Uproxx's Best Rap Albums of 2018

Released in 2018, J. Cole’s fifth studio album came together in just two weeks, after Cole shared the stage with fellow voice-of-a-generation rapper Kendrick Lamar during his *DAMN.* tour, and decided he was ready for another anthemic body of work. The result, *KOD*, is riddled with social messages and symbolism, starting with the title itself, which is an acronym for many things: Kids on Drugs, Kill our Demons, and King Overdosed. The colorful album art, meanwhile, displays children taking pills, snorting cocaine, smoking weed, and sipping lean (when you look closer, the children can be seen morphing into morbid figures, under the cloak of a jewel-encrusted king). The lyrics on *KOD* are even more provocative, and find Cole leaning inward, unpacking his own traumas, demons, and vices, warning about unhealthy dependencies to materialism and drugs. On “Once an Addict,” the platinum-selling rapper uses his mother’s story to ruminate on the intergenerational effects of alcoholism, while “Kevin’s Heart” finds him using comedian Kevin Hart’s publicized infidelities as a vehicle to discuss Cole’s own internal struggles with monogamy. These are weighty topics. But listeners didn’t mind: *KOD* not only topped the album charts, it broke numerous streaming records on its first day of release.

Smino’s debut album, 2017’s *blkswn*, introduced the world to the most original voice out of St. Louis since that of Cornell Haynes, Jr. But aside from rapping and singing, Smino and the aforementioned Nelly have little in common. Yet Smino is able to speak to life in St. Louis—and in a much more ambitious sense, the black American experience—on a level akin to the city’s biggest export to date. Smino’s second album, *NOIR*, is a continuation of the themes of *blkswn*. Through a deluge of flows and varying tenors, he cites touchtones of the proud Midwest culture in which he grew up, and he does it over the rap, jazz, funk, and (most prominently) R&B compositions he chooses to ride. There are allusions to his influences throughout, but none more overt than when he borrows slang from Nelly himself for “LOW DOWN DERRTY BLUES.”

Even before Playboi Carti’s breakout single, “Magnolia,” early fans were expressing an insatiable demand for new music from the rapper. *Die Lit* comes a year after the self-titled album that brought us that hit, with 19 tracks to make up for the wait. Having joked openly about being called a “mumble rapper,” Carti aggressively leans into the distinction here, thickening his Atlanta accent and even pitching up his delivery on songs like the spacey “Fell in Luv” and “FlatBed Freestyle,” where his couplets devolve into rhythmic yet indecipherable vocals. On the whole, *Die Lit* is a collection of earworms built on minimal and bass-heavy production from Pi\'erre Bourne, assisted occasionally by contributors like Lil Uzi Vert, Skepta, and Nicki Minaj.

“We were so inspired last year,” Kevin Abstract told Beats 1 host Julie Adenuga about the making of the sprawling LA mega-group BROCKHAMPTON’s fourth album. “I can’t really explain where the inspiration was coming from. Success messes with the way artists create at times.” So does adversity: Ameer Vann, who was literally the face of the self-styled boy band’s three previous projects, was ousted in 2018 amid allegations of domestic abuse. While he was regarded as one of the group’s best rappers, BROCKHAMPTON has a particularly deep bench; rhyming skill is hardly the only draw. Assembled in part via a Kanye West fan-club message board, the group’s 14 members hail from different corners of the United States, save one from Belfast. The evolving musicality, divergent perspectives and inspirations, and emotional honesty that sent the collective into orbit are all present, if not elevated, on their major-label debut *Iridescence*. An abundance of vocal distortion that sometimes makes it difficult to identify individual contributors lends a sense of cohesion, and underneath it, the album plays as a beautiful hodgepodge of genres. There’s the traditional gangsta rap bounce of “NEW ORLEANS,” the UK grime-inspired charge of “WHERE THE CASH AT,” and an acoustic guitar ballad in “SAN MARCOS,” all emblematic of a group whose ambition is commensurate with its head count. “We’re nowhere near where we wanna be,” said Abstract. “I’m tryna do Travis Scott numbers.”

*FM!* plays like a radio station takeover with Vince Staples at the controls. Over a tight and tidy 11 tracks, three of them skits, the LBC rapper enlists producers Kenny Beats and Hagler for some top-down West Coast perspectives. The mood is especially lifted on Bay Area-style slaps like “Outside!,” reaching maximum hyphy levels on “No Bleedin” and “FUN!” with (naturally) E-40. Other guests chop it up: Picture Ty Dolla $ign in neon jams wielding a Super Soaker (“Feels Like Summer”), Jay Rock and Staples defending their corner (“Don’t Get Chipped”), and Kehlani searching for peace of mind (“Tweakin’”). From the artwork that draws on Green Day’s *Dookie* to the station-break interludes featuring LA radio personality Big Boy, *FM!* presents an anarchic sense of creativity, warmed by the California sun.

Some 20 years deep in the music industry, Bronx-bred producer and rapper Swizz Beatz is still able to coax groundbreaking performances out of seasoned MCs like Nas, Pusha T, and Lil Wayne—artists who have long cemented their individual legacies as innovators. Though there are guests on every track, Swizz\'s second album, *Poison*, is less a compilation of assorted collaborations than a collection of inspired performances united under a singular vision, each one somehow living up to the brilliance of the last. The recent Harvard Business School graduate tells Apple Music his methods for getting the most out of his collaborators in the studio — and how they happen to double as MBA-caliber, *Fast Company*-approved leadership tenets. **Focus on Strengths** “I think I got the best out of these artists because I actually have concepts; it’s not just about throwing them a beat. Look at what Young Thug was able to deliver \[on “25 Soldiers”\]. I just produce him in a way that is different than people normally hear him. And it was fun to take Nas, put him on “Echo,” and have a story in 2018 that\'s just so ill coming from one of our poets—the Langston Hughes of rap.” **Have a Vision** “The criteria for the album was that everybody had to deliver the best that you know them for or better. It was like, \'Is this the one of the best Nas verses you\'ve heard in a long time?\' Yes. Look at what Wayne was able to do off \'P.O.M.S.\'— he was able to launch! And then we hit ‘em with “Uproar” \[from *Tha Carter V*\]. It was important for me to have that vision with Wayne, but it was important for Wayne to deliver on that vision; it\'s an equal exchange.” **Make Connections** “I wanted to make \'We Gon\' Make It Pt. 2\' and hear Styles and Kiss go back and forth like that. I wanted the chorus \[for “Something Dirty/Pic Got Us”\] to be big in a way that people wouldn\'t expect. I knew Kendrick was a fan of theirs and they\'re a fan of Kendrick, so I was like, I can make that happen. Would it have been dope for him to kill a verse? Yeah, definitely, but I just like that fact that he\'s on the chorus on a Styles P and Jadakiss in-and-out.” **Don\'t Micromanage** “Áine Zion was at a No Commissions art show in London and she did a spoken-word performance. I just thought she was dope, so I challenged her with the *Poison* theme \[\'Poison Intro\'\]. She came back with that in like an hour and it just felt so authentic. I was like, \'There we go right there.\'” **Create Safe Spaces** “It’s not that I\'m asking an artist to do something that\'s going to make them feel uncomfortable in a bad way. I might ask them to do something that they\'re uncomfortable with because they’ve never done it before, but that\'s different—that\'s a discovery. And all artists should be open to discovery. I\'m a disruptor, right? I want to disrupt the whole shit, every chance I get.”

In a post-Young Thug, post-Future Atlanta rap landscape, popular upstarts Lil Baby and Gunna are neck and neck as emerging voices of the city. But unlike those elder statesmen—whose collaborative 2017 album *Super Slimey* was released more than half a decade into their respective careers—Baby and Gunna have teamed up early in their race, delivering 13 songs to satiate the pair’s largely overlapping fanbase. The project takes its name from each of the participants\' franchises (*Harder Than Hard*, *Too Hard*, and *Harder Than Ever* for Lil Baby and the three-part *Drip Season* series for Gunna.) *Drip Harder* showcases each rapper in equal measure, Lil Baby\'s distinct vocal timbre complementing Gunna’s in a way that\'s reminiscent of Mobb Deep’s Prodigy and Havoc. While there are standout solo outings from each (“Deep End” for Lil Baby and “World Is Yours” for Gunna), the album is proof positive that when Atlanta’s brightest young talents align, it’s the rap world at large that wins.

For an artist only halfway through his twenties, Masego seems to be an old soul. The full-length debut from the Virginia-based singer and producer is a startlingly mature work, drawing from quiet-storm R&B and Stevie Wonder soul alongside hints of trap (see “Shawty Fishin’,” where a wistful sax solo snakes around 808 knocks). Masego’s a hopeless romantic but also a total flirt, falling in love one moment and purring come-ons to older women the next. Ultimately, though, *Lady Lady* is thoroughly devoted to women, both real and imagined—on “Black Love,” Masego channels “Careless Whisper” for a ballad to his future wife, even though he hasn’t met her yet.

YG’s 2016 sophomore album *Still Brazy* was released in the wake of an attempt on the rapper’s life—and it contained all of the venom and paranoia one might expect. It also boasted the most prominent, brash musical protest of the Trump era, “FDT.” If *Still Brazy* was a man hardened after a life-threatening experience, *Stay Dangerous* finds the rapper’s resolve ossified to the point of god complex. “I\'m the man, bitch I walk \'round like I’m bulletproof,” he spits on the menacing, bass-heavy “Bulletproof.” The tough talk and gang affiliation is front and center throughout, but, tucked deep into the album’s back end on “Deeper Than Rap,” there\'s also a self-awareness YG has reserved for past album’s most honest moments: “I got a daughter now/I’m barely around/That shit fuck with me/She gon\' understand, cause I’m getting money.”

“It wasn’t just verses, it wasn’t just appearances,” 6LACK told Beats 1 host Zane Lowe about the collaborators on his sophomore album. “It was people stepping into my world and saying what they might not say on their track.” Part of the Atlanta native’s launch to stardom was “Ex Calling,” a biting yet conspicuously turnt-down reinterpretation of a song called “Perkys Calling” by fellow Atlantan Future. The revamp clearly was taken as flattery because Future appears on *East Atlanta Love Letter*’s title track, their voices layered together to sing about how their words “hit like a Draco,” the pair likening their pillow talk to the firing of a handgun. “I’m an R&B n\*gga wit a hip-hop core,” 6LACK confesses on “Scripture.” It’s as accurate a definition of the artist’s genre-toeing music as you’ll find. *East Atlanta Love Letter* is another collection of 6LACK’s street sensibility delivered as an R&B confessional, even if the features (J. Cole and Offset among them) skew toward rap’s top spitters.

Maybe more than any other rapper in history, Lil Wayne’s output is defined by franchises. An artist should be so lucky to sustain the kind of longevity that would allow for multi-volume phases the likes of Wayne’s *Dedication*, and *Da Drought* mixtapes, let alone the series that made him into a superstar, *Tha Carter*. Though Wayne was not without projects in between, some seven years were allowed to pass between the release of the fourth and fifth installments of the lattermost. Fortunately, Wayne has rewarded his fans’ patience with 23 tracks that speak to a number of his most storied eras. “Mixtape Weezy,” as Jay-Z famously coined, is alive and well on songs like the Swizz Beatz-produced “Uproar,” Wayne blacking out over a reinterpretation of G-Dep’s 2001 hit “Special Delivery.” The nostalgia doesn’t stop (or peak) there, as Wayne and Snoop Dogg share space over a flip of Dr. Dre’s “Xxplosive” on “Dope N\*ggaz,” while Mannie Fresh revisits the Cash Money golden-era bounce of Juvenile’s “Ghetto Children” for “Start This Shit Off Right.” There are nods to the experimental Wayne of the *I Am Not A Human Being* projects (“Don’t Cry,” “Mess”) and also the rapper’s under-heralded pop wizardry (“Famous,” which features his daughter Reginae as hook singer), and even a love song built on a gospel sample, “Dope New Gospel.” In all, *Tha Carter V* is an album for anyone who’s missed Wayne—no matter which Wayne they’d missed.