1. Syd - “No Complaints” (Syd)
this whole album is standard good/great/amazing but it wouldn’t be what it is without this – a minute where emotion doesn’t shift into menace, it becomes menace
2. Future - “I’m So Groovy” (Tarentino & Tre Pounds)
this the whip song
3. bbno$ - “Run It Up” (Slight)
2018
4. Sean Leon - “God/Guard Up” (WondaGurl)
this album is like frank ocean was a 7/10 rapper and he tried to make blonde and for most of it he falls into a childish-gambino-because-the-internet-era-self-aggrandizing artistic loop but for 3 minutes he blacks out
5. LAMB$ - “Make It Count” (DJ Patt)
it’s nice to know that as the primary mainstream purveyors of this type of rap begin softening its impact by drawing back or stringing through melodies, some still worship relentlessness
6. Rothstein - “Get Your Shit Together” (ryanjacob)
this is an amazing pop song
7. Rich Gang - “Bit Bak” feat. Young Thug & Birdman (808 Mafia & TM88)
i swear i genuinely love this song, but i would also be lying if i didn’t say that i made that artistic judgment the moment i heard “rich gang”
8. Chris Travis - “Iceland” (BigHeadOnTheBeat)
who named this song? give them medals, lots of them
9. Two-9 - “None of These” feat. FatKidsBrotha, Key! & Jace (CeeJ & Mitch)
this is like, a melting ice cube as a song. i live for simple chant-able rap verses that take me only two listens to fully internalize. also he said “i pull up in apcs, no nudies”
10. 24hrs - “VSVSVS” (Nard & B)
something about the “jewelry and women as a metric of my success” trope still holds strong, decades later!!!!
11. Lil Uzi Vert - “Luv Scars” (DJ Plugg)
this is the best song lil uzi vert has ever made, the best song on this playlist, one of the best songs of the entire year. there are at least eleven iconic moments in this song (the dj tag, the first bar of the first hook, the first time he says his patek is flooded, “what you thought it was?”, the way he says the first line of the verse with the same cadence as that adlib, the “whoaaaaaaaa, let me take my time,” how he says he doesn’t wear hanes, the way he says “i just made a bag from like half of a show,” the way the first verse moves into the second hook, the five star room bar, the way his “would’ve warned ya” devolves into wails). the biggest draw to this kind of music is the heartbreak that envelopes the words.
12. Playboi Carti - “Fa$ter”
“less is more” is a cool artistic mantra especially when you apply it to coherence. anyway, this song sounds like armageddon
13. Kodak Black - “Water” feat. A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie
do you understand that a boogie wit da hoodie is a star? it’s easy to begin and end that conversation by mentioning and enclosing him within one of his influences – but it’s a vast undersell of what a boogie is capable of to just say speaker knockerz’s (RIP) name
14. HOMESHAKE - “Khmlwugh” (HOMESHAKE)
if i had an elevator it would play nothing but this
15. Jonwayne - “These Words Are Everything” (Dibia$e)
long live atmosphere
16. Future - “Incredible” (Charles Frost & Jacob Heat)
he made an ‘80s electropop hit just 14 songs on this playlist after he dismantled my subwoofer?
17. Terror Jr - “Come First (Felix Snow Based Mix)” feat. Father & Lil B
this is instantly iconic; back to our regularly scheduled programming
18. SahBabii - “S.A.N.D.A.S”
huge on 30 second non-song sketches
19. SwagHollywood & Richie Souf - “Matrimoney” (Richie Souf)
i don’t know if this song is good
20. Smino - “Anita” (Monte Booker)
too often, the way we visualize musical innovation is in the framework of a drastic jump – a paradigm-shifting reconceptualization of what constitutes a melody, what constitutes an instrumental, what holds up a song and what holds it back. but i’d posit that the most striking hip-hop and pop innovators of the past few years simply draw lines, between one thing we know well and another we know well, but through arbitrary walls that we’ve chosen to let spring up to structure our understanding of music (see: the weeknd). even the most melodic of rappers aren’t supposed to let their voice strain to the limits of their vocal cords, and hip-hop beats aren’t supposed to sound like rainforests: but we’ve seen those things before, just not in a song like this, and to make the unfamiliar instantly so reminiscent is an artistic achievement of the highest degree.
21. Young Clancy - “Always Have” (Young Clancy)
this is great but is made so much greater that the bottom of this song drops out (vanishes) and we’re left watching him grasp frantically for drugs as his lifeline.