New Rap from Rapsody, Nipsey Hussle, and Maxo Kream
Rapsody crowns the afro, YG opens a men’s group, and Maxo Kream skips the therapist.
Same as Soulpolitan. Each of the five of us snatched a rap song that lodged itself into our respective cerebral cortexes, and we spent a brief amount of time with only the song, not as a group project or with a grading curve, but solely with whatever refused to leave. This time around we leaned into lyrics we could at least argue with: Rapsody builds a whole religion out of an afro pick, YG, JID and Ab-Soul pass the microphone to say each what they’re scared of, Nipsey Hussle and Bino Rideaux discuss the cost of chasing the money for one’s home, Rick Ross and T.I. pull up with an armored escort ready to wax philosophic about veneers and caskets, while Maxo Kream navigates a sorrow so profound that a man serving fifty years is a preferable guide to a psychiatrist. We love a couple, tolerate most of one, and you guess the other.
Rapsody, “God Gotta Afro” feat. Karabo yaMorena Choir
A morning spent in front of a mirror morphs into a sermon on its first verse: beads clinking “clink, clink, clink”, afro puffed, rollers like a headdress, and afro shine whipped to a slick polish. By “Cocoa butter on my brown skin like my eyes is” Rapsody is talking us through a Black woman getting herself together as if she is constructing a god. Mr Porter provided the beat, and on it the Karabo yaMorena Choir handles the simple refrain that Rapsody distributes to the room: “God gotta afro.”
She fills the hook with so much Black memory that the verses don’t drift off into affirmation. With only a bar or two apiece, she references Clipse, Diana Ross, “Poetic Justice,” “Like Water for Chocolate,” Andre 3000 as “prototype OG,” Auntie Em, burning bushes, red Kool-Aid- enough allusions to sink a less confident emcee. Rapsody for the most part keeps above the pileup but some sections read like a roll call, with references piling up faster than she can fully articulate any of them. One bar skips beyond product and hair, and into bloodline; that is the bar I return to: “Look just like my momma’s momma’s momma’s momma’s continent.” That’s the afro as inheritance, a line stretching four generations to a place. “God look like me” comes after that, sounding like it finally has the receipt. Her fifth album drops in August. —Phil
YG, “INSECURE” feat. JID & Ab-Soul
It’s nothing new to hear rappers talk about being scared, and for the most part it manifest as a confessional track amidst a suit of armor. On “INSECURE”, YG gives the same admission to three different men and each one fails to live up to it in his own unique way. He sets it up at the beginning of the song discussing how “growing up I thought silence make you solid, but it don’t,” and the song is closed by a spoken word intro to a “Gentlemen’s Club,” where men can talk about things you’d never otherwise hear them speak about (The Gentlemen’s Club is the same title as YG’s upcoming album). Issa Rae’s name is mentioned in both the title and the verses, so it’s clear from the jump what the setup is—a show about having to let the world see behind the curtain.
YG’s verse is the most suspect, and perhaps the most honest in this instance. Every time he tries to break open, he has to resort to the same level of swagger, copping to performance anxiety one minute (“Scared thinkin’ how early I might nut”), and the next threatening to tell the girl he’s speaking to to “hush.” JID takes the route of trying to twist his craft on its head, where normally he’s rapping about all the money he makes with women, here he’s rapping about how “Your bitch could tell you where my inches went” before asking himself, “Am I immature? Maybe.” Finally, Ab-Soul presents the verse that gives the song its name, rapping from the perspective of an “SJS survivor,” who mentions how at six-years-old children would laugh at him and girls “passin’ me by,” and goes on to the most sorrowful point: now that he has success and money he can get any woman he wants “Except for the woman I want, body-wise.” The chorus simply spells out what each man can’t seem to say: “I’m insecure as fuck,” the only instance on the song where the feeling isn’t dramatized through actions.
Ab-Soul gets the last verse and it couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. By the time he’s mentioning a condition and a middle school flashback, the entire swagger on the initial verse is already apparent to the listener as the exact facade he is describing and it explains why one may have to pop “dick pills” before seeing a stripper. —Quinn Baptiste
Nipsey Hussle & Bino Rideaux, “Sacrifices” feat. James Fauntleroy
The battle has already begun when the song kicks off. Bino Rideaux spends the chorus on a woman who “wasn’t never gon’ change” pressing her directly on whether or not she’s for him then writes her out as “ain’t no sacrifices in you.” The first stretch falls on her entirely, and not on him. His is the plea of the man convinced he’s been the only one on this thing with something to offer and that he has taken the whole thing on the chin. Behind it all though is the “Fly as hell, all-black YSL” sung chorus, saving it from sounding like a rant.
Nipsey Hussle is the reason you are sticking around. Where Bino calls out his woman, Nipsey turns it on himself-naming what it is that he does wrong. He is responsible for “broke your heart for these Benzes,” for “Don’t fall in love with no hustler, you know that come with conditions,” for the reason he keeps circling through to the third verse of the song, the realization “love ain’t ‘posed to be prison.” He is like a business man who can’t turn off the logic, even when hurt. “Plant us in fertile soil then plan for the fruit.” The chorus is functional and it does the job. To make a song it’s good enough. It’s across the third verse that Nipsey names all the costs and the stakes and then freezes on a sentiment that he can’t intellectualize. “You ever been so conflicted you scared to make a decision?” After a man so sure of everything else he’s ever had to say, it’s a rare flash of the human being. —Randy
Rick Ross, “Mahogany Caskets” feat. T.I.
Here, you have to salute the work ethic. Some twenty-odd years in playing a kingpin who may or may not have ever moved a single brick, Rick Ross is still showing up in bulletproof trucks and popping out with the chain, forever finding a new luxury item to threaten you with. “Mahogany Caskets” is exactly the Ross you’d hope for, opening on “Stefon Diggs, I need another bitch” and unfolding an entire scheme on the NFL’s Diggs brothers which might be brilliant, or the lamest linking tissue possible, depending on the line; it sounds like he’s enjoying himself, and mostly I am too.
T.I. drops in and effortlessly out-raps the host on his own track, a feature I replayed in order to understand why I enjoyed this so much more; there’s density, aggression, and a focus that you wouldn’t expect at this point, linking the rap game with a “prenup,” talking about “trippin’ since clippin’ my umbilical,” and walking out of a robbery with a man’s teeth in his pocket “as a souvenir”-we take them new veneers home with us as a souvenir. Ross makes his case with flashes, when he drops the flexing for a quick punchline, saying he’d “let a bitch rap” before he’d ever snitch, and throwing in the obligatory “fuck 50 Cent” he seems duty-bound to include in his every outing. None of this is new, and Ross is not trying to make it new; these are just grown men making up extravagant lies on a Nef-U beat, with T.I. as the game’s top performer. —Asa McKenzie
Maxo Kream, “Time Out”
The grief, howbeit, appears from bars one to four, and it never fully departs. Loves of his life are “unalive now” and “addicted to the Adderall and violence, Amy Winehouse.” After the loss of his father, Maxo journey across the globe, to Niger, Lagos, and Ghana, in search of the stable bedrock, seeking his roots. Over a beat by JPEGMAFIA, he writes, as he always does, like a journal page, complete with all the typos, “Time Out” catching him at his lowest, at his most unadorned.
Maxo uses the largest segment of his bars to describe why he will not attend therapy, despite the desire. He notes that he needs “but never make the time” and runs into the wall every stranger becomes-the issue of handing over his own life to someone else who has no chance of carrying it—“I can’t tell a cracka what my niggas kill and die for.” Passed down as it is in the block, the pain is not something one could ever trust a notepad, and a stranger, with; hence, “Can’t share it with no therapist”. The phone rings; it is from Jordan, one of his closest loved ones serving fifty years for murder, who, from prison, advises him to “straighten up and stand on business,” and keep his head down, due to the number of people in his life who still depend on him. When he recalls his suicidal impulses from his lowest moment, he states it flatly and then continues on as one might discuss something that they’ve weathered. It is the final turn that sticks. His support is a collect call from a man doing fifty years for murder, a teardrop tattoo to represent the tears that he allowed himself to shed-to get his head up and his eyes fixed on those who need him. He lets that man talk him out of it, and then relates the experience without a hint of irony. —Kamarion
Rap Albums to Check Out
Wiki: Ancient History
Awon & The Other Guys: Solidified
Hit‑Boy: HITstory 2: Success Is a Dirty Word*
Jim Jones: The Landlord
Mickey Diamond & Big Ghost Ltd: Blood of the Lamb
BabyChiefDoit: Rise Against My Broken Odds
Dee‑1: The Shift
Freddy Stone & Q No Rap Name: REAL LIFE VOLUME 1*
$amaad: Idea of Evil
Don Gunna: Crack Music 3
Terry Presume: FREE
Woo Da Savage: Rap Scholar
BSG Rambo: Sincerely, Beezy
ZekeUltra & Savedbyher.: DOGS NEVER DIE
HeadHuncho Amir: All My Intentions Real
Big Rush: DILEMA DO OURIÇO
Lyno Nine8: Flightmode
lil2posh: Graduation Tape
Dro Kenji: IT IS WHAT IT IS
YFG Pave: Niemand
Tezzus: THE RESURRECTIØN
Lil Rae: The Godfather 2
The Musalini: Summer Breeze (EP)
Lute: Hard to Reach (EP)
Dom Venice: Paid to Live (EP)
Bary: Kuba vs Bary (EP)
Danny Towers: Marina Money (EP)
MC Serch & Apathy: Millions Of Zeros (EP)
Shaolin Monkey, C.Terrible & 1010!: Another Battle (EP)
Rebel Rae: Free the Girls (EP)
Anysia Kym & Tony Seltzer: Purity (Flips)
Fly Anakin: (The) Forever Dream’s Night Shift
DeevoDaGenius & TEGA: Da Story of Tega Brady (Deluxe)
G Herbo: Lil Herb: Lil Heroin Edition
Other Songs to Check Out
Ludacris: Real Hustla (feat. GloRilla)
Polo G: Weight On My Shoulders
Kid Ink: No Play
Pell: Thru the Lines (feat. Kota the Friend)
DAMEDAME*: FIRE BURNIN’ THRU THE RAIN
BlocBoy JB: Get You Some Money (feat. HoodRich Pablo Juan)
Raz Fresco: THE BLIND / BORDERS
Sonnyjim & Da$h: $Cramble
DJ Muggs, T.F & NEMS: Power Tools
ANKHLEJOHN & SwuM: AURA FARMING
Magic & Bird (Andy Mineo & Wordsplayed): FIRE FROM ABOVE (Maxi‑Single)
Erick the Architect: No Doubt (I’m In Love)
DijahSB: The Signs (feat. Kwncy)
Tay‑K: Everywhere I Go / Erupt
Molly Santana: Can’t Touch This
Toosii: yesterday
Mike D: True Colors
Parallel Thought & Fatboi Sharif: Parallel Paradox
AKTHESAVIOR: BLESSINGS
Larry June: The Machinist
Dezzy Hollow: JOOGIN’
Jay Exodus, Big Gates & Jay Worthy: Scared Money
Open Mike Eagle & Kenny Segal: Unfinished Concrete Initials (feat. Hemlock Ernst)
Jay Cinema & Sefu: Amethyst
Joey Purp: Merch That (feat. NEZ)
Kaden Jordan, DJ Mykael V & TJ Carroll: IMAGE
Kiran the Nomad: For What It’s Worth
midwxst: DON’T TRUST
2slimey: lobby
Armani West: basketball