Rap
Song of the Week: Jay Som and Palehound Choose the Bachelor’s Life and Debut “Anything at All”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, two longtime friends form a new band and find a new sound. The past year of our lives has taught us that loneliness comes in several shades of blue. It can feel like total isolation, separation from dear friends, or even the tedium of seeing the same faces every single day. Those among us who have fared best have either found ways to beat the loneliness (a little Zoom went a long way there for a while, didn’t it?) or embrace it as a chance to remain in the moment and accomplish something. Jay Som (Melina Duterte) and Palehound voc...
Facebook’s New App Bars Lets You Rap Over Premade Beats
The follow-up era to SoundCloud rappers may well be upon us. As noted by TechCrunch, Facebook is releasing an app that will let users rap over premade beats and share a video of it with their community. It’s called Bars, and it’s currently available to download in closed beta form. From the sound of it, Bars is an app geared towards beginner rappers and freestyle pros alike. Users can choose from a rolodex of beats already available to use on the app, rap over them for 60 seconds, and then post the video to a “TikTok-style feed” where fellow Bars users can watch it and mark it as “fire” if they like it. Bars reportedly offers “studio quality vocal effects,” including everybody’s favorite AutoTune feature, too. Those in need of a creative boost should be pretty pleased with Bars because it ...
Noname Releases New Single “Rainforest” featuring Adam Ness: Stream
Barely five years after releasing her debut mixtape, Noname is gearing up to drop what may be her last album ever, Factory Baby. Today, she’s teasing its release by sharing a new single called “Rainforest” featuring fellow Chicago rapper Adam Ness. Stream it below. Clocking in just under three minutes in length, “Rainforest” is the latest track to showcase Noname’s unique mellow flow and her penchant for slick retro-themed beats. While the hook is seemingly a forlorn take on trust in relationships (“How you get closer to love?/ How you lemonade all your sadness when you opening up?”) the rest of the song concerns itself with the realities of hustle culture, the environmental ignorance of greed, and the intersection of capitalism and race. Noname is one of the few modern rappers to imbue he...
Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats Connect with Joey Bada$$ and The Alchemist on “‘Cosmic’.m4a” Remix: Stream
Last week, Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats announced UNLOCKED 1.5, a reimagining of last year’s UNLOCKED EP. Today, the duo has shared producer The Alchemist’s take on “‘Cosmic’.m4a” featuring Joey Bada$$. Stream it below. Due out March 5th, UNLOCKED 1.5 is described as “a brand new release inspired by Denzel and Kenny’s original.” Additional remixes are produced by Charlie Heat, Jay Versace, Sango, GODMODE, and Georgia Anne Muldrow, with new verses from recent Artist of the Month Arlo Parks, Benny the Butcher, Kenny Mason, and more. Alongside the EP announcement, Denzel and Kenny shared Robert Glasper’s version of “So.Incredible.pkg”, which includes a guest verse from Smino. Pre-saves for UNLOCKED 1.5 are live now. Related You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are ...
Vanessa Bryant Blasts Meek Mill’s “Disrespectful” Kobe Lyric
Vanessa Bryant, widow of basketball legend Kobe Bryant, has blasted lyrics from a leaked Meek Mill song as “extremely insensitive and disrespectful.” Meek says he has apologized. As Complex notes, lyrics to a track believed to be called “Don’t Worry (RIP Kobe)” appeared on the internet with the line, “This bitch I’m fuckin’ always tell me that she love but she ain’t ever showed me/ Yeah, and if I ever lack, I’m goin’ out with my chopper, it be another Kobe.” The joke references the events of January of last year, when Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna (aka Gigi) died in a helicopter crash. On Tuesday, Vanessa Bryant responded in a social media post. “I find this line to be extremely insensitive and disrespectful. Period,” she wrote. “I am not familiar with any of your mu...
Drakeo the Ruler Connects with Drake on “Talk to Me”: Stream
Drakeo the Ruler is the latest rapper to receive a boost from Drake, recruiting the Toronto superstar for “Talk to Me”. The single will appear on The Truth Hurts, the LA rapper’s first project since being released from jail in November 2020. Stream it below. The song finds Drakeo nimbly adapting to Drake’s R&B side with a street ballad. Following the 6 God’s seductive hook, Drakeo spits game without softening his West Coast gangster appeal. “Don’t be shy, I got killers with me, stupid / I march with sticks, I ain’t worried bout no groupies,” he raps. “Boss you up, your lifestyle could be exclusive / But I don’t know, ’cause you be hangin’ ’round with losers.” During an Apple Music interview with Zane Lowe, Drakeo explained how the collaboration came together. After Drakeo’s engineer en...
J.I.D Pops Off on New Song “Skegee”: Stream
J.I.D. in “Skegee” video J.I.D packs a history lesson into his searing new track about man’s inhumanity to man with his new track “Skegee”. “Skegee” takes its title from the infamous and horrifying Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the African American Male. The experiment launched in 1932 under the auspices of science, but at its core it was nothing but cruelty. Researchers promised about 400 Black men with syphilis free health care, but instead of offering treatment, they watched hundreds of men die. Proving that the experiment had nothing to do with research, the project continued for decades after penicillin was known to cure syphilis. As The Associated Press reported in a shocking exposé in 1972, “even after penicillin became common, and while its use probably c...
Chicago Rappers Mother Nature Drop New Single “Momentz”: Stream
Mother Nature are a Chicago rap duo who make a crisp and punctuated style of underground hip-hop. They have a new mixtape coming out later this year, and today they’re give fans a taste with a new single called “Momentz”. The Windy City MC’s Klevah and TRUTH have been putting out music together as Mother Nature since 2016, and have kicked around in the Chicago local scene ever since. In that time they’ve released a handful shorter projects and a full-length in 2020 called Portalz, and last year they also appeared on a compilation that included bigger names like Open Mike Eagle and Kemba. The project was a collaboration between producer BoatHouse and the venerable Chicago label Closed Sessions, and Mother Nature once again teamed up with those two local entities for for this new joint, “Mom...
Song of the Week: serpentwithfeet Gains Traction with Soulful “Same Size Shoe”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, serpentwithfeet gains traction with “Same Size Shoe”. There are two types of hype in the music business. One type makes it feel like an artist has the primal forces of nature behind them, controlling all media and advertising to make it seem like their next album will not only be the next canonical masterpiece to change music forever, but also the antidote to all that ails our suffering species and planet. And, then, there’s the type of hype that seemingly finds root in the tiniest speck of soil imaginable and slowly grows from th...
DijahSB Announces New Album Head Above the Waters, Shares “By Myself”: Stream
DijahSB has announced the new album Head Above the Waters. It’s out in April, and the rising rapper is offering a preview with the single “By Myself” featuring Harrison. Based in Toronto, DijahSB first made waves with the deceptively-titled EP 2020 the Album. Unsurprisingly for an artist known for “Frontin’ Like Pharrell”, they rap over toe-tapping percussion accented with funk and disco vibes. The new eight-track effort features contributions from Ray HMND, Chris Castello, and Harrison, and it boasts one of the grooviest tracks of 2021 in “Throw That Back”. Anyone who’s been paying attention knows DijahSB can play lord of the dance, but with “By Myself”, the MC is offering a change of pace. Produced by Harrison, “By Myself” slows things down with glittering keyboards and a funky bass line...
Kanye West and Kim Kardashian Officially File for Divorce
Kanye West and Kim Kardashian have officially filed for divorce, ending their marriage of seven years. TMZ reports that Kardashian recently filed the requisite documents through her lawyer Laura Wasser. Kardashian is asking for joint legal and physical custody of the couple’s four children, which West has apparently agreed to. Additionally, neither Kardashian nor West is said to be contesting their prenup. Settlement negotiations are reportedly “amicable” at this time. West first hinted at a riff in the couple’s marriage over the summer when he bizarrely tweeted about divorcing Kardashian in the wake of a meeting she had with Meek Mill. “I been trying to get divorced since Kim met with Meek at the Warldolf [sic] for ‘prison reform,’” he tweeted, seeming to refer to a criminal justice ...
Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats Announce Guest-Heavy UNLOCKED 1.5 Remix EP
Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats famously only took 24 hours to put together their collaborative EP, UNLOCKED. In the year since, they’ve put a bit more time into recreating the eight-track effort as the guest-heavy reimagining UNLOCKED 1.5. Due out February 26th, UNLOCKED 1.5 is described as “a brand new release inspired by Denzel and Kenny’s original.” Remixes of the tracks are presented by the likes of The Alchemist, Jay Versace, GODMODE, and Georgia Anne Muldrow, with new features coming from recent Artist of the Month Arlo Parks, Joey Bada$$, Benny the Butcher, Kenny Mason, and more. As a first listen, Curry and Beats have, well, unlocked Robert Glasper’s version of “So.Incredible.pkg”, which includes a guest verse from Smino. Take a listen via the visualizer below. That fighting-sty...
