New York is a cool city but what’s even cooler is how we’re logging 40 degree weather before we even get into the preteen age months (10 doesn’t count October still fall property fall is approved, good season) I’m sick. Someone asks me every year on some “weren’t you born on the East Coast?” like after twenty years, losing my gloves and re-confirming I look weird in beanies on the first cold day of the year starts being gripping fun. Only fan mail I accepting is winter coats and Roc Marciano vinyls, thanks
1. Blood Orange - “Orlando” (Blood Orange)
soup
2. SZA - “Passport”
whenever the Kevin Parker Mark Ronson song gets a proper rollout it will rule the world. But this one is more ethereal, and for an artist that wields reality like a blade, music that flutters like this is jolting. It’s very good.
3. Medhane - “Clouds” (lastnamedavid)
dusty books
4. Snail Mail - “Heat Wave” (Heat Wave)
sounds like a heat wave. Execution always earns points
5. SOB X RBE - “North Vallejo” (Melo BTB)
I’ll mourn SOB X RBE with the rest of you all but sometimes it almost seems too easy. The tension of figuring out if T.O is a Quavo or a Swae Lee is, in some sense, more gripping than watching home run after home run (which is what Gangin II is)
6. Lil Berete - “What’s Up Now” (By the Writer’s Block)
glad they maxed out the “2013” setting on the mix here
7. Gavin Turek - “WHITNEY” (Chris Hartz)
That ”boul-e-vaAAAAard” sequence is tee’d up but still, stunning
8. yens - “late nights” (yens)
like the song almost as much as the person!!!!!
9. Taphari - “Focus” feat. sixpress (MIKE)
measured
10. SahBabii - “Sunny Days” feat. T3 (Dollie & Jakkies)
Young Thug always felt like the incorrect comparison (he is, often, the incorrect comparison for the rappers whose names he is invoked alongside. The exception is probably Gunna, who has internalized every part of that delivery — Lil Baby only steps into it occasionally, but when he does it, it is full-fledged parroting). Thug would never fade back like this, and accordingly there’s no Thug song that is this sparkling and shimmering. Different rappers different music different goals but still.
11. G Perico - “Play Wit It” feat. Kalan.frfr & GARREN
The Kalan run this last 6 months close to undefeated
12. 70th Street Carlos - “Change On Me”
This is not the best 70th Street Carlos hook but it is the one that manages the momentum the best. The increased breathing room we get from turning the dial a couple notches below breakneck feels key
13. Maine Musik - “Soulja Slim Flow 3”
panoramic rap
14. Peso Da Mafia - “TSAY” (Ronny 808)
100% perfect
15. Usher & Zaytoven - “You Decide” (Zaytoven)
whatever man this is so hard
16. Drego & Beno - “Approach It” feat. Nuk (Jon Boii Beatz & Von Jose)
Drego as magnetic as anyone alive rn; this one of the best beats out of this whole Detroit run this year
17. Cash Kidd - “Zorbas” feat. DaBoii
out of all of the SOB X RBE outcomes I could’ve imagined, the one where I feel eh about a Yhung T.O project and DaBoii is the rapper of the year is not the one that I was putting my chips on
18. ZMoney - “Apart of Trappin’” (Lil Mexico Beatz)
shame that after this week ZMoney is no longer the best whisperer in rap but you win some you lose some
19. Trapperman Dale - “Eat Right” (Bandplay)
he got that Gibbs, instinctive, “he could rap on anything” dexterity; you don’t find many of those
20. Young Thug - “Sin” feat. Jaden Smith (London on da Track)
I listened to Barter 6 for the first time in years (I know) a couple weeks ago and I think, maybe, that was why this is the On the Rvn cut that I still drag around and that still drags me around. Hard not to notice a deliberate-ness (delibaracy? Websters please) in Thug’s words that wasn’t present before (“With That” still zooms) but even so — it’s one thing to deny verbal structure, like all of Thug’s newly popular children do; another thing entirely to do that in a way that suggests real purposeful abstraction, and control.
21. YBS Skola - “Life of a Shinner”
this song super excellent. You’d think that one of these dudes (YFN, YBN, YNW) could use another first word for their abbreviations though. synonyms.com and all that
22. Quando Rondo - “Kiccin’ Shit” (EYE4ZLOWBEATZ)
The comparison is so obvious (and spelled out on the tracklist of this project) it doesn’t particularly warrant mention — but even if Thug and Rich Homie Quan had never stopped making music, I think after the fifth twenty-five song 7/10 solo Quan outing it would’ve become evident what function Thug’s shrillness as a complement. Even if we’re already poking at a ceiling here, Quando is a real dynamo — don’t know if I would’ve granted Quan that.
23. Kevin Gates - “Shoulda” (Go Grizzly & Yung Lan)
Mike Caren had this one all right — I like Gates better as a hyper-regional deity, but I’m glad I don’t have to just dream about Pop Star Gates (you think they’ll ever put this out as a single?)
24. Lil TJay - “Leaked”
best 2008 top 40 hit I’ve ever heard
25. Skooly - “Dope Fiend”
he said “fresh out of pain”
26. NGeeYL - “Tales of YL”
verbal pinball honestly
27. DRETTI FRANKS - “I KNOW WASSUP PT. 2” (DRETTI FRANKS)
extremely unsober
28. Sheff G - “Panic Part 3” feat. Sleepy Hallow & Fresh G (808Melo)
after the first minute and seven seconds of this song you shouldn’t be allowed to start a verse how Fresh G does
29. Roc Marciano - “Congo” (Roc Marciano)
been redefining winter for seven years now glad I have a soundtrack to be snowed in to
30. Mozzy - “Not Impressive” (Jay P Bangz)
very impressive
31. Sheck Wes - “Kyrie” (Redda)
”go outside more” still the most inane but unassailable explanation for this man
32. Father - “Lotto” feat. Abra (meltycanon)
bridge questionable but the rest of this really top tier debaucherous
33. BROCKHAMPTON - “NEW ORLEANS” (bearface, Jabari Manwa, JOBA & Romil Hemnani)
part of the fun of the first SATURATION run (and honestly, that whole “Bet I”-”Dirt”-”Cannon” run as well) was watching people who shouldn’t be able to figure it out figure it all out. Experience sets in quick, though, and by SATURATION III it was a lot of slightly more experienced fun rappers and singers as opposed to completely unexperienced fun rappers and singers and it was suddenly fully feasible to take ownership of a minute of song-time, meaning we started getting four-minutes sequences of disparate adequacy instead of COHESION (execute me if I use this word again this year). I have my own set of takes on the dissonance and discord that’s trademark now and all that but it’s just nice to see them all living in the same song world and singing the same song’s words (“SWIM,” “FAKE”). And Dom McLennon still out for blood and that helps.
34. Lil Baby & Gunna - “Drip Too Hard’ (Turbo)
surprise
35. YGTUT - “Top of the World (White Heat)” (Ducko McFli)
this one more 5pm than 4pm but still hitting the sweet spot for me here
36. Yung Manny - “Fadeaway”
I know we’ve been perfecting the recipe for this song for the past two years but
37. Mizzie Cash - “Be Like That”
actually kind of a cool call to practically record through a cell phone
38. Kilo Kish - “Elegance” (Ray Brady)
this very FKA and all that but not everyone can lose themselves and wander through their own music like this
39. min.a - “sage”
all the right notes and 20% more, can’t lie I know I sequenced “Elegance” into this song but I tried actually listening back-to-back and I almost had a heart attack so maybe just enjoy that conceptually.
40. Mitski - “Two Slow Dancers” (Mitski & Patrick Hyland)
and good night