it’s time to go.” Months of final touches followed—and a collision between rap and TV royalty. An interest in *The Crown* led Simz to approach Emma Corrin (who gave an award-winning portrayal of Princess Diana in the drama). She uses her Diana accent to offer breathless, regal addresses that punctuate the 19-track album. “It was a reach,” Simz says of inviting Corrin’s participation. “I’m not sure what I expected, but I enjoyed watching her performance, and wrote most of her words whilst I was watching her.” Corrin’s speeches add to the record’s sense of grandeur. It pairs turbocharged UK rap with Simz at her most vulnerable and ambitious. There are meditations on coming of age in the spotlight (“Standing Ovation”), a reunion with fellow Sault collaborator Cleo Sol on the glorious “Woman,” and, in “Point and Kill,” a cleansing, polyrhythmic jam session with Nigerian artist Obongjayar that confirms the record’s dazzling sonic palette. Here, Simz talks us through *Sometimes I Might Be Introvert*, track by track. **“Introvert”** “This was always going to intro the album from the moment it was made. It feels like a battle cry, a rebirth. And with the title, you wouldn\'t expect this to sound so huge. But I’m finding the power within my introversion to breathe new meaning into the word.” **“Woman” (feat. Cleo Sol)** “This was made to uplift and celebrate women. To my peers, my family, my friends, close women in my life, as well as women all over the world: I want them to know I’ve got their back. Linking up with Cleo is always fun; we have such great musical chemistry, and I can’t imagine anyone else bringing what she did to the song. Her voice is beautiful, but I think it\'s her spirit and her intention that comes through when she sings.” **“Two Worlds Apart”** “Firstly, I love this sample; it’s ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’ by Smokey Robinson, and Flo’s chopped it up really cool. This is my moment to flex. You had the opener, followed by a nice, smoother vibe, but this is like, ‘Hey, you’re listening to a *rap* album.’” **“I Love You, I Hate You”** “This wasn’t the easiest song for me to write, but I\'m super proud that I did. It’s an opportunity for me to lay bare my feelings on how that \[family\] situation affected me, growing up. And where I\'m at now—at peace with it and moving on.” **“Little Q, Pt. 1 (Interlude)”** “Little Q is my cousin, Qudus, on my dad\'s side. We grew up together, but then there was a stage where we didn\'t really talk for some years. No bad blood, just doing different things, so when we reconnected, we had a real heart-to-heart—and I heard about all he’d been through. It made me feel like, ‘Damn, this is a blood relative, and he almost lost his life.’ I thank God he didn’t, but I thought of others like him. And I felt it was important that his story was heard and shared. So, I’m speaking from his perspective.” **“Little Q, Pt. 2”** “I grew up in North London and \[Little Q\] was raised in South, and as much as we both grew up in endz, his experience was obviously different to mine. Being a product of an environment or system that isn\'t really for you, it’s tough trying to navigate that.” **“Gems (Interlude)”** “This is another turning point, reminding myself to take time: ‘Breathe…you\'re human. Give what you can give, but don\'t burn out for anyone. Put yourself first.’ Just little gems that everyone needs to hear once in a while.” **“Speed”** “This track sends another reminder: ‘This game is a marathon, not a sprint. So pace yourself!’ I know where I\'m headed, and I\'m taking my time, with little breaks here and there. Now I know when to really hit the gas and also when to come off a bit.” **“Standing Ovation”** “I take some time to reflect here, like, ‘Wow, you\'re still here and still going. It’s been a slow burn, but you can afford to give yourself a pat on the back.’ But as well as being in the limelight, let\'s also acknowledge the people on the ground doing real amazing work: our key workers, our healers, teachers, cleaners. If you go to a toilet and it\'s dirty, people go in from 9 to 5 and make sure that shit is spotless for you, so let\'s also say thank you.” **“I See You”** “This is a really beautiful and poetic song on love. Sometimes as artists we tend to draw from traumatic times for great art, we’re hurt or in pain, but it was nice for me to be able to draw from a place of real joy in my life for this song. Even where it sits \[on the album\]: right in the center, the heart.” **“The Rapper That Came to Tea (Interlude)”** “This title is a play on \[Judith Kerr’s\] children\'s book *The Tiger Who Came to Tea*, and this is about me better understanding my introversion. I’m just posing questions to myself—I might not necessarily have answers for them, I think it\'s good to throw them out there and get the brain working a bit.” **“Rollin Stone”** “This cut reminds me somewhat of ’09 Simz, spitting with rapidness and being witty. And I’m also finding new ways to use my voice on the second half here, letting my evil twin have her time.” **“Protect My Energy”** “This is one of the songs I\'m really looking forward to performing live. It’s a stepper, and it got me really wanting to sing, to be honest. I very much enjoy being around good company, but these days I enjoy my personal space and I want to protect that.” **“Never Make Promises (Interlude)”** “This one is self-explanatory—nothing is promised at all. It’s a short intermission to lead to the next one, but at one point it was nearly the album intro.” **“Point and Kill” (feat. Obongjayar)** “This is a big vibe! It feels very much like Nigeria to me, and Obongjayar is one of my favorites at the moment. We recorded this in my living room on a whim—and I\'m very, very grateful that he graced this song. The title comes from a phrase used in Nigeria to pick out fish at the market, or a store. You point, they kill. But also metaphorically, whatever I want, I\'m going to get in the same way, essentially.” **“Fear No Man”** “This track continues the same vibe, even more so. It declares: ‘I\'m here. I\'m unapologetically me and I fear no one here. I\'m not shook of anyone in this rap game.’” **“The Garden (Interlude)”** “This track is just amazing musically. It’s about nurturing the seeds you plant. Nurture those relationships, and everything around you that\'s holding you down.” **“How Did You Get Here”** “I want everyone to know *how* I got here; from the jump, school days, to my rap group, Space Age. We were just figuring it out, being persistent. I cried whilst recording this song; it all hit me, like, ‘I\'m actually recording my fourth album.’ Sometimes I sit and I wonder if this is all really true.” **“Miss Understood”** “This is the perfect closer. I could have ended on the last track, easily, but, I don\'t know, it\'s kind of like doing 99 reps. You\'ve done 99, that\'s amazing, but you can do one more to just make it 100, you can. And for me it was like, ‘I\'m going to get this one in there.’”
There’s a handful of eyebrow-raising verses across Tyler, The Creator’s *CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST*—particularly those from 42 Dugg, Lil Uzi Vert, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, Pharrell, and Lil Wayne—but none of the aforementioned are as surprising as the ones Tyler delivers himself. The Los Angeles-hailing MC, and onetime nucleus of the culture-shifting Odd Future collective, made a name for himself as a preternaturally talented MC whose impeccable taste in streetwear and calls to “kill people, burn shit, fuck school” perfectly encapsulated the angst of his generation. But across *CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST*, the man once known as Wolf Haley is just a guy who likes to rock ice and collect stamps on his passport, who might whisper into your significant other’s ear while you’re in the restroom. In other words, a prototypical rapper. But in this case, an exceptionally great one. Tyler superfans will remember that the MC was notoriously peeved at his categoric inclusion—and eventual victory—in the 2020 Grammys’ Best Rap Album category for his pop-oriented *IGOR*. The focus here is very clearly hip-hop from the outset. Tyler made an aesthetic choice to frame *CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST* with interjections of shit-talking from DJ Drama, founder of one of 2000s rap’s most storied institutions, the Gangsta Grillz mixtape franchise. The vibes across the album are a disparate combination of sounds Tyler enjoys (and can make)—boom-bap revival (“CORSO,” “LUMBERJACK”), ’90s R&B (“WUSYANAME”), gentle soul samples as a backdrop for vivid lyricism in the Griselda mold (“SIR BAUDELAIRE,” “HOT WIND BLOWS”), and lovers rock (“I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO DANCE”). And then there’s “RUNITUP,” which features a crunk-style background chant, and “LEMONHEAD,” which has the energy of *Trap or Die*-era Jeezy. “WILSHIRE” is potentially best described as an epic poem. Giving the Grammy the benefit of the doubt, maybe they wanted to reward all the great rapping he’d done until that point. *CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST*, though, is a chance to see if they can recognize rap greatness once it has kicked their door in.
By the time he was ready to drop *Life of a DON*, Houston MC Don Toliver (an alum of Apple Music’s Up Next initiative) had already notched two wins in the long-playing project column (2018’s *Donny Womack* and 2020’s *Heaven or Hell*). Still, *Life of a DON* meant something different for Toliver, who spoke to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe about the process of putting it together. “\[I’m\] very proud of this album in particular, because I just went full-fledged Don mode and just took it upon myself to try to make this album as best as I could,” he says. Within *Life of a DON*, that means very little interference from his Cactus Jack boss (Travis Scott appears on two tracks, “Flocky Flocky” and “You”) and plenty of Toliver’s distorted wail through stories about how extravagant his life has become (“Way Bigger”), what he can do for a potential lover (“What You Need”), and some of Toliver\'s favorite pursuits (“Drugs N Hella Melodies”). He sounds plenty in touch with his vices across the project, but maybe more pertinent is how frequently he volunteers that living fast and chasing women has changed his perspective on the world, expecting nothing in return for his efforts. “You\'ll hear all type of emotions, and different little stories or renditions throughout this album,” Toliver says. “*Life of a DON* is just me giving you whatever I can possibly give you for my life in 16 songs, and whatever you take from it is what you take from it.”
On the second posthumous album from Pop Smoke, we get a glimpse of the late rapper\'s mindset in the period before he died and of the seemingly limitless potential of his singular voice. The second half—on songs like “Woo Baby” and “Mr. Jones”—spotlights the agile melodies he was beginning to employ; “8-Ball” introduces an especially bluesy version that summons even more possibilities. The first half, though, is where he shines with his signature style. It\'s especially there on songs like “30” and “Brush Em,” which feature fellow Brooklyn drill rappers Bizzy Banks and Rah Swish, and in other flashes, even as the sounds around him shift. As with *Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon*, *Faith* is heavy on features in order to fill out the song fragments he left behind. This one pairs him with the likes of Kanye West, Pusha T, Rick Ross, and Pharrell as well as would-be peers like 42 Dugg, 21 Savage, and Lil Tjay. It\'s rarely disappointing to hear Pop doing what he did best, but it\'s also impossible not to wonder how he would\'ve approached these songs had he been here—still creating, still innovating, still evolving. Nevertheless, Pop Smoke\'s magic lives on, even if only in frustratingly fleeting moments.
It’s perhaps fitting that Dave’s second album opens with the familiar flicker and countdown of a movie projector sequence. Its title was handed to him by iconic film composer Hans Zimmer in a FaceTime chat, and *We’re All Alone in This Together* sets evocative scenes that laud the power of being able to determine your future. On his 2019 debut *PSYCHODRAMA*, the Streatham rapper revealed himself to be an exhilarating, genre-defying artist attempting to extricate himself from the hazy whirlwind of his own mind. Two years on, Dave’s work feels more ambitious, more widescreen, and doubles down on his superpower—that ability to absorb perspectives around him within his otherworldly rhymes and ideas. He’s addressing deeply personal themes from a sharp, shifting lens. “My life’s full of plot holes,” he declares on “We’re All Alone.” “And I’m filling them up.” As it has been since his emergence, Dave is skilled, mature, and honest enough to both lay bare and uplift the Black British experience. “In the Fire” recruits four sons of immigrant UK families—Fredo, Meekz, Giggs, and Ghetts (all uncredited, all lending incendiary bars)—and closes on a spirited Dave verse touching on early threats of deportation and homelessness. With these moments in the can, the earned boasts of rare kicks and timepieces alongside Stormzy for “Clash” are justified moments of relief from past struggles. And these loose threads tie together on “Three Rivers”—a somber, piano-led track that salutes the contributions of Britain’s Windrush generation and survivors of war-torn scenarios, from the Middle East to Africa. In exploring migration—and the questions it asks of us—Dave is inevitably led to his Nigerian heritage. Lagos newcomer Boj puts down a spirited, instructional hook in Yoruba for “Lazarus,” while Wizkid steps in to form a smooth double act on “System.” “Twenty to One,” meanwhile, is “Toosie Slide” catchy and precedes “Heart Attack”—arguably the showstopper at 10 minutes and loaded with blistering home truths on youth violence. On *PSYCHODRAMA* Dave showed how music was his private sanctuary from a life studded by tragedy. *We’re All Alone in This Together* suggests that relationship might have changed. Dave is now using his platform to share past pains and unique stories of migration in times of growing isolation. This music keeps him—and us—connected.
The posthumous album is a tough thing to get right. If nothing else, it can be hard for fans to ascertain what’s really representative of an artist’s vision versus what was completed after death to the sometimes less than exacting specifications of the stewards of said estate. In the case of dearly departed hip-hop legend DMX, however, the Dog-loving faithful had nothing to worry about. “All of the songs was finished,” longtime friend, collaborator, and executive producer of his *Exodus* album Swizz Beatz tells Apple Music. “This album was done while he was living. I know they’re saying ‘the album after he\'s gone,’ but really he did the album before he was gone.” Pop Smoke was initially slated to appear on “Money Money Money,” but a leak forced Swizz to switch up the plan and bring on Moneybagg Yo. Otherwise, though, *Exodus* is exactly how X designed it—one of hip-hop’s most impactful MCs making space for the voices he revered, while staying true to a career-long practice of baring his soul on record. “He gave people real shit,” Swizz says. “He gave you a front-row seat into his life, because he loved his fans, he loved his people, and it\'s where he was at. He was comfortable, and I think that every artist should get to that level one day, to where they’re not capping and they’re saying real things that are happening in their life and that they’re going through. And it should be uncut, like Dog did on this record.” Below, Swizz talks us through—track by track—the last musical testament of friend and icon DMX. **“That’s My Dog” (feat. The LOX & Swizz Beatz)** “Setting the tone was very important. This is a real curated body of work, and me and X hadn\'t been in the studio like this for 12 years. The first rapper you hear on the album is Jadakiss, so that\'s letting you know the tone right there for where we going. This is not play-around.” **“Bath Salts” (feat. JAY-Z & Nas)** “Out the gate, we just wanted to put pressure on everybody—and then take them on this journey at the same time. With Hov and Nas, people know what they getting, you know what I’m saying?” **“Dogs Out” (feat. Lil Wayne & Swizz Beatz)** “Wayne always spoke highly of X—when he was living *and* when he passed. If you go and you look at YouTube, you see Wayne bringing out X at \[Miami Beach nightclub\] LIV. His concert I was at, he did a whole tribute about X. They went crazy \[here\].” **“Money Money Money” (feat. Moneybagg Yo)** “I didn\'t want the album just to be artists from when X first came out. I wanted it—and he wanted it—to be energy from today, which is why Pop Smoke originally had this slot. I actually made the beat for Pop Smoke. Pop Smoke was like, \'I want something that sound like X.\' And then I think by mistake or whatever, the verses got out, and they was put on different songs, so we had to change it at the last minute. The song is called \'Money Money Money,\' so I felt like Moneybagg Yo was perfect for it, and I actually like him as an artist. The beat reminded me of \'Stop Being Greedy\' a little bit when I was doing it. It put me in that old X vibe.” **“Hold Me Down” (feat. Alicia Keys)** “‘Hold Me Down’ is one of my favorite records, not only because of my wife on it, but because the way that DMX opens up about his life. If you listen to the record, he starts off, ‘I\'m pulled in opposite directions, my life\'s in conflict/That’s why I spit words that depict a convict.’ And to have a simple chorus that\'s just saying, \'Hold me down\'—’cause that\'s all X wanted. He wanted the people that loved him to hold him down. That\'s what he cared about.” **“Skyscrapers” (feat. Bono)** “Bono is like family to me, and I had \[an early version of the track\]. I asked for his permission to give it to my brother because I felt that he deserved it more, especially with the body of work that we was working on. As soon as X heard it, he automatically went in. And then it was crazy, ’cause Bono was writing him saying, ‘Man, it\'s an honor to have my voice next to yours.’ He drew him a drawing and wrote X a poem and everything right before he passed. It was pretty deep.” **“Stick Up Skit” (feat. Cross, Infrared & Icepick)** “This is the late, great Icepick Jay, who passed away \[in 2017\]. He did all the skits, so that was kind of like paying homage. It just fit, and we can\'t have an album with no skits.” **“Hood Blues” (feat. Westside Gunn, Benny the Butcher & Conway the Machine)** “\[Griselda and DMX\], they was both fans of each other. X liked them cause they was super hard. And they was a fan of X, so that was pretty easy. X kind of did this one on his own, to be honest. I just sent the beat and they did they thing.” **“Take Control” (feat. Snoop Dogg)** “\[Snoop and DMX\], they knew they wanted to do something after Verzuz. We did the song and it was like, ‘Yo, you know what? Snoop would sound good on this.’ That’s Marvin Gaye and that\'s \'Sexual Healing,\' so you know we had to do the right thing. I love that record. It shows you the \'How\'s It Goin\' Down\' vibe.” **“Walking in the Rain” (feat. Nas, Exodus Simmons & Denaun)** “\[DMX’s son\] Exodus was in the studio with us for a lot of \[the album\]. He was loving ‘Walking in the Rain’ and he just started singing it and he was on beat and everything. It was a beautiful sight to see.\" **“Letter to My Son (Call Your Father)” (feat. Usher & Brian King Joseph)** “\[DMX\] pulled me in the corner and was like, ‘I\'m going to let you hear this.’ I kept it acoustic so you could hear every word, and then felt like it needed something else. Then Usher came into the studio and did what he did to it. I left it to where the music had some space for people to reflect instead of it being a whole bunch of words, ’cause X didn\'t put a whole bunch of words on a record. He said what he said. And it was beautiful.” **“Prayer”** “This was live at Kanye\'s Sunday Service. It was his latest prayer. That\'s why we put that one on there. He did another one where he was rapping, but this one feels more like what it should be. He was the master of prayers, for sure.”
There’s a liquid, surreal feeling that runs through *Pray for Haiti*, a sense of touching solid ground only to leave it just as fast. Between the bars of Newark rapper Mach-Hommy\'s dusty, fragmented beats (many courtesy of the production regulars of Griselda Records), he glimpses thousand-dollar brunches (“Au Revoir”), bloodshed (“Folie Á Deux”), and the ghosts of his ancestors (“Kriminel”) with spectral detachment—not uncaring so much as stoic, the oracle at the outskirts who moves silently through a crowd. He likes it grimy (“Magnum Band,” “Makrel Jaxon”) and isn’t above materialism or punchlines (“Watch out, I ain’t pulling no punches/So real I make Meghan Markle hop out and get the Dutches”), but is, above all, a spiritualist, driven by history (like a lot of his albums, this one is peppered with Haitian Creole), feel, and a quiet ability to turn street rap into meditation. “It’s crazy what y’all can do with some old Polo and Ebonics,” he raps on “The 26th Letter”—a joke because he knows it’s not that simple, and a flex because, for him, it is.
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, the 2021 alliance of Lil Baby and Lil Durk is historic. There hasn’t been a real-time coupling of two of contemporary hip-hop’s most beloved and revered MCs like this since at least 2015’s *What a Time to Be Alive*. Their *The Voice of the Heroes* project—the title references their respective nicknames—is a testament not only to their relationship, but to the respect they have for their legacies. It’s hard to imagine either being more popular within the hip-hop space, and yet hip-hop—the kind heavily informed by street life, to be specific—is what we get across *The Voice of the Heroes*, wholly. The closest thing to a pop aspiration on the project is the Travis Scott feature, and even Cactus Jack taps into his gutter side while detailing the consequences of going against the gang (“Bro, do it silent without a potato,” he says on “Hats Off”). Elsewhere on the album are guest appearances from Meek Mill, Young Thug, and the face of pain rap himself, Rod Wave. Though it would appear Baby and Durk spared no expense with regard to production (London on da Track, Turbo, Wheezy, Murda Beatz, among others), the two never lose sight of the fact that the real draw is what happens when they get in the same room, which is the kind of rapping that has made each a king in his own right, compounded by the kind of chemistry that makes them sound like an actual group.
Released nearly two years to the day after his tragic death, Juice WRLD\'s second posthumous album sounds even more haunted than the first. As the title suggests, the songs here hinge on the rapper\'s inner battles, and it\'s a brutal listen. He goes round after round with his addictions, mental health, and self-destructive behaviors, seemingly fighting back and giving up in turns. Metro Boomin\'s gorgeous string-propelled production on opening track “Burn” brims with melancholy to set the mood for what\'s to come—as Juice declares midway through, “The truth hurts, let it bleed out.” And there are many painful truths to reckon with on *Fighting Demons*. “Rockstar in His Prime” dispels the notion that money and fame are any match for inner turmoil and the quest to numb or escape it. His dance with death, whether as a lifeline or a foregone conclusion, exposes the depth of darkness that can poison a mind; what is a platitude to someone who, as he admits on the harrowing “Already Dead,” hasn\'t felt alive in years? It\'s uncomfortable but worthwhile to understand what a person is up against and to consider that the act of saying it aloud, without fear of judgment, may not be glorification but a potential path to healing. When the possibility of better days seems tenuous at best, Juice still finds a way to summon something akin to optimism. “Understand, none of these drugs make the person I am/Sober up, I can, sorry but I can\'t,” he raps on “Feel Alone,” before falling into his signature melodies: “Hope to see tomorrow, the potency of sorrow/I was thinking hopefully, maybe hopefully, there\'s some dopamine I could borrow.” The candor in his lyrics, spilling out in detail like private journal entries, is relentless, but his courage to share anyway is inspiring. *Fighting Demons* is as much a cautionary tale as a heroic one—may we never forget that Juice fought for his life until the very end, as the tenacity of his artistry continues to shine beyond the grave.
Roddy Ricch knows that even people you respect can give you bad advice. “My OG told me like, ‘Man, you should make a song fast,’” Ricch tells Apple Music. “I remember him saying, ‘Fast money, fast bitches, fast cars—make a song like that.’ I knew that wasn\'t it, even in that time.” Which sort of explains how Roddy Ricch fans were made to wait two years between *Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial* and *LIVE LIFE FAST*. The MC knows that quality takes time. As does securing contributions from some of hip-hop’s most in-demand feature artists, including Kodak Black, 21 Savage, Future, Takeoff, Gunna, and Lil Baby. But even those names only appear in service of Ricch’s vision. His goal across songs like “all good,” “rollercoastin,” “paid my dues,” “crash the party,” and “man made”—to name but a few—is to detail how good he’s already living, and then to express gratitude for the talent that got him there. It’s almost as if the way the music would be received wasn’t even a concern. “I feel like people think, why he don\'t put out a lot of music, or why he don\'t deal with a lot of artists?” he says. “But it\'s like when I do that song with NLE Choppa, and they go three times \[platinum\]…or when I do that song with 42 Dugg, and it goes platinum—I could really pop the shit that n\*\*\*as can\'t pop. \'Cause it\'s like, some n\*\*\*as is just doing songs, getting lucky. I\'m shooting my shot knowing I\'m a hit.”
Madvillain superfans will no doubt recall the Four Tet 2005 remix EP stuffed with inventive versions of cuts from the now-certified classic rap album *Madvillainy*. Coming a decade and a half later, *Sound Ancestors* sees Kieran Hebden link once again with iconic hip-hop producer Madlib, this time for a set of all-new material, the product of a years-long and largely remote collaboration process. With source material arranged, edited, and recontextualized by the UK-born artist, the album represents a truly unique shared vision, exemplified by the reggae-tinged boom-bap of “Theme De Crabtree” and the neo-soul-infused clatter of “Dirtknock.” Such genre blends turn these 16 tracks into an excitingly twisty journey through both men’s seemingly boundless creativity, leading to the lithe jazz-hop of “Road of the Lonely Ones” and the rugged B-boy business of “Riddim Chant.”
Westside Gunn has said he doesn\'t plan to rap forever, eyeing instead a more behind-the-scenes, executive-producer kind of role for his future. Thus it\'s fitting that *Hitler Wears Hermes 8: Sincerely Adolf*, the first half of a double-volume project, is as much an exercise in curation as it is a display of his own prowess. He selects some of the finest beats of his career; soulful loops abound, but there\'s also a refined, cinematic quality to them that lays a smooth path for the rapper and his features to skate on. And skate they do: With features from the likes of Mach-Hommy, Boldy James, Jadakiss, and Lil Wayne as well as his Griselda counterparts Benny the Butcher and Conway the Machine, Westside Gunn brings out the best of guests just as they do him, and they fill the album with enough one-liners and high-fashion coke raps to last a lifetime. If the second half resembles this one—and if, indeed, the Buffalo rapper is stepping back from the spotlight on wax—his parting gift will be the way he and his associates have cornered the market for brash, mafioso-style rhymes that remind of bygone eras yet are perfectly suited for a modern landscape where trap rap reigns. The Flygod does it like no other.
As a lifelong fan of anime, Steven Ellison was struck by the lack of Black characters in the genre. So he decided to do something about it, signing on as an executive producer of *Yasuke*, a Netflix series from creator LeSean Thomas about a Black samurai in feudal Japan. Naturally, Ellison—aka Flying Lotus—scored the series too. An extension of the genre-free experiments of his solo catalog, his soundtrack for the show doubles as an ambitious act of world-building. Produced under the kinds of deadlines that don’t normally apply to his sprawling albums, this one moves quickly through different moods and styles: “War at the Door” pairs traces of trap and footwork with blockbuster-grade drums; “Your Lord” plants its flag halfway between easy listening and John Carpenter; the ambient “Shoreline Sus” negotiates a truce between ’70s Berlin and ’80s Japan. Soft tendrils of synthesizer, reminiscent of Vangelis’ *Blade Runner* soundtrack, serve as a through line for the album, highlighting its sci-fi glow, though a few tracks, like the jazz-funk “Crust,” wouldn’t sound out of place on one of FlyLo’s studio LPs. And while the music is largely instrumental, a few standout vocal tracks rank among the musician’s most affecting songwriting. “Hiding in the Shadows,” featuring Niki Randa, is a quietly operatic lullaby set to Japanese strings; “Black Gold,” the protagonist’s theme song, makes the most of Thundercat’s wistful falsetto. And a feature from Denzel Curry helps turn “African Samurai” into a minimalist masterpiece. A pulse-quickening showdown between blippy electronic beats and Curry’s lightning-fast flow, it’s the musical equivalent of blades slicing through air.
“I used to hear speculation: I\'m not really keeping up in music,” Meek Mill told Zane Lowe ahead of the release of his fifth album. “That\'s why I\'m trying to bring my best music and really showcase my talent for the people that really give me my credit. Because I\'ve been in this game for 10 years, man. I felt like this is the year that I really want mine because I sit in the studio by myself with a producer and try to remain a top artist.” *Expensive Pain* is where Meek Mill\'s effort pays off. Long heralded as one of the most preternaturally talented MCs in rap, Meek is bars-up consistently across *Expensive Pain*, delivering the kind of endless couplets that people who rewatch Funkmaster Flex freestyles live for. But he’s also expanded his repertoire to include the kind of Auto-Tuned harmonizing (see “On My Soul,” “Love Train,” and “Love Money”) that dominates contemporary hip-hop playlists. Getting there, he admits, was no small task. “Through quarantine, I sat back—even through a big writer\'s block—just trying to learn melody for months and months until I got confident enough,” he says. “And when I got back into the studio, my confidence just took me in a way where I felt like I could do anything in the booth.” What he does across *Expensive Pain* is tell us what life is like for Meek Mill in 2021. “How would you feel/When you so lit that you can’t tell if the love real,” he asks on Lil Uzi Vert collaboration “Blue Notes 2.” In addition to Vert, he’s called on Lil Baby and Lil Durk, A$AP Ferg, Moneybagg Yo, Kehlani, Brent Faiyaz, and, maybe most notably, London MC Giggs, to help him talk about how being rich and famous isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. But while “mo money, mo problems” is a concept at least as old as the Notorious B.I.G. song, Meek also needs us to know that he’s never far from what made him. “I always try to stay close to my hood,” he says. “Not hang in the hood, because I can\'t, but just to get the feeling and the understanding of never forgetting where I come from and what the people go through, so when I deliver my music, it\'s still got real feel to it that people can actually feel inside instead of just dance to.”
The 49-year-old Brownsville rapper cuts a mythic figure: Raised on the mean streets of ’70s Brooklyn, he now splits his time between being a NYC fire captain and crafting dense rap allegories that touch on Greek mythology and the code of the samurai. But on *A Martyr’s Reward*, Ka strips down everything—the mythology, the production—to tell his own story, unembellished, over hauntingly minimalist (and mostly self-produced) beats. But it isn’t just his story; it’s the story of surviving being Black in America—or, in the cases of too many of his friends, not surviving. And on “I Need All That,” he demands retribution: “I want back everything they took/My culture, my music, my look.”
Pop music is, by design, kaleidoscopic, and Doja Cat\'s third album takes full advantage of its fluidity. *Planet Her* is ushered in on the euphoric Afropop of “Woman” and moves seamlessly into the reggaetón-kissed “Naked,” the hip-hop-meets-hyperpop of “Payday,” and the whimsical ad-lib trap of “Get Into It (Yuh)”—and that\'s just the first four songs. Later, R&B ballads and club-ready anthems also materialize from the ether, encompassing the spectrum of contemporary capital-P Pop and also the multihued sounds that are simply just popular, even if only in their corners of the internet for now. This is Doja\'s strength. She\'s long understood how mainstream sensibility interacts with counterculture (or what\'s left of it anyway, for better and worse), and she\'s nimbly able to translate both. *Planet Her* checks all the right boxes and accentuates her talent for shape-shifting—she sounds just as comfortable rapping next to Young Thug or JID as she does crooning alongside The Weeknd or Ariana Grande—but it\'s so pristine, so in tune with the music of the moment that it almost verges on parody. Is this Doja\'s own reflection or her reflecting her fans back to themselves? Her brilliance lies in the fact that the answer doesn\'t much matter. The best pop music is nothing if not a blurring of the lines between reality and fantasy, its brightest stars so uniquely themselves and yet whatever else they need to be, too.
In 2019, Atlanta MC Grip was at a crossroads. He’d released two official projects, 2019’s *Snubnose* having been the latest, but was yet to see any of the spoils he’d worked towards as one of the most honest, observant, and technically proficient rappers in his state. Touring Europe with JID had exposed him to new listeners, but when the pandemic slowed the entertainment industry en masse, forcing Grip to consider some moneymaking schemes he’d long ago thought he’d graduated from, the MC began to take a good hard look at what music was *not* doing for him. “And then,” he tells Apple Music, “Eminem reached out.” The Shady Records head honcho had apparently loved *Snubnose*, and went on to offer Grip a deal exponentially more desirable than the ones he and musical partner Tu had been fielding as relative unknowns in the years prior. With the support of someone like Em—which included a guest verse for his Shady debut *I Died for This!?*—Grip’s passion for storytelling was born anew, allowing the MC to recount, for fans and newcomers alike, exactly what he’d gone through to get here. “I gave up damn near everything for this,” he says. “But part of you is also questioning everything that you gave up in order to get to this point and just being a totally different person than you were when you originally started the journey. Parts of me have died that I\'ll never get back. So yeah, I died for this.” Below, the MC takes us through the life-affirming project, track by track. **“And the Eulogy Read!?” (feat. Wiley From Atlanta)** “You know how a eulogy is somewhat a summary of your life up to that point? So what it was was a summary of everything that had been going on with me up until the album drops.” **“Hands Up!”** “This was one of the first tracks that I made with DJ Khalil. I remember listening to it in the car and when the hook portion comes on, it\'s just like, this shit just sounds like it was meant for a fucking concert, meant for people to react to. So the first thing that came to mind was how it is for me to interact with the crowd and how powerful that shit is. So then from there, I just dive into \'hands up\'—of course, like you would do that at a concert, but also like the cops said it. That\'s something that\'s always in the back of our minds as we navigate, as Black men.” **“IDFT!?”** “‘IDFT!?’, being the title track, represents the greenness or just being naive when you first get that rap check. It’s like that braggadocious feeling that you got as a n\*\*\*a who ain’t never had shit when you come across that first check. That\'s probably the biggest check he ever seen. It\'s kind of like, \'Yo, I went through hell for this. Like, I *died* for this.\' That\'s one of the ones that have the exclamation.” **“Momma Told Me!”** “It\'s just one of those tracks that\'s announcing myself as a presence in this game. Second verse, of course, is just lyrical showcase, bars and shit, but the hook, \'My momma told me don\'t mess with these messy lil hoes/Get a check, make it stretch and get more\'—it\'s just how we grew up. And just that those lessons die hard. You’re staying the same person in a sense, where you\'re still trying to keep what momma told you inside, but at the same time, you might bend her words a little bit and just use it as a flex. \'My momma told me\' is a flex. So yeah, another exclamation point.” **“Placebo” (feat. Royce da 5’9)** “This song was originally just one beat. We ended up adding one more beat and then Tu hit me with the idea, ‘Hey, let\'s do three beats.’ I thought about it and I\'m like, well, matter of fact, this shit can be art. Royce, he bodied it. Not necessarily a slight to other rappers, but just how all this other shit is hype. The shit ain\'t healing you, n\*\*\*a. It\'d be cool for the moment, but real music is here to last.” **“Gutter!” (feat. Wara)** “‘Gutter!’ was also one of the first songs that we made \[for the album\]. A lot of people didn\'t like the distortion, but coming off of *Snubnose*, we was looking to do some different shit. Outkast is my favorite group of all time; \'Da Art of Storytellin\', Pt. 2\' was one of the first tracks I heard with distortion. The song is pretty much just a \'fuck you\' to critics ahead of time.” **“JDDTTINT!?” (feat. Dead Cassettes)** “I had been listening to a lot of rock. ‘Human Sadness’ by Julian Casablancas and The Voidz is one of my favorite songs of the past few years. I just wanted to speak on pop culture and celebrity status and how it\'s demanded of the celebrities to just \'Take a pic, crack a smile/You owe it to the world every once in a while\' and just people being unaware of the pressures that come behind that shit. We\'ve lost so many of our icons—2Pac, the Kurt Cobains, the Pop Smokes—whether it was overdoses or violence and shit. It\'s an ode to everyone that\'s ever been in the limelight who has ever sacrificed to be in this position and died. And then me, as a father, I\'m a hero to my kids. It\'s like, hey, you\'re doing the same thing, but just don\'t die this time.” **“A Soldier’s Story?”** “I say, \'My hunger to be regarded as the best is what\'s starving me to death/Partially depressed, harboring regret, targeting success, bartering\'—that\'s how I felt at a certain point. I\'m reaching for this goal and we\'re doing this shit, and we\'re *kind of* getting noticed, but at the same time, nothing\'s changing. We had already dropped *Snubnose*. It was critically acclaimed and all this shit. I was just at a point like, maybe I was going too hard in this shit and maybe it\'s time to do something else. And then Eminem reached out.” **“Walkthrough!” (feat. Eminem)** “Originally, we weren\'t sure if we were going to be able to get Em on the album. But I knew I really wanted him on the shit. Me and Tu sit down and we didn\'t hear him on any of the songs. I said, \'Out of respect for the project and for the art, let\'s craft something from scratch.\' We end up flying to Detroit, playing the album for Em and the team, and before I even let Em know that this is the track I wanted him on, he\'s like, \'Damn, that hook was dope as fuck.\' I was like, \'I\'m glad you think so, because this is the track I wanted you on, brother.\'” **“The Lox!” (feat. Tate228)** “Shout-out to my guy Tate228. He\'s from Mississippi, but been in Atlanta. We actually went to high school together. He\'s got that real gritty, street but still intelligent shit. The first part of \'The Lox!\' is actually produced by Tedd Boyd. Tu killed the \[other part\]. But it\'s just another one of those tracks that can get the people going. My mind state at the time was \'I want it all: money, power, and respect.\'” **“Enem3?” (feat. Big Rube)** “This song, it\'s just pretty much about self-reflection and just facing the truth. When I first heard the beat, this shit made me think of some Phil Collins shit. I didn\'t want to rap on it. I didn\'t even have to give Rube too much of a description, because he\'s a fucking genius.” **“ConMan?” (feat. Ahyes)** “‘Con Man’ is a love song from the perspective of me realizing that I was a con man. And by the time I realized what it was, it wasn\'t no way to get out of it without somebody\'s heart being broken. Part of the point of view is selfish. Because I\'m blaming someone that I was in love with for the way that my career unfolded. \'I was too focused on you and I should\'ve been been more focused on rap when all my peers were, because now they\'re ahead of me. Because when they were focusing on rap, I was focusing on us.\' It\'s an apology. It\'s a love letter. It\'s growth for me.” **“Glenwood Freestyle!”** “Glenwood is a neighborhood on the east side, and back in the day, back when we were in high school and shit, everybody bring their old-schools out, motherfuckers cooking out, motherfuckers wilding out in the street playing their music loud. That naive state of mind, where you\'re just like, \'Gotta push that GLE \'fore I\'m pushin\' daisies.\' That shit\'s what\'s important at the time, because you ain\'t never had the shit.” **“At What Cost?”** “Yeah, I got to this point, but at what cost? What did I give up? It\'s not necessarily speaking on my situation with Shady. This is about the industry and how an artist can fall into that shit and have no other options and be forced to go through that cycle. It\'s just about the plight of the starving artist.” **“Patterns?”** “I was on a beach in LA late into the night. I had been listening to *Sgt. Pepper\'s Lonely Hearts Club Band*. And then me, Beat Butcha, and Willy Yanez made the song from scratch. I sat with it and just got in the mindset of wanting to speak on those sacrifices like missing your kids\' first steps and shit. And them being too young to even know that you let them down. Because my pops wasn\'t in my life. So it\'s like, \'I\'ll be damned if I\'m not in my kids\' life.\' I know I\'m not necessarily perfect at this point, because I\'m too busy chasing this shit. It’s still feeling like a dream, you ain\'t getting no respect, but you’re literally devoting time out of your life to this.” **“Pennies…Exit Stage Left!?” (feat. Kay Nellz & Kenny Mason)** “Early on when we started mapping out the album, thinking about what our influences were going to be, \[Outkast’s\] *Stankonia* was heavy. *Stankonia* broke a lot of sound barriers for hip-hop music, especially Southern hip-hop music. I wanted to tap into other genres on this album. I wanted to mesh everything, blend some shit.”
Few producers can make dance tracks as soulful and at the same time futuristic as KAYTRANADA. On the “Intimidated” single, the Montreal producer/DJ enlists a number of guests—as has been his MO for a while now—accentuating their strengths while keeping the vibe purely in his own pocket. The lead track, featuring H.E.R., bumps along gently, letting the singer glide over an easy house beat, KAYTRA’s signature drums sluggish but still slinky. “Be Careful” gives Thundercat’s silky falsetto an equally laidback, downtempo pulse. But the gem here just might be \"$payforhaiti,\" with the mysterious Griselda rapper Mach-Hommy. (Both he and KAYTRANADA have Haitian roots.) In a mix of Haitian Creole and English, Mach-Hommy drops lines like “I told my n\*\*\*a ‘pray for Haiti’ and he told me ‘take the R out.’” For KAYTRA, it’s a rare, fiery political turn—and low-slung hip-house perfection.
