Hiphopheads Best of 2022

When Ari Lennox dropped her debut album *Shea Butter Baby* in 2019, the D.C. native was a young woman exploring love and heartbreak while trying to understand her self-worth beyond sex. Now, with her sophomore outing, Lennox ditches the romantic uncertainty and frustrations about not receiving the love she deserves for a sultrier, sexier, more self-assured collection of songs. “I just was being my regular hopeless romantic self and crushing on just completely terrible individuals that for whatever reason in that state I completely romanticized, and I’m recognizing I love the idea of love,” Lennox tells Apple Music radio’s Nadeska. “Sometimes it can feel like something that’s really unavoidable or unhealthy or avoidant. So it’s just really me just trying to maneuver through this dating life, which can be so exhausting.” Described by Lennox as a “transitional space before my current ‘eat, pray, love’ journey,” *age/sex/location* is a play on online dating and AOL chat rooms, where Lennox’s adventures in dating began. The opening track, “POF,” named after the dating site Plenty of Fish, introduces Lennox’s frustrations with the lack of good men in her life. However, despite experiencing not-so-good outcomes with these lackluster relationships, she still desires companionship. Over a bluesy bassline and gentle percussion, Lennox yearns for love but asserts her power in understanding what she doesn’t want. “Young Black woman approachin’ 30 with no lover in my bed/Cannot settle, I got standards,” she sings. Not every song on the 12-track project is about setting boundaries and lovelorn texts; the best moments are when Lennox pivots into the salacious details of her sensual pleasures. On the seductive and hypnotic “Hoodie,” Lennox lustfully crushes on a potential lover while trying to get underneath his clothes. She continues to express her passion and desires on tracks like “Pressure,” “Stop By,” and the Chlöe Bailey-assisted “Leak It.” Other guests on the album include Summer Walker, who lends her buttery vocals on the Erykah Badu-esque closer “Queen Space,” and Lucky Daye, who does his best to woo Lennox on the flirtatious duet-skit “Boy Bye.” The song plays like a game of cat and mouse with Daye’s slick talk and player-like lines, and Lennox, who’s dismissive but secretly is kind of into him too, offers up her cheeky one-liners in response, singing, “Those lines belong in 1995/Just like them funky Nikes.” “I love people who play,” Lennox says of the song. “Or not play with my feelings, but we’re playing around. We’re goofing around as long as your actions or your energy can show that you’re a secure, nice person. Me and Lucky, it was just really innate and natural. And we’re just lovers of soul. I feel like lovers of love.” *age/sex/location* showcases Lennox’s storytelling as the album starts with her search for authenticity in her suitors and ends with removing negative influences (“Blocking You”) and setting boundaries while emphasizing her self-worth (“Queen Space”). The evolution is evident in comparison to her *Shea Butter Baby* debut: Where she was hoping for reciprocation from her lover, now she demands it with a promise of cutting the relationship off without it.

Since his release from jail in early 2021, the majority of any attention directed towards Kodak Black was a by-product of the MC\'s freewheeling lifestyle: beefing with former friends, making romantic advances to other rap stars via social media, and even getting shot outside of a Los Angeles nightclub. But then came “Super Gremlin.” The ATL Jacob- and Jambo-produced song, which took off just about as soon as it was released (“Super Gremlin” first appeared on October 2021’s *Sniper Gang Presents Syko Bob & Snapkatt: Nightmare Babies* album), appears as a bonus track on Kodak’s *Back for Everything*. And in the context of the album, it was foreshadowing of the artist informally known as Yak’s return to form. *Back for Everything*, as its title implies, is Kodak Black returning from a hiatus that began with his incarceration in 2019 on gun-related charges (Kodak’s full sentence was commuted by Donald Trump in early 2021). The album, though, is the MC getting back to the uniquely catchy flows and endlessly inventive non sequiturs that once inspired Drake to proclaim, via Instagram comment, “You really all that for this generation and the next one if we being honest.” On *Back for Everything*, Kodak is less worried about his influence—“I switched my flow on them lil’ n\*\*\*as who tried to steal my sound,” he says on the Zaytoven-produced “Elite Division”—and more concerned with emptying out the scratchpad that is his brain. Aside from maybe “Vulnerable” or “Love Isn’t Enough,” no song on *Back for Everything* is about any one thing, a pattern that recalls some of the most impressive verses of Lil Wayne’s mixtape catalog. So much of the rapping here sounds like freestyling in the traditional sense, but only to the extent that you’re listening to a savant at work. Yak sounds like he’s having the most fun stringing together lines about his girlfriend’s undergarments, what he has in common with Martin Luther King, his mom’s jewelry, why he has to smoke weed, and when it was that he lost his virginity in one particular sequence on “Purple Stamp.” He’s talking about anything and everything he wants to across *Back for Everything*, and that, more than anything, seems to be what was worth coming back for.

MIKE’s mumbled delivery and hazy, soul-sampling beats might not seem uplifting at first. But get on his level and you’ll find a world of small wonders and daily affirmations believable, in part, because of how ordinary he seems, whether he’s flubbing a verse (“Nuthin I Can Do Is Wrng”) or pointing out how he loves music—but, hey, other people might prefer basketball (“Eczema”). For listeners who’ve followed him before, you’ll note that he sounds happier and more alert. And while he still lives in his head, the depression that served as his muse on albums like *tears of joy* and *War in My Pen* has evolved into something more sustainable: gratitude.

Beware of the Monkey produced by dj blackpower artwork by Bianca Fields

produced and recorded by myself (Jacob Matthew Christensen) in a bunch of different states inside a bunch of different rooms and closets and airbnbs and friends houses and ... yeah. here's what I got. i hope u like it :)

In July of 2022, a weight was lifted from the shoulders of beloved Baton Rouge MC YoungBoy Never Broke Again when a Los Angeles court found him not guilty of possessing a firearm and ammunition as a felon. A conviction would have added to a near endless amount of interruptions that YB’s career has sustained from trouble with the law, so the clearing of his name was as good a reason as any to celebrate, which he does with *The Last Slimeto*. At 30 songs, the album is true to YB’s reputation as one of the most consistently prolific artists of his era, YoungBoy weaving in and out of two of his most prominent vocal styles: aggressive-to-the-point-of-teeth-gnashing rapping, and his twangy, unmistakable, and dependably emo singing. There’s enough YB to go around here, and, if the pace at which he traditionally releases music is to be trusted, more than enough to hold fans down until the next time he drops.

a tape called component system with the auto reverse

Stormzy’s third studio album finds the Merky rapper in a whole new headspace. “I started in LA, trying to record the album there, but the pandemic hit, and a few other things,” he tells Apple Music. “Suddenly, I wasn’t feeling the energy of the music I was making—so I came back home with a new plan: to get all of the producers in one place, and record this album there.” Sanctuary was eventually found on Osea Island—an enchanting and secluded haven in Essex—gifting the Londoner fertile ground to plot his third record with handpicked musicians and writers. The result is his most mature—and consciously soulful—offering to date. “This album is also testament to producer Stormz, the kind of Stormzy that people don’t really know,” he says. “One of my skills is being able to produce from an executive view, guiding other musicians towards my vision. I’ve always had the ethos where the best idea wins. So I might want to \[record\] something, but if there’s someone better for it, I’ll always allow them to do it.” In many ways, the gentle, soul-searching sound of this LP should come as no surprise—after all, Stormzy records often attempt to integrate R&B and gospel. But *This Is What I Mean* has a far more explicit through line: a desire to interrogate the experience of losing love. Speaking from the heart—aided by a string of songwriters (Jacob Collier, Tems) and top production talent (P2J, PRGRSHN)—Stormzy finds the words for heartfelt ballads (“Firebabe”) and poignant duets (“Holy Spirit”), while he employs Sampha as an emotional conduit on a spirited intermission (“Sampha’s Plea”). By the time we reach the stunning closer (“Give It to the Water”), it becomes clear the opportunity to reshape and remold himself in the face of such pain was simply too important to pass up. “I think back to what \[co-president of 0207 Def Jam\] Twin B told me before \[headlining\] Glastonbury \[in 2019\]: ‘As much as it’s Glasto, it’s another show in a park, and you’ve done hundreds of them,’” he says. “And it’s true: Once you kill the size, or the magnitude, of the task, that’s when you allow people to be at their most real and honest.” Below, he takes us through the story of *This Is What I Mean*, track by track. **“Fire + Water”** “This track came from my first session with PRGRSHN on my return to London. And it was quite spiritual. The first half is what he made that day—and everything you hear me sing, even the structure of my verse, was put down right at that moment. From here, this song went on a two-year journey. Tendai came along and helped on the transition part, and then we got to Osea Island—where Debbie made ‘Pour Me Water.’ Later I was on tour, listening to the song for ages, and eventually had a lightbulb moment: I realized I needed a transition to get from the beginning of the song to ‘Pour Me Water.’ Even that took six months to figure out the drums and the tempo, but, we got there in the end.” **“This is What I Mean”** “I made this with Knox Brown and P2J, and it started extremely different to how it ended up. The only thing that’s the same, I guess, is the sparse intro—leading to the drop. P2J had this wicked idea to sample Jacob Collier, and make an insane rhythm out of \[layering\] his vocals. I’ve always thought that Ms Banks is one of the coldest rappers, I’ve said this to her, I just love her tone. So she killed her bit, and Amaarae sang the melody on it. There\'s also something in her voice, her style and attitude that’s so sick. Lastly, I wanted a second verse from another rapper, but we went around in circles and it never really moved along. Until Twin went to Ghana and I think he had an idea for Black Sherif to ad-lib me, but Black Sherif heard the riddim, went into the booth, and laid this fucking insane outro.” **“Firebabe”** This is the second song I made with Debbie—and it started out with George Moore playing some chords. They’re currently making a track that’s one of my favorite songs of all time, I heard it and knew I needed to get with them both. After fiddling with the chords, Debbie and I got down to writing and we came up with this.” **“Please”** “During this process, I became fascinated with the word ‘please,’ its many meanings and the sincerity of it. It’s a word we use all the time, but I’d never heard it isolated and repeated before. Please is painful, please is desperate…so many things, and it just made me think of what *my* please would be.” **“Need You”** “This is probably the only song we had the intention to make before the album. Between myself, Twin, \[#Merky A&R\] Jermaine Agyako, and Kassa \[PRGRSHN\], there was this excitement to be making a song that encapsulates the three words we had up on the whiteboard: ‘Afro,’ ‘expensive,’ and ‘royal.’” **“Hide & Seek”** “Yes, that’s \[Nigerian singer\] Teni \[The Entertainer\] on the intro, but it was actually PRGRSHN that came up with that harmony. One of his God-given gifts, as well as being an incredible producer, is he’s an amazing songwriter and melody man.” **“My Presidents Are Black”** “I had the instrumental for maybe a year and a half. And for ages, I only had the first eight bars down. Everyone would ask when I was writing to it, and it just wasn’t the right time. Because of those bars, it started very intentionally, and I knew, ‘This ain’t the time to chat rubbish.’ Not even being purposely profound or deep, but what that piece of music was telling my spirit: ‘Rap your arse off, but say *something*.’” **“Sampha’s Plea”** “In terms of a voice with truth, emotion, and pain—you\'ll be hard-pressed to find one with more *feeling* than Sampha’s. I made ‘Please,’ and every time I heard it, I’d think, ‘How amazing would it be to hear Sampha sing this?’ I feel like it would be interesting to see what the word means to other artists, and Sampha is the first artist that I thought of. ‘Please’ feels like a confession booth, or an altar, that you’re just going to with your version. And Sampha came in and did that. It was just beautiful and breathtaking.” **“Holy Spirit”** “I was in the studio at the time with Dion Wardle \[aka ‘Chord Lord’\], and I was feeling really, really close to God. All my career, I’ve known Dion, he’s been on all of my albums, and has been the foundation on which I’ve built my songwriting and my melodies—I would sit in a room with him and a mic, he would play chords, and I would just sing to them. I’ve got loads of demos with Dion, beautiful, unfinished songs. So ‘Holy Spirit’ was probably a defining moment in my time working with him. The whole track is just one take of his chords and my melodies, and then I came back in and added lyrics.” **“Bad Blood”** “This is the only track we created outside of the bubble we created on Osea Island. It’s probably the song I was the most drawn to in a spiritual way. I saw the vision for this and felt it in my spirit, even if a lot of people on my team felt like it was the one \[track\] that didn’t need to exist on the album.” **“I Got My Smile Back”** “This is the last track I made for this album. So, at the camp, I asked Jacob \[Collier\] for two samples, a beautiful R&B one and a dark rap one, and he came back with this a cappella—so beautifully arranged. I didn’t even know what to do at first. I tried to sing, I tried to rap, but it was such a stunning piece of music that I wanted to tread lightly. For this one, I asked the amazing India.Arie to come and sing it. I’ve never worked with such a respected and phenomenal artist, but she approached it with class, grace, and so much service to the music. It was such a pleasure to work with her.” **“Give It to the Water”** “The only way to end this is by giving it to the water. I’ve bared my whole soul on this album—in terms of doing the work, accountability, forgiving myself and just allowing God to do the rest. I had just returned from Jamaica, which was a very extremely spiritual trip for me. And before we left, we went to the side of the ocean and we gave things away, our fears, our stresses, saying: ‘We’re not taking things back home, we leave those things here.’ In my first session back with Debbie, we got to the hook, trying to figure it out, and I was like, ‘Just give it to the water.’ Debbie asked me what it meant, so I explained that it’s just a beautiful way of saying, ‘Give it to God.’”

Upon the release of King Von’s *What It Means to Be King*, nearly a year and a half after his passing, a charting single from Lil Durk entitled “AHHH HA” finds him confronting the frustration of having to forge on without his friend. “Don’t respond to shit with Von!” Durk shouts on the chorus, imploring himself to ignore the near constant mentions of Von’s name that fill the comments of his social media posts. As difficult as it’s been for King Von fans to move on, as “AHHH HA” reveals, it’s been that much harder for those who knew the MC best. *What It Means to Be King*, though, is where those who did and did not know Von personally may find some semblance of healing. The album is packed with former peers and supporters like Lil Durk, 21 Savage, G Herbo, Moneybagg Yo, Fivio Foreign, Tee Grizzley, and Dreezy. Their voices complement Von’s across the board, helping him to lay out Chicago drill culture in the way he’d become renowned for. Von’s personal rap style, excited and ever aggressive, carves through production from frequent collaborator Chopsquad DJ, as well as Kid Hazel and ATL Jacob. The storytelling that gave him some of his first acclaim is fully intact here (“Where I’m From,” “Trust Nothing,” “Get It Done”), as is a romantic side (“My Fault”). But what his fans and even his friends are most likely to take from *What It Means to Be King* isn’t something they didn’t already know. When it comes to the legacy of dearly departed King Von, the music we got during the MC’s lifetime had only barely scratched the surface.

Before becoming a progenitor in the microgenre chillwave—defined by a 2000s indie rock culture obsessed with 1980s electro-synth sounds and nostalgic, dreamy bedroom pop—Toro y Moi (Chazwick Bradley “Chaz Bear” Bundick) was known for his experimental production, leading to a long run of widely lauded albums. *MAHAL* is his seventh, its title taken from the Tagalog word for “expensive.” It\'s also a good time in 13 songs, from the Parliament funk of “Postman” and the psychedelic percussion of “Clarity” to the garage-psych of “The Medium” featuring New Zealand band Unknown Mortal Orchestra and the smoky “Mississippi.” If chillwave was a flash-in-the-pan moment, Toro Y Moi has long since survived it.

The 13-track project marks the seventh studio album from Bear under the Toro y Moi moniker. To celebrate the announcement, Toro y Moi shares two singles from the forthcoming record "Postman" b/w "Magazine." Each of the new singles arrives with accompanying visuals. "Postman," directed by Kid. Studio, sees Toro and friends riding around the colorful San Francisco landscape in his Filipino jeepney, seen on the cover of MAHAL. "Magazine," directed by Arlington Lowell, sees Toro and Salami Rose Joe Louis, who supplies vocals on the track, dressed vibrantly in a photo studio spliced with various colorful graphics and playful edits. MAHAL's announcement and singles arrive on the heels of Toro's highly celebrated 2019 album Outer Peace, which Pitchfork described as "one of his best albums in years" along with his Grammy-nominated 2020 collaboration with Flume, "The Difference," which was also featured in a global campaign for Apple's Airpods. Today's releases mark the first from Toro y Moi since signing to Secretly Group label Dead Oceans. Dead Oceans is an independent record label established in 2007 featuring luminaries like Japanese Breakfast, Khruangbin, Phoebe Bridgers, Bright Eyes, Mitski, Slowdive and more. Toro y Moi is the 12+ year project of South Carolina-reared, Bay Area-based Chaz Bear. In the wake 2008’s global economic collapse, Toro y Moi emerged as a figurehead of the beloved sub-genre widely known as chillwave, the sparkling fumes of which still heavily influence musicians all over today. Over the subsequent decade, his music and graphic design has far, far surpassed that particular designation. Across 9 albums (6 studio as Toro y Moi along with a live album, compilation and mixtape) with the great Carpark label, he has explored psych-rock, deep house, UK hip-hop; R&B and well-beyond without losing that rather iconic, bright and shimmering Toro y Moi fingerprint. As a graphic designer, Bear has collaborated with brands like Nike, Dublab and Van’s. And as a songwriter and producer, he’s collaborated with other artists like Tyler, The Creator, Flume, Travis Scott, HAIM, and Caroline Polachek.

Prior to Young Dolph’s tragic passing in November 2021, many of his albums were boldly centered around near-death experiences, often anchored by defiant songs of survival against seemingly impossible odds. On the first posthumous project from the Memphis rapper, the vibrance of his artistry shines brightly as if in celebration of his incredible life. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the album was essentially completed while he was still alive, thus reflecting his high standards and overall vision. Yes, a world-weariness pervades a handful of cuts, namely the somber trap closer “Get Away.” Yet most of the album touches on his successes and all the corresponding spoils, evident on the luxe lifestyle raps of “Smoke My Weed” and “Woah.” He romanticizes the game he grew up with on “Love for the Streets” and reaffirms his dedication to the hustle amid the reminiscing of “Old Ways.” Gucci Mane guests on the hyper-virile “Roster,” while the 2 Chainz feature on “Beep Beep” stacks punchlines like bands.

“The whole concept of the album is me having a conversation with my mom, and we’re just catching up,” GIVĒON tells Apple Music of his debut album. Hers is the first voice we hear, as she tells the singer how proud she is of him. Then comes the nocturnal breakup jam “Let Me Go.” “Decide if I am worth the time I cause you/Let me know or let me go,” he declares on the hook, before Mom closes it out with a reminder: “People make mistakes/People don’t always agree with each other/Keep that in mind.” *Give or Take* unfolds like the pages of a journal, detailing the romantic escapades of a twentysomething who loves love but isn’t always prepared to have it. Between wandering eyes, bad timing, and a desire to heal always at odds with the weakness of the flesh, there’s a bit of everything here conceptually. The songs are experiences he recounts to his mom, in search of advice or perhaps absolution. “That’s why the stories kind of feel like a roller coaster and not just one smooth story—because it was more sporadic,” he explains. “I really wanted to give people a look behind the curtains of a 26-year-old man growing up today.” GIVĒON’s gorgeous voice has the kind of grit and soul that imbues every lyric with emotional resonance; the production throughout further adds to the mood while also allowing his instrument to take center stage. As a result, these songs sound—and feel—like some of his most mature to date, even as he searches for romantic maturity within himself. “I just wanted to make sure I was being honest and vulnerable, and making sure everything was elevated,” he says, adding that there was little different about his approach this time around. “I made my other stuff in 2019-2020, so naturally, with the course of time, I knew I was evolving as an artist, so I wasn’t really worried about it.” By the end of it all, Mom is brought to tears—the happy sort though. Below, GIVĒON shares the ideas and inspiration behind each of the songs. **“Let Me Go”** “I always think it’s really important to start with just a hook—something heavy, drums, just rhythmic. Pretty much the story of this one is either we’re going to be something or nothing at all, and then it ended up being nothing at all. So, that’s really just the end of everything before. That song was really just the closure.” **“Scarred”** “‘Scarred’ really is just running into someone fresh off of a heartbreak way too quick and really just telling them, ‘I’m a fan of what this is, but it’s not going to work because the breakup is so fresh and because I still have lingering issues that need to be resolved. But selfishly, we could still do everything we’re doing.’ Because it’s just, I don’t know, sometimes it feels easier to be in something while you try to heal versus just healing, staring at a wall.” **“dec 11th”** “I’m pretty much just setting the scene for the next song, ‘This Will Do.’ It’s really just a message or a Bat-Signal for just a connection that I made while on stage. And then, the next song really talks about how fleeting those connections are because it’s stage and it’s not real, essentially. So, December 11th, I did a sold-out show in Houston and, yeah, that’s the date of that show.” **“This Will Do”** “Sometimes, production will have their structures, but I feel like, sometimes, artists—we know what feels better because we know what to sing over. We know when to let it breathe. And I love to go into that space where it kind of just makes it flow more. So, for ‘This Will Do,’ this is the beginning of the story of me saying that I’m single for the first project ever, really. And one of the problems I run into being single and being me is not being quite sure what’s real and what’s fake, but this song is me acknowledging that possibility and then just going with it—saying it could be fake, yeah, but it’ll do.” **“Get to You”** “‘Get to You’ was meant to feel exhausting. You have all these options and then, now, it feels empty. It’s just the bachelor—single life is old, but it’s also a message to someone saying, ‘Sorry that I’m doing this on my time, but I kind of had to.’” **“Tryna Be”** “‘Tryna Be’ is just as simple as, ‘Listen, I’m trying to be everything that I should be and even that I want to be, but...’ It really speaks on distance as well and trying to be the best you can be when you know no one is looking. It also speaks to the mindset of telling someone and just being honest and no one caring, which is a very real thing. You’ll tell someone, ‘Listen, I have this, this, this,’ and they’ll be like, ‘You know what? I really don’t care.’ It just speaks on how toxic today is. Not that it’s a new concept, but it’s just—I don’t know, it’s wild out there.” **“Make You Mine”** “This is all still a part of a journey, so these are just checkpoints that I was going through. Once I get to ‘Make You Mine,’ I start to fall back into the romance of it all. It’s a rare moment of me being more sensual and just light and dreamy. I only have a few songs in this space—‘WORLD WE CREATED’ and ‘Garden Kisses’—and ‘Make You Mine’ is where we just see that side.” **“July 16th”** “So, pretty much, it’s just a timeline. At the end of ‘Make You Mine,’ there’s a transition, there’s a conversation being had. It’s me saying. ‘I know I’m moving too fast. I just can’t help it. It’s just how I am.’ And ‘July 16th’ is really just the message of, ‘I’m moving too fast again and trying not to but doing it anyway.’” **“For Tonight”** “I kind of tried to have this song where it feels contradictory in a way. The sonics are so—they feel romantic, and it feels like it’s a love song. But if you scratch the surface and actually look and listen and read the lyrics, you could kind of see the truth peek out and the taboo-ness of what I’m talking about. Because that’s really sometimes what relationships are and what life is: It looks and feels right on the outside, but then, once you put a magnifying glass on it, you could kind of start to see all the cracks.” **“Lost Me”** “So, ‘Lost Me’ is—I’m always in something. I’m always romantically involved, but for this time, I’m going to actually try to just take time for myself and not be bummed out about it, not be melancholy about it. It was just more of a shoulder-shrug, like honestly, let me just, for lack of a better word, do me and not make it feel like there’s anything wrong with it. That’s why the sonics are so—there’s so much rhythm to it. There’s so much bounce to it. It has the drums; it has the light and airy acoustic guitar that you hear throughout the whole song. It was me just chillin’.” **“Lie Again”** “‘Lie Again’ is really, it’s kind of almost self-explanatory. It’s just seeking information, getting that information, and then wishing you never had it.” **“Another Heartbreak”** “\[Piano ballads are\] one of my favorite forms and structures of songs, to where I like it so much, I tried to limit it to just one on this album. I can make piano ballads all day. But for ‘Another Heartbreak,’ I just wanted something stripped back but that also feels cinematic. So, throughout the song, there’s key changes and chord changes, and it still has a building element to it—there’s choir vocals, there’s strings. And the song is as simple as saying, ‘I got one more heartbreak left in me, so this has to work, or I’m done off all of it.’ It’s really just me saying I can’t take another one.” **“At Least We Tried”** “I just wanted to make sure I had real good moments as well. It’s easy to tell these stories of heartbreak and melancholy, but to be able to balance it with ‘At Least We Tried’ and stuff like that is, I think, what really makes it an album. Because it could just continue to go on that roller coaster.” **“Remind Me”** “That’s one of my favorite songs that was written on the album because it’s just such an introspective one. It’s like you’re looking at someone and they’re reminding you of the old you, when you weren’t as thoughtful and when you weren’t as caring and empathetic. And now, you pretty much just ran into you. It’s just karma.” **“Unholy Matrimony”** “‘Unholy Matrimony’ is just so—it’s heart-wrenching, but also it is what it is. That’s how it goes. And the story is just so visual. You could see the white dress, and you could see the tux, you could see it all happening throughout the song. And these conversations with my mom throughout the album are real, organic conversations that we had, and it all just came together perfectly.”

On his third solo album, Fred Gibson (better known as Fred again..) returns with his fingers firmly on the pulse of everything around him. Rounding out a deeply personal trilogy, *Actual Life 3* sees the London-based producer, DJ, and singer-songwriter once more thrive on the challenges of sound reinvention and renewal. “I think the feeling that I’ve become really obsessed with is taking very fleeting moments and exposing as much beauty as is in them,” he tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “You know how sometimes if you see something in normal timing, and then you see it in slow-mo, like, ‘Oh wow. There\'s a whole new emotional framing for this.’” Fred first envisioned this unique narrative in 2020 for his debut, *Actual Life*, released over lockdown as a remedy to the melancholic uncertainty of the time. Delivering three distinct chapters across 2021, the BRIT Award-winning producer (and longtime mentee of Brian Eno) dives deeper in his cache of bright snippets and samples from everyday scenes, fusing soul, R&B, and bass house elements for jaw-droppingly euphoric and intimate tracks. “Sometimes I’m conscious of it and sometimes I’m not,” he says. “But one thing I know is that when I’m there, I make loads of ideas.” Much of this LP was made on the move, via long airport stops, tube journeys, or lunchtime breaks. And, like its predecessors, this collection is predominantly influenced by this process, with tracks labeled after the people he’s worked with, or the inspirations behind them. Here, Gibson draws euphoria from fleeting emotions, filtering vocals from names including London rapper and singer BERWYN, Toronto poet Mustafa Ahmed, and G.O.O.D Music’s 070 Shake across woozy synths and deep, intrepid basslines. But *Actual Life 3* also differs in its greater worldly experience. As is the case with hits he’s penned for the likes of Ed Sheeran, BTS, George Ezra, and Stormzy, tracks including “Delilah (pull me out of this)” (sampling Delilah Montagu’s 2021 single “Lost Keys”) and “Bleu (better with time)” (slicing verses from Yung Bleu’s 2020 track “You’re Mines Still”) arrive with the boost of rapturous unveilings at Gibson’s online DJ sets and gig slots. Although getting the music to people’s ears on these occasions offered an ideal proving ground for his blossoming tracks, it was moments of solitude that gave him the most to work with. “When you\'re on your own,” he explains, “you can just be in the world—any place that gives you a conveyor belt of humanity, buzzing away in the background, often when there\'s a bubbling undercurrent of slight excitement, I think that’s just the ultimate gift.”

Atlanta’s Ken Carson may be at the forefront of a uniquely glitchy and mosh-pit-friendly sound in hip-hop, but at the tender age of 19, he’s somehow already spent plenty of time studying his city’s most impactful voices—and then also imagining himself in their shoes. “I used to hang out with TM88 and Southside all the time, so you \[didn’t\] know who was gon walk in the studio,” Carson told Zane Lowe in conversation ahead of the release of his album *X*. “But I was just the youngest guy in the room, so it’s like nobody really paying attention. Literally, every beat that I was listening to—in my head, I’m going crazy to it.” Fast-forward some five years, and Carson is going crazy to just about any beat of his choosing following the success of his *Teen X* EP series and 2021 album, *Project X*. Of his Interscope debut, which features production from names like Gab3, Gl1tch, Outtatown, Rok, Star Boy, and ssort, Carson points out that fans are getting the most dialed-in version of his aesthetic yet. “My fans know that I’m big on the ‘X’ thing,” he says. “This one is just *X*, so the title says a lot for itself. I feel like I didn’t get the most experimental—if anything, I was just trying to treat the ear.” Carson, who points to Future and Young Thug as his most immediate stylistic influences, chose fellow Opium signees Destroy Lonely and Homixide Gang as the album’s featured guests. But it’s his Opium label boss, Playboi Carti, whose influence not only reigns supreme, but whose support means the absolute most. “I been watching Carti do this for a long time,” Carson says. “So, for me to be doing it, too, it’s just a blessing. It’s like automatically insane. He tell me every day, ‘Bro, I’m proud of you.’ This shit crazy.”

A compilation companion piece to a docu on the late rap star.

During his time in the public eye, Japanese fashion icon Nigo has been a man of few words and famously great taste. Both traits are intact across 2022’s *I Know NIGO!*, a compilation album where the BAPE founder taps a small handful of his favorite hip-hop artists, all of whom have been spotted in the designer’s fashions over the years. The verses, however, are hardly drip-dependent. *I Know NIGO!* features multiple appearances from coke-rap devotee Pusha T, Nigo’s BBC and Ice Cream labels business partner Pharrell, and Tyler, The Creator and A$AP Rocky, who, outside of their respective solo outings, deliver a rap-off on “Lost and Found Freestyle 2019” in the tradition of the pair’s 2018 track “Potato Salad.” Elsewhere, there are mosh-pit-ready big-room anthems from Lil Uzi Vert and A$AP Ferg (“Heavy,” “Paper Plates”), one of the most well-enunciated verses of ATL spitter Gunna’s entire career (“Functional Addict”), a little hip-house from Nigo’s own group Teriyaki Boyz (“Morë Tonight”), and a rock-solid reminder of why Pop Smoke remains the face of Brooklyn drill rap a full two years after his death (“Remember”). There’s a lot to digest within the album’s 11 tracks, but Nigo was on the same mission here as he was when creating the BAPE pieces that superfans still scour the internet for: He was making something intended to outlast any single season.

DJ Drama and Jeezy—who became famous as Young Jeezy—were equally important to trap music becoming the dominant sound of hip-hop in the mid-aughts. Though trap is less of a powerhouse in 2022 than it was then, *SNOFALL*, a project released almost 20 years after their first pairing (2004’s *Tha Streetz Iz Watchin’* mixtape), confirms that together they are as capable as they ever were of producing—to borrow a phrase common in Drama parlance—quality street music. *SNOFALL* itself sounds a great deal like their earliest collaborative work. The project features the very producers who helped him define their shared era, names like D. Rich, Cool & Dre, J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, and Don Cannon. And Jeezy is as pugnacious an MC as he ever was, if slightly wizened. Here he opts less for flexing on detractors than educating the legions of younger G’s he once took so much pride in motivating to chase paper. He uses songs like “Street Cred” to instill a vision of legal hustling, warning them that “street cred” never paid any of his bills, fed his family, took him out of the country for months at a time, or helped him close a million-dollar deal. None of which is to say that the balling has slowed in any way, shape, or fashion. Look no further than “Still Havin,” “Grammy,” or “My Accountant” for an understanding that the Jeezy brand is still and will always be “rich gangsta shit.”

Run The Jewels didn’t become the biggest and baddest hip-hop duo in all the land by resting on their laurels. Building one of rap’s wildest second acts off of EL-P’s indie Def Jux pedigree and Killer Mike’s coveted Dungeon Family heritage, the pair have grown in reputation and popularity with each new collaborative project from 2012’s proto-RTJ effort *R.A.P. Music* onwards. Energy and eclecticism define their sequentially numbered albums, reconfiguring that old-school attitude into a generationally agnostic timelessness. Still, as reliable as those records are, the fellas’ creative curiosity sometimes leads to leftfield surprises. Perhaps their most explicitly odd move came in 2015 with the release of literal pet sounds in *Meow the Jewels*, a novelty remix for charity with power players like The Alchemist and Prince Paul behind the boards. By contrast, the pair’s second remix album *RTJ CU4TRO* couldn’t be further from the kitschy meme stylings of that veritable cat party. Conceived in the wake of some inspired *RTJ4* reworks by Toy Selectah (of influential Mexican hip-hop group Control Machete) and Camilo Lara’s genre-mashing Mexican Institute of Sound, the ambitious and well-executed project places their acclaimed 2020 full-length in the hands of some of Latin America’s dopest DJs, producers, and musicians, with invaluable input from longtime friend and curatorially minded collaborator Nick Hook. Fans of the original will find new voices mixed with the familiar, with Brazil’s Baco Exu do Blues and Mexican rapper Santa Fe Klan adding to “fuera de vista” and “ooh la la,” respectively. Colombian cumbia provocateurs Bomba Estéreo add a revitalizing new danceability to “Never Look Back,” now called “nunca mirar hacia atrás.” This subtle Spanish-language renaming convention does more than simply reflect the backgrounds of RTJ’s guest remixers; it also aids in making *RTJ CU4TRO* stand alone the way remix albums rarely ever do.

“When it’s just us two, it’s really easy to make music,” JD BECK tells Apple Music. “We play around, and the tracks come pouring out.” Instrumental prodigies DOMi & JD BECK certainly have a telepathic connection when it comes to creativity. First meeting in 2018 at the NAMM trade show in Southern California, where the two teenagers were individually invited to perform as part of a larger ensemble, Texas-born drummer BECK formed an instant connection with French keyboardist and Berklee student DOMi Louna (born Domitille Degalle). The pair soon began writing fast-paced, note-packed jams to upload to their Instagram, and by 2020, they had caught the attention of multi-instrumentalist Anderson .Paak. Swiftly signing them to his APESHIT label, he challenged the duo to release an updated body of work as a debut. “He basically told us we could do better than the album’s worth of material we already had,” BECK says. “So, we put together a wish list of collaborators and got to work.” The result is *NOT TiGHT*, a 15-track jazz-fusion odyssey of head-nodding hip-hop, psychedelic vocoder experiments, and rhythmic freakouts. “We just wanted to surprise ourselves with this album,” DOMi says. “This music is an expression of ourselves at our core.” Here, DOMi & JD BECK offer their thoughts on each of the album’s tracks. **“LOUNA’S iNTRO”** DOMi Louna: “We thought the album needed book-ending to help bring the listener in and then back out of the tracks. We already had the outro, “THANK U,” so we wrote these chords and added synth patches before sending it to violin, double bass, viola, cello, and harp players all around the world. It was like a mini online orchestra opening the album for us.” **“WHATUP”** DL: “We’ve had these chords since 2018, as they were part of a track that was going to be the intro for our original album. We kept playing around with it when we were locked down together during the pandemic, and after deconstructing it a few times, we decided to make a new tune. We added a drum solo section, and so now the record has two intros before we get into ‘SMiLE.’” **“SMiLE”** JD BECK: “I sing dumb little melodies a lot, and when I was in the bathroom on my phone one day in 2018, the melody just came to me. I put it together in my head and shouted to DOMi to quickly set it to some chords.” **“BOWLiNG” (feat. Thundercat)** JDB: “We met Thundercat around the same time as meeting each other. Whenever we were in LA, we would go and stay with him and take over his house. We always write a lot with him when we’re there—we must have 50 song ideas together already. Back in 2018, we’d all go bowling a lot, as it’s his favorite thing to do, and so we wrote this song about hanging out in the bowling alley.” **“NOT TiGHT” (feat. Thundercat)** JDB: “It’s probably the closest representation of our sound—just singing random melodic lines to crazy chord combinations. In 2019, we played it for Thundercat, and he loved it so much that he wanted to be on it. He became the first instrumentalist to collaborate with us, and it was incredible to have him soloing on the track with DOMi.” **“TWO SHRiMPS” (feat. Mac DeMarco)** DL: “We wrote the instrumental for this track while we were on tour in 2019. JD had a little drum machine, which he made a loop on, and then I added the keyboard parts and put it in a 9/8 time signature. We met Mac the same day we met Anderson .Paak in 2019, and by 2020, we were spending a lot of time at Mac’s house. We played him this instrumental, and he started singing along to it, just listing random sandwich names. The track was originally called ‘Sandwiches of America.’ We ended up rerecording new lyrics with him, but thankfully it’s still food-related.” **“U DON’T HAVE TO ROB ME”** JDB: “I’ve been playing gigs by myself since I was 11, and I got used to the element of danger, being in cities late at night. When DOMi and I started going out in LA, you could feel when there was danger, like one day we were in the parking lot of the bowling alley at 1 am, and this dude asked us for a cigarette, and it really felt like he might pull a knife on us too. It made us think about how we never have cash—only cards that we can cancel easily—so why even go through that trouble of robbing us?” **“MOON” (feat. Herbie Hancock)** JDB: “Andy made us write down all our goals for the record, and among them was a list of people we’d love to work with. Herbie was at the top of those names. One of Andy’s managers had a connect with Herbie, and he called us one day to say that Herbie had watched our videos on YouTube and was down to collaborate.” DL: “We were shitting our pants, as we knew we now had to come up with the best song we’d ever written. *Sunlight* is some of our favorite stuff that Herbie has done with the vocoder, and so we wrote ‘MOON’ to that same vibe. Luckily, we got him on piano, too, and when we recorded it together in 2021, we got to hang out with him, which was amazing.” **“DUKE”** JDB: “This track is a George Duke reference. We had been hanging out a lot with Earl Sweatshirt and his producer Black Noise, and they inspired us to put three of our loops together into one track and then record it as a new song. The record is full of crazy songs, and we needed something to chill after Herbie—a track that has a natural feel.” **“TAKE A CHANCE” (feat. Anderson .Paak)** DL: “We really wanted a feature from Anderson, as we’re huge fans of his, and so we had to come up with something unique and very pretty for him to sing and play on. JD wrote this hook, and when we played it to Andy, he just started rapping over the verses, and then we all sang on the chorus. The whole track was a bunch of surprises and sections put together, since Andy can fit over pretty much anything.” **“SPACE MOUNTAiN”** JDB: “When we first got to LA, I couldn’t get into any clubs, so the only thing we ended up doing, apart from making music, was going to Disneyland. We went on the ride Space Mountain a lot, and it felt like the perfect title for this crazy tune. The first section is a loop we wrote in 2019, where I recorded the drums through an intense compressor, and then the second half used to be part of the original intro to our first album.” **“PiLOT” (feat. Anderson .Paak, Busta Rhymes & Snoop Dogg)** DL: “We made this beat in 2020, before we signed with Anderson. We used to send him clips of what we were making, and the day after we sent him this, he emailed it back with him and Busta on it, which was amazing. Once we signed, we had Snoop Dogg on our dream list of collabs, and we thought he would be perfect for ‘PiLOT.’ He was down for it, so we went to Snoop’s studio for six hours one day and recorded it all super smooth. It was very cool to see him and Andy interact and write to our loop.” **“WHOA” (feat. Kurt Rosenwinkel)** JDB: “DOMi wrote the first part of this tune when she was 12. It was on a random Sibelius session that she played by accident, and I loved it. I knew we had to do a song with it, and Kurt felt like the perfect fit. We met him through the drummer Louis Cole when we were in New York in 2019. A week after he had the track, he sent it back with him soloing from beginning to end. It was perfect.” **“SNiFF”** DL: “The original title for this was ‘You Can Sniff My Butt.’ JD wrote it in 2018, all in one go in front of me—and it’s one of my favorite things he’s ever made. We played it at every show as a closer and people loved its pace, so it felt like a good idea to close the record with it too. It was one of the earliest songs we came up with together.” **“THANK U”** JDB: “This used to be a crazy loop in a 13 time signature, which was called ‘Dermatologist’ because DOMi had just learned what that word was. We wrote it in an Airbnb somewhere in 2018 and then, when we came back to it a few years later for this record, we realized it was perfect to send to the mini-orchestra who played on the intro. It rounds out the album really well.”