Hiphopheads Best of 2023

For every crossover smash in Tinashe’s catalog (like 2014’s massive “2 On”), there’s a dozen slinky experiments that are way too weird for pop airwaves. In the decade since her breakthrough mixtape, 2013’s murky *Black Water*, the former teen actor and girl-group member has resisted the path to rote R&B stardom and opted for the road less traveled, dabbling in moody downtempo or twitchy breakbeats when she pleases. On *BB/ANG3L*, her third release since going independent in 2019, the singer counters the fun, flirty “Needs” (as in, those things that turn humans into simps) with left-field tracks like “Tightrope,” which could be a long-lost deep cut from Janet Jackson’s *The Velvet Rope*.

After 2022’s bookend projects *FACE* and *MOB* brought him to greater national prominence beyond his Detroit base, he switches from cold climes to extreme heat with the timely seasonal arrival of *Summer’s Mine*. The confidence behind such an album title comes backed by his years of experience on the mixtape front, building locally with the likes of Icewear Vezzo and Veeze, and bolstered by the success of recent singles like “Ron Artest” with 42 Dugg and “Wonderful Wayne & Jackie Boy” with Lil Durk. That extends to righteously boastful moments here like “Donda Bag” (“My name good, my face clean, my pockets full, my people straight”) and “All Star Team” (“I\'m an all-star team, far from a rookie”). His choice of collaborators reflects his elevated status, tapping in with Vory for “Dancing With the Devil, Pt. 2” and Westside Gunn for “Fly Gods.” Yet many of his production choices, and the inclusion of guests like Los and Nutty and the aforementioned Veeze, stay rooted in the Motor City that made him.

Rarely one to shy away from tough topics and pain parables, Moneybagg Yo cracks open his chest cavity once again for *Hard to Love*. Coming more than two years after his fourth album *A Gangsta’s Pain*, this full-length effort furthers the CMG star’s engrossing mix of booming trap beats and unflinchingly real themes. After quashing rumors and shutting down haters on the inventive opener “They Say,” the South Memphis native proceeds to apply pressure to those who foolishly underestimate the caliber of his lyricism. Drug consumption and concerns eerily commingle throughout the project, from the sips and slurps that open “No Show” to the faded recollections behind “Ocean Spray” and the queasy complications of “More Sick.” He taps in with toxic twin Future on the speaker-rattling “Keep It Low” and trades vicious bars with the unstoppable GloRilla on “On Wat U On.” Meanwhile, he makes space for his Bread Gang signee YTB FATT on two of the project’s hardest cuts, including the Lil Durk-assisted “Rock Out.”

When an artist of G Herbo’s caliber makes a statement record, as he did with 2022’s ambitious and revelatory *Survivor’s Remorse*, one of the best ways forward is a return to form. In a move bound to delight the Chicago rapper’s day-ones as much as his more recent disciples, *Strictly 4 My Fans 2* provides a gratifying and concise sequel to his 2016 project. Still, as much as some might want another “Pull Up,” this second installment reflects his growth and development over a diverse production palette. Menacingly dark and razor-sharp cuts like “Fuck Opps” and “Watch Me Ball, Pt. 2” speak to his tenure as a drill ambassador, while “Any Other Way” speaks frankly on pain with a street poet’s perspective. A young veteran of the game with plenty to say, he mostly eschews features; an exception is the ominous “Outside” with GloRilla and Mello Buckzz. Later, he weighs the pro-versus-con complications of fame on “Off Days” and thematically explores trauma with sincere remorse on “Letter to My Love.”

“I feel like I have a better sense of boundaries,” Tkay Maidza tells Apple Music. “I know what I do want to do and what I don\'t want to do. I stand up for myself a lot more, and when I go into the studio, I’m not questioning anything. I lost the sense of embarrassment.” The Zimbabwean Australian artist’s second LP comes seven years after her debut, *Tkay*, and two years after the final installment of her *Last Year Was Weird* EP trilogy. In those past couple years in particular, she recognized that she’d been giving too much attention to people who were holding her back. “Before I started making the album, I had this overarching feeling of being embarrassed or not doing the right thing all the time,” she says. Maidza struggled with motivation and faith in herself for a long period, until a series of co-writing sessions in LA in September 2022 saw her hit the accelerator. She found the confidence to listen to herself, to stop second-guessing, to take the high road. “It all just happened really quickly after a year and a half of being confused,” she says. “And I felt like I shouldn\'t question anything because it\'s been a while since I\'ve been on a hot streak like that. I\'m more confident in myself now. I\'m less scared. And even when I do question myself, it’s different now. It’s not because I\'m surrounded by people who constantly criticize me.” *Sweet Justice* is the sum total of that growth. It flows between hip-hop, house, and ’90s-inspired R&B, and features production from KAYTRANADA (“Our Way,” “Ghost!”) and Flume (“Silent Assassin,” which he also co-wrote). There are representations of the stages of grief Maidza encountered as she cleared her life of those holding her back—particularly anger and acceptance. Ultimately, though, it’s a proud acknowledgment of hard-won self-assurance; a wink and a middle finger up at everything and everyone quickly fading away in her rearview mirror. Below, she talks through key tracks on the album. **“Silent Assassin”** “I was letting go of a lot of people and while I was trying to separate myself from them, a lot of them were being really nosy, like, ‘You\'re not doing what you\'re supposed to be doing. What are you doing? You\'re supposed to be working.’ And little did they realize that I was working, it just didn\'t involve them. So this is basically me describing what I\'m actually up to and what they don\'t understand. I’m continuing my life without them, basically.” **“Ring-A-Ling”** “This was one of the first songs where I had a sense of finally healing, I was coming from an empowered place. Before, I was trying to figure out how to finish the song. I was sleeping a lot, I was procrastinating a lot, and the song was almost like my spirit saying, ‘Wake up, babes, it\'s time to get the money. There\'s business calling you.’ It’s my inner cheerleader telling me to wake up and get it, because time keeps moving with or without you, and the more you keep moving, the more you get results.” **“WUACV”** “I was letting go of the old people in my life and there was a sense of sadness, but then there came this feeling of anger. I remember a lot of people on Twitter were writing, \'Woke up and chose violence.’ That was such a meme, and I wrote it down as a song title. Then I heard this beat and it sounded like a riot. I wanted to make something that you could mosh to at a show, but it was kind of sneaky and smart in a way, like, be patient. You’re holding in the anger and then you let it go and that can contain it. It\'s like, ‘I\'m dangerous, don\'t try me. I could unleash, but I\'m choosing not to.’ And I think the healthiest way for me to channel that was in the music. Otherwise, I\'ll just be doing unproductive things.” **“Out of Luck”** “One of my focuses was to make smooth songs that also hit hard. You can listen to it in your lounge room or you can go to a party and it\'s banging. When I heard the instrumental for ‘Out of Luck,’ the energy just really embodied that mood board for what a Tkay album should sound like. I was in this powerful stage coming through grievance and acceptance where I almost felt sorry for everyone. I\'m like, ‘Damn, I\'m really about to start flying off. I\'m literally gone.’ And instead of thinking that I lost something, I think it\'s more powerful for girls to be like, ‘It was their loss.’” **“Won One”** “This one was really fun to do. I’m such a big fan of Aaliyah and Timbaland. So the mood board was around that inspiration, and also doubling down on the early-2000s idea by kind of interpolating USHER’s ‘U Remind Me,’ but flipping it to be from a girl\'s perspective. I really wanted to make songs that were about overcoming and reflecting, but not from a sad point of view. I think the lyrics are really honest—and I often feel that if you\'re able to speak about something, you\'ve moved on from it. So the fact that I could actually express how I felt in a way that I haven\'t before was a new sense of maturity and growth in terms of accepting my past and being okay with it.” **“What Ya Know”** “One of the things I really wanted to do on this album was to build on the universe of house music. I wanted to make at least three house songs. The other goal for this one was to create almost a girl group. It sounds like there\'s three people on the song. And to embody this empowering feeling, like you\'re walking through a club and everyone\'s looking at you, and they just don\'t know what it is that keeps them looking at you. You can tell they\'re kind of confused, and you’re okay with that. It\'s like, ‘I\'ve got a secret that you don\'t know about.’” **“Walking on Air”** “I really wanted a song that felt like that indie blog era, where they\'d pitch up vocals. The concept was about almost wanting to be in this state of blissful ignorance and being okay with it. I feel like I walk through life that way, with blind optimism, and I wanted to capture it in a song. And it kind of wraps the whole album up in a way—nothing really matters as long as I\'m sitting in this ‘ignorance is bliss’ state of mind and just being okay with not knowing what\'s going to happen.”

The appeal of Roc Marciano’s productions is the way they turn the grit and heaviness of street rap into something dreamy and featherlight. Worthy’s cadence is deliberate, Roc’s is higher and more fragmented, and together they take you on a tour through a workaday underground where they get rich enough to relax but not so rich that they have to worry about it, at least not *too* much (“Simple Man”). In a culture that favors the young, they savor the wisdom and assurance of age (the Bun B-featuring “Underground Legends”), and while you sense that their dark days are behind them, they still summon a menace potent enough to make you wonder what skeletons might be rattling around their closets (“The Plug”).

For nearly a decade now, Kodak Black has navigated the rap game with no shortage of highs and lows. Still, the post-incarceration wins of “Super Gremlin” and the 2022 album *Back for Everything* put the controversial yet exceedingly popular Florida rapper back in a position of prominence. So, for *Pistolz & Pearlz*, an apparent finale for his longtime major-label home base of Atlantic Records, he delivers a characteristically strong effort that speaks to his past as much as his future. He shrewdly frontloads the project with features from Sniper Gang associates like GorditoFlo and Vvsnce, giving some deserved shine to the artists currently riding with him. But after the booming trio cut “Dirt McGerk,” with EST Gee & Lil Crix, he largely places the focus back on himself for the duration. Whether expressing an ice-cold worldview on “Murder Mystery” or sing-rapping about loyalty and love on “Follow Me,” his consistency stays undeniably on display. On the piano-led trap ballad “No Love for a Thug,” an album highlight, he opens up about loneliness and feeling emotionally adrift in ways rarely heard in hip-hop.

“No one ever told me what I’d have to sacrifice for fame,” The Kid LAROI sings on “SORRY,” the opening track on his debut album. “I’m just trying not to go insane, but I got all this weight on me and I just want to run away.” It’s a very real depiction of a fundamentally unreal experience: a young teen from Australia thrust into global stardom at rapid speed. His confessional continues: “Shit don’t make no sense, I mean, the pressure’s a mess/I’m 19, trying to navigate money and stress, weird industry friends/And my family life is intense and my girl is always upset because I’m always fuckin’ working.” There aren’t many people who can count multiplatinum certifications and an array of firsts, broken records, and awards among achievements earned prior to turning 20 or even releasing an official album. To be fair, The Kid LAROI, whose moniker honors his Kamilaroi heritage (the Aboriginal community of his maternal ancestry), started early. Born Charlton Howard, he released his first EP at 14, signed a record deal at 15, and dropped his *F\*CK LOVE* mixtape at 16. The mixtape was then rereleased three times, each time with more new tracks added. The second reissue, *F\*CK LOVE 3: OVER YOU*, included the Justin Bieber collaboration “STAY,” which topped charts in more than 20 countries. It’s no wonder the pitfalls of fame have already left scars. As with his mixtape, *THE FIRST TIME* is primarily a breakup record. But the anger and resentment of *F\*CK LOVE* has evolved and matured into heartbreak, loneliness, even grief. The shift comes with significant musical growth, too: Save for a handful of hip-hop tracks with big-name features like Future and Central Cee, *THE FIRST TIME* is all pop melodies, folksy guitars, and soulful R&B samples. “CALL ME INSTEAD” even features enchanting piano from jazz legend Robert Glasper. What Howard realizes time and time again is that no amount of money or possessions will keep him warm at night. “The ghost of you still floats around my room,” he admits on “BLEED.” “Now every night, I lay here in this bed we made for two.” On “WHAT WENT WRONG???”, he tries and fails to distract himself: “There’s a whole lotta women running round this room, but the whole time, I can only think about you,” he sings over wistful synths. And then there’s the two spoken interludes. On “STRANGERS (Interlude),” Howard lays it out: “You can be with someone for three years… and then one day it’s over. We’re both living our own separate lives again, as complete strangers.” A little later, “STRANGERS PT 2 (Interlude)” feels like a self-flagellating response: the story of love that hasn’t gone wrong at all. It’s a cutesy anecdote from Justin Bieber, recalling the first time he met his “squishy little peanut” and now wife, Hailey. The Hallmark moment serves only to make Howard’s heartache all the more depressing. Still, Howard isn’t just curled up in bed feeling sorry for himself: He’s doing the work, too. On “TEAR ME APART,” he takes responsibility, apologizes, and laments the “year’s worth of emotions in days,” his tangible pain a stark contrast to the breezy accompaniment. He checks himself on “YOU,” realizing with 20/20 hindsight that maybe *he* was the problem: “I used to think I was never wrong and all you’d do was complain/I see it all now that my ego calmed down, I don’t even know why you would keep me around.” While he’s still got some work to do (the “DESERVE YOU” line “I spent half a million dollars on love, how could you not feel for me?” might best be unpacked on a therapist’s couch), *THE FIRST TIME* presents a Kid LAROI who isn’t a kid anymore. He closes the album with “KIDS ARE GROWING UP,” a reflection on his traumatic family history and the consequences of success. It’s a full-circle moment: After opening the album with a similar admission, here he acknowledges his Faustian bargain: “Growing up I watched my favorite rappers’ interviews, I ain’t believe ’em when they said it ain’t all what it seems/But now I’m here and realized they were telling truths, ’cause you sacrifice yourself for everybody’s needs, by any means.”

From the very beginning of his career, Burna Boy has always moved with the disposition of a misunderstood and underappreciated virtuoso. There was the statement-making 2013 debut *L.I.F.E - Leaving an Impact for Eternity*, controversy-addressing releases like 2015’s *On a Spaceship* and 2016’s *Redemption*, and the self-assured groove of 2018’s *Outside* that recentered his journey and set the stage for further success on 2019’s era-defining, self-mythologizing *African Giant*. By the time he won a Grammy for 2020’s *Twice as Tall*, Burna Boy was already at the forefront of popular African music, regularly being referenced as one of global pop’s most incisive acts. A left turn on 2022’s emotionally charged and personally reflective *Love, Damini* has done nothing to diminish Burna’s powers, while the resounding success of his Toni Braxton-sampling 2022 hit “Last Last” has only further propped up his international profile. All of these triumphs have left Burna Boy walking in rarified air and appreciative of sticking to his convictions. In keeping with his penchant for not holding back on his most cogent thoughts, it’s no surprise that the first words uttered on his new album *I Told Them…* is a cheeky reminder to longtime detractors and onlookers. “It\'s fun to tell people something is true, and they doubt—and then they end up seeing it. There\'s no greater feeling,” Burna Boy tells Apple Music. “You can go back to my old tweets and stuff. I basically predicted everything that\'s happening now. So this is basically that.” Where *Love, Damini* was primarily a revelatory, genre-bending immersion into Burna Boy’s world, *I Told Them…* is hip-hop inspired, cocksure, and blunt, offering a glimpse at Burna’s future with backstory from his past. Whether warning haters not to be surprised by his successes on “On Form” or reeling off said successes on glitzy cuts like “Big 7” and “Sittin’ on Top of the World,” Burna is keen to make it clear that he’s in a new place, and he taps J. Cole for a withering dress-down of his critics on “Thanks.” Still adept at pulling musical influences from all over into a fully realized musical vision, Burna Boy recruits newcomer Seyi Vibez for a cinematic reimagining of street pop on “Giza.” He barely breaks a sweat swapping verses with Byron Messia on “Talibans II,” but the emotional core of *I Told Them…* comes on “If I’m Lying,” a wispy ballad where he admits to losing control at times over an alluring instrumental by Steel Banglez.

Five years after her critically acclaimed studio debut *Lost & Found*, Jorja Smith returns more self-assured than ever. On *falling or flying*, the UK singer-songwriter stays true to her roots, her lush tone draping over jazzy, futuristic production, while cuts like “GO GO GO” give listeners access to Smith’s more lighthearted side as she dips into indie rock territory. While *Lost & Found* exuded the energy of an exploratory coming-of-age for the then-19-year-old, *falling or flying* is a brutally honest expression of all the artist has learned. In her return to the musical spotlight, Smith also found her way back to her hometown of Walsall after spending a handful of years in London, during which time she worked on her sophomore album. *falling or flying* represents the singer’s blossoming sense of self amidst relentless public opinion, once again proving her intricate capabilities as a storyteller through both lyricism and vocal prowess.

LA-based, Dallas-raised artist Liv.e, announces her sophomore album 'Girl In The Half Pearl' due February 10th via In Real Life. 'Girl In The Half Pearl' seizes on both the creative and personal liberation Liv.e has experienced in the time since her 2020 debut album 'Couldn't Wait To Tell You...'. The album's 17 tracks are a document of self-examination, as she works through realizations prompted by grief and grapples with the dynamics of her role in the relationships in her life. Building upon the foundation she laid with CWTTY, 'Girl In The Half Pearl' bares her process of growth, forgiveness and reclamation of her sense of womanhood across an immersive soundscape. The album's artistic shifts developed during her time experimenting with live performance in London earlier this year while under residency at London's Laylow. The 24-year-old artist first garnered attention with her 2017 EP, FRANK, and 2018's Hoopdreams EP. Over the past year, Liv.e shared the standalone Mndsgn-produced single "Bout It," along with a COLORS performance and released 'CWTTY+', the deluxe version of her 2020 critically-acclaimed debut album. She's since performed alongside Earl Sweatshirt and Ravyn Lenae. Liv.e's unique sensibilities have also caught the eye of the fashion world, marked by an appearance in a Miu Miu ad campaign photographed by Tyrone Lebon. Most recently, she was featured on the new Mount Kimbie single titled "a deities encore."

Over the years, Future has lent his co-sign to any number of MCs. Yet Doe Boy remains one of the most consistent artists ever to rep the Freebandz imprint, not to mention one of the most enduring. The Cleveland rapper’s tough yet easygoing flow served him especially well on 2022’s high-grade *OH REALLY*, while his features opposite Young Thug, Trippie Redd, and Babyface Ray made him difficult to ignore elsewhere. At last, with the immersive *BEEZY*, his compelling menace finds new ways to lure listeners into his often ice-cold world. With its overt nod to a 2000s crossover classic and unapologetic hook, lead single “WAY I WALK” provided the first inklings that *BEEZY* would hit different. The hard-funk underpinnings of brooding album opener “RHUDE BOY” position Doe Boy for optimal intimidation. Much like his antiheroic bars, his lithe choruses on “DEMON TIME” and “NONSENSE” keep that same energy while leaving lasting impressions of their own. Production by ATL Jacob, Southside, and other heavy hitters ensures that he maintains a strong foothold as he stomps on the necks of his enemies. The features, to be sure, are impressive, from known quantities DaBaby and Lil Yachty to rising star Lola Brooke. Naturally, Future comes through on more than one occasion, in duo mode with his cohort on “MENACE” and as part of a robust posse with G Herbo and Roddy Ricch on the aggressive “TRY & SEE.” Matching much of the album’s ominously street-lit vibe, Rubberband Money Gang signee Big Flame 8 adds a memorably fearsome verse to “TOP TAKER.” To counter the violent rhetoric inherent to his experience, Doe Boy tries another tack for the R&B boom of “DEEP END” with Don Toliver and on his own with the smooth honesty of “RAN INTO A THUG.” In nothing short of an absolute coup, he secures hometown heroes Krayzie Bone and Bizzy Bone for the bullet-riddled climax “GRIM REAPER.”