If there were any remaining doubts as to hip-hop’s MVP, consider the decision stamped: Kendrick Lamar officially won 2024. There were whispers that Compton’s finest was working on an album in the wake of his feud with Drake, a once-in-a-generation beef that kept jaws dropped for months. (Perhaps you’ve heard of a little song called “Not Like Us,” an immediate entry into the canon of all-time great diss tracks.) After a sold-out celebration at the Kia Forum, an armful of Grammy nods and streaming records, and the headlining slot at next year’s Super Bowl, Lamar ties up his biggest year yet with a bow with his sixth album, *GNX*, the most legitimately surprising surprise drop since *BEYONCÉ* in 2013. Named for his beloved classic Buick, *GNX* finds Kendrick wielding a hatchet he’s by no means ready to bury, still channeling this summer’s cranked-to-11 energy. On “wacced out murals,” he’s riding around listening to Anita Baker, plotting on several downfalls: “It used to be fuck that n\*\*\*a, but now it’s plural/Fuck everybody, that’s on my body.” (Yes, there’s a nod to his Super Bowl drama with Lil Wayne.) If you’ve been holding your breath for Jack Antonoff to link with Mustard, wait no more—the seemingly odd couple share production credits on multiple tracks, the explosive “tv off” among them. Still, K.Dot keeps you guessing: It’s not quite 12 tracks of straight venom over world-conquering West Coast beats. SZA helps cool things down on the Luther Vandross-sampling “luther,” while Lamar snatches back a borrowed title on “heart pt. 6” to remember the early days of TDE: “Grinding with my brothers, it was us against them, no one above us/Bless our hearts.” He cycles through past lives over a flip of 2Pac’s “Made N\*\*\*\*z” on “reincarnated” before getting real with his father about war, peace, addiction, and ego death, and on “man at the garden,” he outlines his qualifications for the position of GOAT. Here’s another bullet point to add to that CV: On *GNX*, Lamar still surprises while giving the people exactly what they want.
A Top Dawg Entertainment fixture since the early 2010s, ScHoolboy Q played no small role in elevating the label to hip-hop’s upper echelon. With his Black Hippy cohorts Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, and Jay Rock, the tremendously talented Los Angeles native made a compelling case for continuing the West Coast’s rap legacy well beyond the G-funk era or the days of Death Row dominance. Even still, his relative absence from the game after *CrasH Talk* dropped in 2019 has been hard to ignore, particularly as the most prominent member of his group departed TDE while SZA became the roster’s most undeniable hitmaker. Indeed, it’s been nearly five years since he gave us more than a loosie, which makes the arrival of his sixth full-length *BLUE LIPS* all the more auspicious. His concerns as a lyricist draw upon the micro as well as the macro level, as a parent decrying mass school shootings on “Cooties” or as a rap star operating on his own terms on “Nunu.” Elevating the drama, the *Saw* soundtrack cue nods of “THank god 4 me” accent his emboldened bars targeting snitches, haters, and fakes. Q’s guest selection reflects a more curatorial ear at work than the gratifying star-power flexes found on *CrasH Talk*. Rico Nasty righteously snarls through her portion of the menacing “Pop,” while Freddie Gibbs glides across the slow funk groove of “oHio” with scene-stealing punchlines. A producer behind TDE records by Isaiah Rashad and REASON, Devin Malik steps out from behind the boards to touch the mic on a handful of cuts, namely “Love Birds” and the booming paean “Back n Love.”
As someone who invited fame and courted infamy, first with inflammatory albums like *Wolf* and later with his flamboyant fashion sense via GOLF WANG, Tyler Okonma is less knowable than most stars in the music world. While most celebrities of his caliber and notoriety either curate their public lives to near-plasticized extremes or become defined by tabloid exploits, the erstwhile Odd Futurian chiefly shares what he cares to via his art and the occasional yet ever-quotable interview. As his Tyler, The Creator albums pivoted away from persona-building and toward personal narrative, as on the acclaimed *IGOR* and *CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST*, his mystique grew grandiose, with the undesirable side effect of greater speculation. The impact of fan fixation plays no small part on *CHROMAKOPIA*, his seventh studio album and first in more than three years. Reacting to the weirdness, opening track “St. Chroma” finds Tyler literally whispering the details of his upbringing, while lead single “Noid” more directly rages against outsiders who overstep both online and offline. As on his prior efforts, character work plays its part, particularly on “I Killed You” and the two-hander “Hey Jane.” Yet the veil between truth and fiction feels thinner than ever on family-oriented cuts like “Like Him” and “Tomorrow.” Lest things get too damn serious, Tyler provocatively leans into sexual proclivities on “Judge Judy” and “Rah Tah Tah,” both of which should satisfy those who’ve been around since the *Goblin* days. When monologue no longer suits, he calls upon others in the greater hip-hop pantheon. GloRilla, Lil Wayne, and Sexyy Red all bring their star power to “Sticky,” a bombastic number that evolves into a Young Buck interpolation. A kindred spirit, it seems, Doechii does the most on “Balloon,” amplifying Tyler’s energy with her boisterous and profane bars. Its title essentially distillable to “an abundance of color,” *CHROMAKOPIA* showcases several variants of Tyler’s artistry. Generally disinclined to cede the producer’s chair to anyone else, he and longtime studio cohort Vic Wainstein execute a musical vision that encompasses sounds as wide-ranging as jazz fusion and Zamrock. His influences worn on stylishly cuffed sleeves, Neptunes echoes ring loudly on the introspective “Darling, I” while retro R&B vibes swaddle the soapbox on “Take Your Mask Off.”
Sporting one of the most outsized personalities in all of hip-hop history, LL COOL J made rap braggadocio into an art form. During his mid-’80s emergence, the Queens-bred MC used his inherently aggressive delivery to prove himself bigger and deffer than the competition. In the ’90s, he channeled that tenacity even more effectively on the seminal *Mama Said Knock You Out* and its gritty successor *14 Shots to the Dome* while increasingly amplifying his libidinous loverman side to great commercial effect. It worked so well that, by the time he popularized the term “GOAT” on his sexually charged 2000 album of the same name, few could argue he wasn’t a contender for that prestigious title. Yet those who arrived during James Todd Smith’s R&B crossover era, or the many more who’ve come to know him primarily as an actor on television and in film, may not know what a tremendous rapper he was—and remains. His first studio album in some 11 years, *THE FORCE* shows his microphone prowess has in no way waned over the past decade. There’s a core combativeness to his contemporary approach, unquestionably bolstered by the distressing and galvanizing events of recent years. Out the gate, on the Snoop Dogg-assisted “Spirit of Cyrus,” he conjures a vivid Black vigilante fantasy where racists receive their comeuppances in brutal fashion. With a similarly vibrant Busta Rhymes in his corner, he outlines a revolutionary mindset on the thunderous “Huey in the Chair.” As should be expected with an artist with his tenure, he also reveals a sentimentally nostalgic streak in a number of instances here, calling back to his come-up on “Basquiat Energy” and realizing that the you-can’t-go-home-again axiom rings truer than expected on “30 Decembers.” “Black Code Suite” synthesizes his tendencies quite beautifully, its Afrocentric bent mixing memory with militancy. Part of what makes *THE FORCE* such a tremendous record comes from producer Q-Tip. Rather than chase trends, the Natives Tongues veteran gives LL a series of instrumentals (and, on more than one occasion, hooks) that veer far from legacy-act stagnation and instead towards a mature yet rugged vibe. This translates to the laidback synth slap of the Saweetie duet “Proclivities” as much as the far squirmier funk of his Eminem collab “Murdergram Deux.” From the reconfigured throwbacks of “Passion” and “Post Modern” to the timeless grooves of “Runnit Back” and “Saturday Night Special,” their robust artist pairing ensures that *THE FORCE* is an album to reckon with.
It’s not easy being ahead of your time: You have to wait years for the world to catch up. Such was the case when an 18-year-old Chief Keef followed up his anthemic major-label debut (2012’s *Finally Rich*) with a pair of self-released 2013 mixtapes (August’s *Bang, Pt. 2* and October’s *Almighty So*) that sounded obscure in comparison, prompting many a claim that he’d fallen off as quickly as he’d gotten on. These days, you can hear echoes of both projects everywhere, in particular *Almighty So*, the better of the two. You might argue that the slurry, intuitive style which has dominated the past decade of rap began here. Eleven long years later, the project’s sequel arrives after a half decade of teasing. (Keef previewed *Almighty So 2*’s initial cover art way back in 2019.) Hip-hop’s reinvented itself a dozen times over in that time span, perhaps the only constant being Keef’s enduring influence. On *Almighty So 2*, the 28-year-old veteran sounds as if he’s well aware of just how tall his legacy looms. “I done been through so much smoke to where I couldn’t even see myself,” he raps in his oft-copied swing on “Treat Myself” before busting out a classic Sosa-ism: “Diamonds shining off my charm, I think I Christmas tree’d myself!” He spits fire and brimstone over sinister church choirs on “Jesus,” puffs out his chest on the soulful “Runner,” and offers up the most demented Scarface impression since Future circa 2011 on “Tony Montana Flow.” And on “Believe,” the former teenage phenom is now a man who’s done some soul-searching in his time off from shaping the sound of modern rap.
The hip-hop polymath built a reputation on witty freestyles that befitted her Philadelphia roots, then broke through in 2017 with “MUMBO JUMBO,” a purposefully unintelligible trap ditty that brought new resonance to the term “mumble rap” with a Grammy-nominated video that should come with a warning for those with dentophobia. Her debut album, 2018’s *Whack World*, crammed an LP’s worth of ideas into the time it takes to brew a pot of coffee: 15 sharp, surrealist minute-long tracks that veered from slapstick vocal hijinks to straight-ahead spitting, each accompanied by its own micro music video. The world Whack built was carnival-esque, all funhouse mirrors and sensory overload, with a darkness lingering at the edges. Aside from a trio of three-song EPs (the tentatively titled *Rap?*, *Pop?*, and *R&B?*) released in 2021, Whack kept a puzzlingly low profile in the years that followed. The colorful critical darling who’d had so much to say in so little time had more or less gone quiet. Then, six years after *Whack World*, she announced *WORLD WIDE WHACK*, billed as the rapper’s real full-length debut. Early videos continued the high-concept ideas and cartoonish costumes, but listen awhile and you heard something new: naked vulnerability, almost shocking in its rawness. “I can show you how it feels when you lose what you love,” Whack sing-songs on the twinkling “27 CLUB,” looking like a cross between Pierrot the clown and Bootsy Collins. The hook was one word, drawn out into a wistful melody: “Suiciiiiide…” In other words, there’s more to Whack’s world than you might expect. (“Might look familiar, but I promise you don’t know me,” she reminds you on the minute-and-change “MOOD SWING.”) Over the 15 songs of *WORLD WIDE WHACK*, the rapper grapples with real life, where echoes of abandonment and instances of suicidal ideation coexist with bursts of cockiness, uncertainty, lust, loneliness. The constant is her voice, thoughtful and brimming with ideas as ever. “BURNING BRAINS” is an expression of depressive thinking filtered through Whack’s imagistic lens: “Soup too hot, ice too cold, grass too green, sky too blue.” And there’s a great deal of whimsy, too, as on “SHOWER SONG,” a space-funk bop on the joys of singing in the bathroom.
“Sampling is a part of me, because I grew up on these songs,” Cash Cobain tells Apple Music. “I just take everything, throw it in a bowl and mix it up, and make my own Slizzy sauce.” Raised in the Bronx and Jamaica, Queens, two of the most hallowed locales in hip-hop history, he came up as a leader in the city’s vibrant sample-drill and sexy-drill waves before breaking big nationally as a sought-after producer for Drake, Trippie Redd, and Lil Yachty, to name but a few. Even while he scored hits and built his movement with locals such as B-Lovee and Chow Lee, he didn’t get as much credit for his rapping until his single “Fisherrr” with Bay Swag and its corresponding Ice Spice remix made him inescapably ubiquitous. “Two years ago, I thought I made it,” he says, adding, “but now I’m like, ‘You going somewhere.’” After linking on both sides of the booth as a featured artist opposite the likes of Don Toliver and A Boogie wit da Hoodie, his proper album debut *PLAY CASH COBAIN* puts him fully front and center. The raw sexual energy of “act like” and “rump punch” exemplify the sumptuous sound he pioneered and its correspondingly raunchy lyrical direction. Elsewhere, though, he demonstrates a softer, more romantic side on “message to u” and “wassup wya,” actively conjuring his dream girl fantasies into sincere realities. (“The album is sexual healing,” he quips.) Whether he’s creatively interpolating R&B classics on “all i wanna hear” and “cantsleep/drunkinluv” or flirting with other sources like on the Afrobeats-inflected “luv it,” his cutting-edge approach makes nearly every track feel momentous and of the moment. As if his own verses and hooks weren’t enough, the diverse guest list on *PLAY CASH COBAIN* nods to Cobain’s elevated status in the rap game. Quavo and the aforementioned Toliver help set the tone on opener “slizzyhunchodon,” their respective waves uniting for one irrestible vibe. For the show-stopping “problem,” he gathers a breathtaking and unexpected array of compounding features by everyone from Big Sean and Fabolous to Flo Milli and YN Jay. “It\'s like everyone is doing their own freestyle to it,” he says of the multigenerational posse cut built around Brooklyn singer Laila!’s single “Not My Problem.” For the most part, Cobain does what he does best without high-profile help, reflecting his humble rise from a South Jamaica basement. “I’m just trying to bring positivity and fun,” he says. “I want my people or my peers around me to do the same. I want everybody to win.”
If runaway smashes like “Pound Town,” “SkeeYee,” and “Get It Sexyy” told us anything about St. Louis MC Sexyy Red, it’s that the *Hood Hottest Princess* trades in anthems. Nearly exclusively. Her *In Sexyy We Trust* mixtape hardly deviates from the plan, delivering even more anthems extolling the allure of the Sexyy Red lifestyle. Across the tape, we hear Red rap about upholding a particular standard of courtship (“Boss Me Up”), the joys of puppy love (“U My Everything”), how hard she goes in the streets (“Ova Bad”), and also the very precise sexual maneuvers she enjoys (“Lick Me,” “Awesome Jawsome”). The bulk of it is delivered over charging Tay Keith production, which will make fans excited to shout back lyrics at her during an unknowable number of Rolling Loud sets. Red’s work here is enough to make guest appearances from Drake and Lil Baby seem like an afterthought, but they, too, very obviously recognize an aspiring hitmaker when they hear one.
Over the course of his decade-plus in the spotlight, Future has allowed his many alter egos a turn at center stage. There’s Future Hendrix, the soulful hippie for whom 2017’s *HNDRXX* is named, and *The WIZRD*, a nickname given by his uncle and the namesake of 2019’s *Future Hndrxx Presents: The WIZRD*. Super Future represents him at his catchiest, where Fire Marshal Future shows the rapper at his most lit (as in, the fire marshals are going to have to shut the club down). But it’s been a while since we’ve seen Pluto, the character associated with his earliest projects, including 2012’s *Pluto*, the debut studio album that revealed him as a secret romantic and unexpected hitmaker. That eerie, pink-lit house on the cover of *MIXTAPE PLUTO*, Future’s first solo release of 2024, is none other than the Dungeon, the Georgia studio from which some of history’s most vital and inventive rap music emerged, from Goodie Mob to Outkast to Future himself. The basement studio was owned by Rico Wade, Organized Noize producer and Future’s older cousin. When Wade died at 52, Future posted a poignant message to Instagram: “This life wouldn’t b possible if it wasn’t for my cousin. Love u forever.” Across the album’s 17 featureless tracks, Future pays tribute not only to his uncle and mentor, but also to the era from which he emerged. “SKI,” “MJ,” and “READY TO COOK UP” deliver elevated updates on his narcotized rasp circa 2011’s *Dirty Sprite*, 2012’s *Astronaut Status*, and 2013’s underrated *F.B.G.: the Movie*. (“READY TO COOK UP,” in particular, feels like a high-end sequel to *Dirty Sprite*’s haunting title track: He might pull up in a helicopter, but he still knows how to use a Pyrex.) But it’s his soulful side that shines on tracks like “SURFING A TSUNAMI,” a shimmering hallucination of mermaids and giant waves, or on “OCEAN” when he croons, “So many tears, I could fill up an ocean.” And on the heartbreaking “LOST MY DOG,” he mourns a friend who died from a fentanyl overdose: “His mama tried to raise an angel, turned out gangster like his daddy/We share the same pain, so I knew he wasn’t happy.” It’s further evidence for Future as one of our greatest living bluesmen.