Hiphopheads Best of 2023

“I wrote it as a story,” Genesis Owusu tells Apple Music about *STRUGGLER*. “The album is pretty much what would this story sound like.” You can tell. The Ghanaian Australian artist born Kofi Owusu-Ansah’s second album is a surreal concept album about a protagonist—the Roach—fighting for his life in a kind of post-apocalyptic world overrun with constant physical and metaphysical threats. The antagonist, God, stops at nothing to try and bring the Roach down, to destroy him both inside and out. “The Roach character is a metaphor for we as humans,” he says, “and the God character is a metaphor for all these huge uncontrollable forces around us, natural and man-made, these systems we\'ve built around us that were supposed to make our lives better. But at some point, we started feeling like we\'ve been caged by them and they’ve slipped out of our control.” Owusu-Ansah’s story lays out three philosophical concepts that the Roach journeys through: nihilism, existentialism, and, ultimately, absurdism, the latter of which was inspired in part by the Samuel Beckett play *Waiting for Godot* and Franz Kafka’s *Metamorphosis*. The title and its character were inspired by *Berserk*, a legendary manga series by Kentaro Miura which features a character who “just gets dealt the worst hand in life”, he explains. “He has to fight through these forces so unimaginably larger than himself, to the point where it can\'t even be called a fight. The other characters call him a struggler.” Owusu-Ansah’s debut, *Smiling With No Teeth*, was a concept album as well, albeit a more personal one that explored his journey with two “black dogs”—personifications of racism and depression. “I’d poured so much of my life experience into it,” he says. “When it was time to make album two, I had to reconfigure which well to draw from and how to be inspired again.” It was that search itself—an existential hunt for purpose in a world that feels (and is) absurd—that led to the story of *STRUGGLER*. Like his debut, it’s still personal, but in a universal way; it’s a journey that Owusu-Ansah feels humanity as a whole experiences in its search for meaning, sense, and the will to live. It’s a particularly prevalent experience in 2023, while the world is reeling from a pandemic, successive environmental disasters, and a growing financial crisis. The music, recorded with a range of producers in Australia and the US, reflects those feelings: frantic and punky at times, slinky and languid at others—and the tracks with the darkest themes often have the smoothest, loftiest melodies. Read on to explore the story and concepts within this thought-provoking record. **“Leaving the Light”** “I just wanted to jump straight into it. I wanted it to be the tone-setter for the album. When I think of the story setting, it\'s almost post-apocalyptic, barren. When we started making this song, we wanted it to feel like the world was ending. There’s a huge wall of fire and debris and wind, and somehow you are trying to outrun that. That’s the pace of the opening chapter for the album.” **“The Roach”** “‘The Roach’ and ‘The Old Man’ are where I introduce and give context to the two main characters. ‘The Roach’ is the story of this flawed antihero character that\'s just trying to move through life at this pace, but starting to question what the point is. We get a sense of their mentality and why they\'re doing what they\'re doing. Some lines in the second verse: ‘Feeling like Gregor Samsa, a bug in the cog of a gray-walled cancer/I’m trying to break free with a penciled stanza/So are we human, or are we dancer?/I\'ma waste a life trying to chase an answer.’ It’s like they\'re moving through life at a survivor\'s pace because they have to or they\'ll get crushed. But in their mind, they\'re starting to question the point. It\'s indicative of how we can feel at our lowest. There\'s this absurd whirlwind of chaos around you, but you just got to keep stepping and get to the next day.” **“The Old Man”** “I think the verses of ‘The Old Man’ also give more context to the Roach character, but then the choruses talk about this looming figure up in the sky that\'s dealing the bad hands, trying to mess up your life. The passages at the end are where we get the context to what the God character actually is. ‘Your master is a system. Your master is a suit, a dollar. Your master is a planet. Your master is chaos itself. Your master is absurdity itself.’” **“See Ya There”** “You have your ups and your downs, your peaks and your valleys. This is the abyss. This is the character at their low point. They\'ve been struggling, running through and fighting to figure it all out, and it\'s like, ‘What is the point of all of this turmoil and struggle that I\'ve been going through?’ Throughout the album, the three main philosophies it touches on are nihilism, existentialism, and absurdism. This is definitely the point of nihilism. It\'s the scary and depressing realization, but the abyss inevitably comes before the transformation.” **“Freak Boy”** “This is stepping out of the existential crisis for a bit. This is the point where the character acknowledges they don\'t have the answers, they keep moving. Even if they don\'t have the answers, they don\'t want to fall into this pit of despair. The chorus goes, ‘Don\'t wanna turn out just like you, hating everything that you do/I hope I figure out a thing or two.’ On we forge. It’s almost a rejection of the abyss and all of that. It would be easy to want to close your eyes to everything that\'s going on around you and just live an ‘ignorance is bliss’ mentality, but maybe that\'s not the healthiest way to go. You gotta figure out how to do this right.” **“Tied Up!”** “I feel like it\'s easy to identify qualities when you put it into a character or a piece of fiction, but in reality, it’s all drawn from how I\'m seeing human beings. It\'s all of these qualities I see in everyday people that we don\'t acknowledge in ourselves every day. We don\'t give ourselves enough credit for it. ‘Tied Up!’ is a continuation of that. I feel like there\'s a point in giving up the need to feel in control of external circumstances and focusing more inward. Maybe, if I can\'t control the things around me, I can control my perspective of how those things look and how those things are. Maybe that will help me in my journey. Maybe there is some light somewhere, but maybe that comes from me first, not outside.” **“That\'s Life (A Swamp)”** “This one\'s kind of a journey. It\'s the two-part banger. I feel like it’s almost a step back into reality. With ‘Freak Boy’ and ‘Tied Up!’ you don\'t really get any conclusive answers; you never really will. I feel like it\'s the character trying different things to make their experience easier. ‘Tied Up!’ ended with the character being like, ‘Maybe if I can change my perspective on things, things will be easier.’ But that\'s a process that I feel puts a lot of onus and responsibility on you, and when the world is falling apart, I don\'t think you can really do that. That’s where the chorus comes from: ‘I said, baby, it’s not about me,’ and then in the second part, ‘My arms are tired from carrying the weight of your shit.’ It\'s a step back into the reality of the situation.” **“Balthazar”** “If ‘See Ya There’ was nihilism, then ‘Balthazar’ is existentialism. So ‘See Ya There’ was like, ‘There’s no meaning—oh *fuck*.’ Here, it’s like, ‘There’s no meaning. *Fuck yeah*, this is amazing.’ Maybe there’s no inherent meaning, but maybe all that means is we\'re not shackled by this predetermined thing we\'re supposed to do. Maybe that means we can make our own meaning. One of the first lines is about taking the power back into your own hands, and the second verse turns it into a battle against time. Maybe we can have control over ourselves and our destinies, but we gotta do it before time runs out. The second verse is almost paraphrasing a monologue from *Waiting for Godot*: ‘In one day we go blind… In one day we go deaf… We can fly, fall in love, waste aside, be the one.’ We can achieve or complete all of this in one day, and yet we choose to wait. Why? It opens up this idea where you can take control and do it now. Stop waiting. The time is now.” **“Stay Blessed”** “‘Stay Blessed’ is keeping on with this newfound empowerment through the realization that all of these things might have a negative side, but there\'s also a side of immense possibility, a ‘we\'re all in this together’ vibe. The Roach is everyone, and there are a million roaches out there because that\'s all of us. And that goes back to that line, ‘If you kill me now, you\'re gonna deal with roach number two.’ It\'s like, we can\'t be stopped. The song starts delving into that third and last philosophy of absurdism. Maybe there\'s no inherent meaning, and maybe we don\'t need to make our own meaning at all. We\'ve come this far in the journey, and we\'ve grown so much that maybe that\'s the gift itself. Maybe the fact that the sun rises and falls every day, and we get to see that from this magical distance where it\'s this giant ball of fire. It\'s far away enough where we get to feel its warmth, but it doesn\'t burn us to death. And we get to hug our friends every day, see cute little birds flying through the sky. It’s such a one-in-a-billion chance that this has all happened and we get to experience it. That’s absurdism to me. We exist in this world, and we can\'t buy or earn our way out of absurdity.” **“What Comes Will Come”** “It\'s a solidification of the journey so far. We go through these hardships and trials and tribulations, and maybe it\'s because of Hollywood media or just a naive sense of whatever, we expect the outcomes to be based on how good we are or how well we did. But we just live in this absurd reality. What comes will come, and that\'s not a bad thing. It\'s not a good thing, either. It\'s just a thing. Rollercoasters need their ups and their downs to make the full experience fun and exciting.” **“Stuck to the Fan”** “It’s not a happy ending. It\'s not a sad ending. It\'s not really even an ending. It\'s the point of acceptance. The Hollywood story arc is like, you climb the big mountain, and then there\'s a field of flowers for you to frolic in after your hard journey. In reality, you climb the mountain, and then there\'s another huge mountain waiting to be climbed. But the good thing about that is after you climb a new mountain, you become a better climber to get ready for the next big challenge and the next big hurdle. And I think that\'s just kind of indicative of life, which I wanted this story to be. I just wanted it to be an honest portrayal. Shit has hit the fan for so long that it\'s stuck there, and that\'s just the way it goes.”

Just when it looked like The Hustla was about to leave us hanging for another summer—third album *Beautiful and Brutal Yard* arrived for 2023. When news first broke of the long-awaited album, fans were immediately alarmed by the lack of credits for JAE5. Exploring his range away from the guidance of his former exec producer and Afroswing architect, has, though, seen J Hus stage a coup on the direction of his own sound. Here, he turns up the dial on his flickering emotions: careering from aggressor to party-starter via lover boy at dizzying speeds. TSB holds the reins chiefly on production here—but it’s undoubtedly J Hus calling the shots now. Follow on for our pick of five highlights from *B.A.B.Y.*. **“Massacre”** Straight after the bright horns and gruff, motivational intro (“THE GOAT”), it’s “Massacre” where *B.A.B.Y.* shifts into gear. The sharp, sexy chords of the beat (produced by Marco Bernardis and P2J) was featured on the album’s visual trailer—narrated by Idris Elba. In the short clip, an invite to Hus’ yard, the London actor states, “Imagine if the heart was not designed to express love or pain, but to express ultimate power: the core of masculinity.” This internal struggle, in spite of all his success, is still key to understanding a mind as complex and chaotic as J Hus’. **“Who Told You” (feat. Drake)** A solid contender for the song of summer 2023, and a track fans have been waiting for since Drake declared his admiration for J Hus on stage at London’s O2 Arena in 2019. If we were worried about the absence of JAE5, this stellar single (produced by P2J, E.y, and Gaetan Judd) put all fears to bed. An infectious anthem on not being too tough to bust a move that certainly lives up to its billing. These badmen dance, and we should follow their lead. **“Militerian” (feat. Naira Marley)** The Marlian meets the Militerian on this swinging combination of sounds from sons of the African diaspora. Slick, pidgin-infused lyricism mingle within crisp production that wouldn’t sound out of place at Fela’s The Shrine in the ’70s. **“Cream” (feat. CB)** J Hus teased a snippet of this track way back in 2020. A month before release he declared it “The Hardest in Drill History” on Instagram. And when the rankings are eventually drawn up one day, this collaboration between Newham’s finest should at least be considered. Hus is joined by infamous driller CB—three years into a 23-year prison sentence when *B.A.B.Y* was released—on this blaring ode to money-making, to cement his legacy. **“Nice Body”** All the stars are out across the album’s genre-fluid features. There’s Popcaan (“Killy”) and Burna Boy (“Masculine”) flying their flag for their regions. And here’s the UK’s Jorja Smith, laying a sweet half-sung verse—a trick she also pulled off beautifully alongside Giggs on 2020’s “Im Workin.” An introduction to this joyful pairing that we hope to hear much more of.

Lil Tjay set a high bar for himself with 2021’s *Destined 2 Win*. Coming a couple years after his standout features on Polo G’s and Pop Smoke’s albums, the Bronx rapper’s sophomore album showcased an artist creatively growing beyond his beginnings with notable cuts like the smash hit “Calling My Phone.” For his third album, he maintains that same authentic yet commercially savvy approach. *222*’s impeccably sleek production style gets augmented by the unflinching honesty of “Heart Felt Soul” and the balladic “Scared 2 Be Lonely.” A balancing act stays constant throughout, weighing the sincere rawness of “June 22nd” and “Nightshift” against the pop tendencies of “2 Grown,” the latter with The Kid LAROI in tow. He dips back into the drill of his *State of Emergency* period for “Bla Bla” with Fivio Foreign while moving into an R&B space for “Stressed” opposite Summer Walker. On the latter half, he teams with New York rap legend Jadakiss for the personal “Hole in My Heart” and collabs with the unstoppable YoungBoy Never Broke Again over the warbling boom of “Project Walls.”

Masego hasn’t released an album since his critically acclaimed 2018 debut *Lady Lady*. And while fans have been anxiously awaiting his follow-up, the singer-songwriter has been popping up on tracks with Kehlani, Alex Isley, and VanJess, to name a few. He released an EP, *Studying Abroad*, amid a worldwide pandemic, and a deluxe version in 2021, but now the wait is finally over. On his self-titled sophomore outing, the multi-instrumentalist reintroduces himself as the genre-bending artist fans love as he showcases the ins and outs of his life and musings through melody. Throughout the LP’s 14 tracks, Masego revels in his dualities, such as being contemplative about his rising fame (“Who Cares Anyway,” “Remembering Sundays”) while also being bold and brash (“In Style”). He navigates the ebbs and flows of his relationships by keeping his flirtatious player attitude (“Say You Want Me,” “Two Sides \[I’m So Gemini\],” “What You Wanna Try”), but also deals with the heartache from his failed relationships (“Down in the Dumps,” “You Play With My Heart”). Sonically, Masego continues to showcase his growth and creative prowess as an artist by experimenting with his sound as he did on *Studying Abroad*. He still delivers dreamy, intoxicating vocals, but is set against a mash-up of upbeat, bouncy dance beats, trap beats, pianos, and his signature saxophone solos. Opting not to include any features, the Grammy-nominated artist instead decided to collab with other musicians, producers and creatives like WaveIQ, monte booker, Richie Souf, and more.

The Chicago rapper, activist, and Savemoney founder used to drape himself in black leather and rap about self-medicating to ward off his demons, but these days, VIC MENSA’s more of a “wake up at sunrise and read the Qur’an” kind of guy. That’s the mood on *Victor*, the long-awaited follow-up to his 2017 studio debut: a portrait of the artist at 30, two years sober, and celebrating a personal rebirth. An outspoken protester of police brutality and the Dakota Access Pipeline, MENSA’s never shied from speaking truth to power. Now he’s ready to get real about his own radical change. On *Victor*, MENSA’s letting go of what doesn’t serve him (strip clubs and Newports, to name a few) and appreciating the simple pleasures of existence. The lush Thundercat collab “STRAWBERRY LOUIS VUITTON” has him cruising with the top down, whispering references to early-2000s R&B in his partner’s ear. But growth can be bittersweet, too: On “Blue Eyes,” he admits to resenting his Blackness as a child as he raps, “Internalized self-hatred with racism in society is as American as apple pies.” He’s joined by Common on the soulful “$outhside Story” to recall summer nights punctuated by fireworks and gunshots, back when a young Victor would ride the Green Line and imagine his face on the billboards he’d pass—like the ones young Chicagoans can see MENSA on today.

One of the most alluring things about the rise of Queens MC Lil Tecca was the young star’s willingness to take off his cool. His way of annotating a gun reference in the lyrics of breakout song “Ransom” included an admission: “I don’t have no straps for nobody…no straps around here.” With each project he’d release, however, Tecca seemed to get further and further away from stereotypical rap posturing, using his signature nasally delivery to dig deeper into his own continually evolving reality. (It’s easier to sound cool as an MC when your life actually does involve consultations with a stylist and avoiding thirsty groupies.) And Tecca sounds nothing if not cool on *TEC*, the MC’s third proper album and fourth release since 2019’s *We Love You Tecca* mixtape. Production is handled largely by the Internet Money collective Tecca made his name with and Working on Dying’s ‎BNYX®, both of whom provide 808-heavy backdrops for the MC’s endless non sequiturs. Each bar is a day in the life of Tecca unfolding, like the following passage, which appears on “500lbs”: “She told me she bad, I say, ‘You could do worse’/I\'m born to be blessed, I live with a curse/When shit is a mess, I\'m rollin\' up first/I smoke on my blunt, then I hit the church.” The project is likewise rife with unique Tecca-isms like “I take it slow now, but I got no reason to slow down” from “Gist,” or “I don’t need someone I need/I don’t need someone like me,” a claim he makes on title track “TEC.” On the whole, any given song is less about any single topic than it is an opportunity for Tecca to empty out his rhyme vault—a practice familiar to the album’s singular feature, Florida hero Kodak Black. Each is a talent who understands that sharing what goes on in their brains is more than enough to keep us entertained.

The Chicago MC isn’t afraid to go deep, and his raps often center on the hard work required to become a better, more self-aware man. Jenkins has given earlier releases titles like *The Anxious* and *The Frustration*, and he devotes his fourth studio album to a virtue he finds similarly vexing. Patience, he suggests, is the part of your journey where you are no longer in control. Over beats that are jazzy, unhurried, and slightly unsettled, Jenkins plays tricky word games as he ruminates on outgrowing old friends (“Show & Tell”) and cracks wry half-jokes about peers who only talk about money (“Guapanese”). He’s joined by a few thoughtfully selected guests (Freddie Gibbs, Benny the Butcher, JID), but on album highlight “007” he holds it down alone, flipping a catchphrase to his advantage: “We fucked around and found a way out.”

It’s been 18 years since the East Atlanta rapper broke through with his debut album *Trap House* and began rewriting rap in his witty, marble-mouthed image. It’s hard to overstate Gucci’s influence on how hip-hop sounded through the late ’00s and the 2010s as his wildly prolific, deceptively intricate trap bangers went mainstream. For several of those years his lifestyle threatened his continued legacy, or added to his outlaw mystique in ways that proved unhealthy. A handful of Gucci’s biggest albums, like 2009’s *The State vs. Radric Davis*, were released while he was incarcerated. By the time of 2016’s *Everybody Looking*, he was buff, sober, and serving the final months of a three-plus-year sentence for possession of a firearm by a felon, looking and sounding like a totally new man. That new man continues to thrive in a rap landscape far removed from the one in which he started, stunting wholesomely on the cover of his 16th studio album alongside his wife and two children draped in matching furs. (So icy, indeed.) The 24 tracks of *Breath of Fresh Air* feel like an extended victory lap, a celebration of his profound influence, which took longer to be acknowledged than it ought to have. “I feel like it’s me in ’06 and ’07, ’08 and even ’09,” Gucci crows on “06 Gucci,” where he’s joined by DaBaby and 21 Savage to extol his glory days. There’s plenty more torch-passing to the next generation of trap stars, some of it bittersweet: On his two appearances (“Thank Me” and “Pretty Girls”) the late Young Dolph sounds like the truest heir to Gucci’s buoyant, street-smart throne. A decade ago, a collaboration between Gucci and J. Cole would have caused conniptions in a certain type of rap fan; today, their link-up on the playful Mike WiLL vehicle “There I Go” simply feels inevitable. But the highlight is “Stomach Grumbling,” where the East Atlanta Santa delivers the final word on a few hot-button issues of late. “Writers on strike and I know why they did it/Hollywood moguls be paying ’em pennies,” he drawls, sounding rejuvenated. “AI can’t write the song Gucci would write/’Cause AI didn’t stay up all night in the trenches.”

The nearly six-year period Kelela Mizanekristos took between 2017’s *Take Me Apart* and 2023’s *Raven* wasn’t just a break; it was a reckoning. Like a lot of Black Americans, she’d watched the protests following George Floyd’s murder with outrage and cautious curiosity as to whether the winds of social change might actually shift. She read, she watched, she researched; she digested the pressures of creative perfectionism and tireless productivity not as correlatives of an artistic mind but of capitalism and white supremacy, whose consecration of the risk-free bottom line suddenly felt like the arbitrary and invasive force it is. And suddenly, she realized she wasn’t alone. “Internally, I’ve always wished the world would change around me,” Kelela tells Apple Music. “I felt during the uprising and the \[protests of the early 2020s\] that there’s been an *external* shift. We all have more permission to say, ‘I don’t like that.’” Executive-produced by longtime collaborator Asmara (Asma Maroof of Nguzunguzu), 2023’s *Raven* is both an extension of her earlier work and an expansion of it. The hybrids of progressive dance and ’90s-style R&B that made *Take Me Apart* and *Cut 4 Me* compelling are still there (“Contact,” “Missed Call,” both co-produced by LSDXOXO and Bambii), as is her gift for making the ethereal feel embodied and deeply physical (“Enough for Love”). And for all her respect for the modalities of Black American pop music, you can hear the musical curiosity and experiential outliers—as someone who grew up singing jazz standards and played in a punk band—that led her to stretch the paradigms of it, too. But the album’s heart lies in songs like “Holier” and “Raven,” whose narratives of redemption and self-sufficiency jump the track from personal reflections to metaphors for the struggle with patriarchy and racism more broadly. “I’ve been pretty comfortable to talk about the nitty-gritty of relationships,” she says. “But this album contains a few songs that are overtly political, that feel more literally like *no, you will not*.” Oppression comes in many forms, but they all work the same way; *Raven* imagines a flight out.

"Rome wasn't built in a day....but they were laying bricks every hour" Every overnight success spent a lifetime up to that point to be seen as one. Whether it was thru the amount of work they put in or the experiences that shaped em. Nobody decides to do something notable n wakes up as a success at it the next day. If you never put in the time or the effort or the work...you probably never did shit anyways. If Rome makes this rap shit look easy...just remember he laid a lot of bricks to be able to walk on em. This is the long awaited collabo yall been waiting on. Its been feature verses n group projects...but never a full Rome Streetz & Big Ghost Ltd album. The wait is over.