Music made bad music,” and most damningly, “you signed Big Sean.” The latest in the Rochester rapper’s ongoing series of appointment-listening diss tracks, “Yeezy Boots” works well enough as a litany of opinions about Kanye’s rapping (mediocre), street credibility (non-existent), haircut (dumbass) and shoes (same).

In all of the debate over Kanye West’s place in our current cultural climate, no one has gotten to the point as quickly as RXK Nephew: “Jay-Z don’t even like you,” “the whole G.O.O.D. –Ryan DombalĬrackRock Records / NEWWRLD RXK Nephew: “Yeezy Boots” “So many checks owed I feel Czech-o-slovakian,” he raps, hilariously, before reacting to the line with an incredulous “ What the fuck?” This time, he actually deserves to be amazed by his own dingbat brilliance. But most memorably, he’s the host of an amateur European history podcast, dropping the names of defunct nations as part of his quest for quotables. He’s a wannabe Letterboxd power user, referencing Citizen Kane, Jordan Peele, and Silence of the Lambs while tsk-tsking a date because “your words don’t match your actions, like a foreign film.” He’s a not-so-secret assassin, tossing subliminals at YoungBoy and Kanye as he alludes to possessing career-ending videos of his enemies that he could unleash at any moment. “8am in Charlotte” continues in the tradition of his head-down timestamp tracks, unloading tangy punchlines over dinner party boom-bap.

OVO Sound / Republic Drake: “8am in Charlotte”Įvery now and then, when Drake decides to stop sounding like an insufferable White Lotus character, sing-whining about botched luxury vacations and the women who have supposedly done him dirty, he can still be one of the best bar-for-bar rappers on the planet. Together, the two rappers conjure an apocalypse that’s as hopeless as it is hilarious, the cruelest possible joke. Over queasy feedback that squeals like a zombie radio signal, Brown tosses off rhetorical bicycle kicks, rhymes Cool Runnings with Good Will Hunting, and cracks wise about out-of-service McDonald’s soft serve machines. If woods is stewing underground in this dystopian hellscape, Danny Brown is commandeering an abandoned amusement park and reveling in the anarchy. Living in the only country on Earth with more guns than people, he dreams up a nightmare in which there are “two unrelated active shooters-same place, same time.” The song’s most brutal gut punch, meanwhile, is a simple matter of fact: “My taxes pay police brutality settlements.” The deadpan New York rap realist sounds like he’s burrowed into a bunker on this doomsaying spiral from Maps, his staggering album with the producer Kenny Segal. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and billy woods is feeling particularly nihilistic. As the genre turns 50, its most rewarding songs wisely cherry-pick from the past while staying true to rap’s reputation as a harbinger of what’s next.īackwoodz Studioz billy woods / Kenny Segal: “Year Zero” From dedicated scenes in Milwaukee and the DMV that are fighting for their place on the rap map. From internet oddballs like TisaKorean and RXK Nephew. From all-women posses bubbling out of Memphis and Chicago. It’s coming from underground heroes like New York doomsayer billy woods and Detroit punchline addict Veeze. 1s, but the fact remains: Pretty much all of the best rap music being made right now is further down the charts, or not on them at all. More recent months quelled industry fears, with lackluster records and tracks by the likes of Travis Scott, Jack Harlow, and Doja Cat scoring No. As hip-hop celebrated its 50th anniversary this year, headlines swirled around its potentially diminishing force as a commercial juggernaut: The first half of the year didn’t see a rap song or album top Billboard’s main charts for the first time since 1993.

Best songs 2021 rap