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favorite rap, 2023
as previously promised i will not be doing sprawling unannotated hundred song rap lists anymore but still i did listen to and enjoy several of new rap songs in a year when many men my age tried to pretend that there were no new rap songs left for anyone to enjoy and i just wanted to make some messy notes on a few favorites before i forget about them forever. this is an honest and more or less by-the-numbers run down of the things i listened to the most this year so if my taste is too basic or too arcane or too washed or whatever don't blame me blame it on the algorithm 08 teddy pain voice. we don't make choices anymore.
1. veeze - "lick" (come on p)
veeze is the stock rap nerd choice for artist of the year but he's also the only correct one. the same way lil wayne triangulated his new orleans bounce roots with a slanted interpretation of the most derided crossover southern rap of his time and a studied but still idiosyncratic understanding of the purist east coast hip hop canon veeze draws connections between the long marinating sounds of michigan rap (specifically those of his eastside predecessors), the sharpest of talents from the unfairly hated
ps there is a little structural trick that veeze uses here and a few places elsewhere on ganger that i love where he'll lock into a single cadence for maybe the first two-thirds of the track, stacking the bars tightly without as much as a breath, putting no kind of emphasis on anything not even the most blunt punchlines and then as the song winds down he'll slide out of that flow and shift to a looser style to finally finally punctuate his points.
2. sexyy redd - "pound town" (tay keith)
it has been cool seeing the "ah thousand jugs" girl level up to full fledged rap star over the past year, producing multiple hits without ever compromising the roughness that got her on in the first place. "skeeyee" is the bigger record by now but "pound town" remains the people's choice, and there is no question that "my coochie pink my booty hole brown" is the only bar that we all will collectively remember from 2023 (who said the monoculture was dead). i'm not totally sold on her claim of the "female gucci mane" mantle just yet but hey maybe she can get there eventually (unlock new flows to advance). so far she seems closer to the great oj the juiceman, a belligerently one note rapper coming with the exact perfect pitch of ignorance for her time. (of course i would be remiss if i didn't also acknowledge the heavy influence of another internet savvy oj acolyte - lil b the based god). in any case i just hope she can at least continue to stay dusty as fuck with hers in the age of "elevated pussy rap."
3. 41 - "run that!" (touchamill)
the brooklyn trio of kyle richh, jenn carter and tata have been on a pretty incredible run of growly/ecstatic/rapping-ass club drill over the past few years, becoming a dominant factor in the world's biggest little self contained regional rap scene (the greater new york metropolitan area) while remaining practically invisible in the national media (give or take some probably well warranted handwringing). "bent" was their breakout hit this year and is a really fascinating crossover in how nj producer mcvertt both slows and streamlines his usual chaotic formula for the radio format while still somehow creating something that feels one thousand times weirder than anything flex has ever dropped a bomb to. nevertheless my boom bap dinosaur heart has to go with "run that," a flip of "ante up" by fellow brownsville icons m.o.p., as their choice cut from 2023.
the question of who can sample what and when or how popular or recent can the sample be has been one of the more tedious ongoing ~hip hop conversations~ this year (ffs "good times" was three months old when "rapper's delight" dropped) imo the guru "it's how you hook them up and the rhyme style troop" applies here and unlike the eighty hundred hard a&r'd mid mid-album flips of idk "chickenhead" that i've heard this year, "run that" works because it actually matches - or even exceeds - the energy of its source, reformatting it as a club drill banger and rescuing it from the nostalgic/ironic sync purgatory of ninja turtles soundtracks and amazon prime commercials. this is the hardest song ever recorded (objectively), if we want to carry it with us into the future we as a society have an obligation to make it even harder with each new iteration, more urgent, less accessible. danz and fame make a brief cameo in the video, looking like proud uncs naturally. it's only too bad there isn't any footage of them hearing kyle hit that full throated BROWNSVILLE WE GOT THE MOTION for the first time in real time.
4. baby drill - "baby drill vs. madman" (ayoblackcard, whatitdoflip, mojo krazy & baby drill)
album intro as a death threat/invocation, this is like someone extracted like six seconds from the depths of some unheard 2013 808 mafia instrumental, time stretched it and let a monster grow in the space between the sinewaves. of course we must protect '10s trap music from its inevitable griseldification but this is a welcome one off drumless experiment. bonus points to babydrill for (unintentionally, i assume) bringing back the pre-olympics hellmouth atlanta rap visuals, respect always to mr ku and sniper unit.
5. ayoolii - "smackin crackin" (thatguyeli) it is a true blessing that milwaukee's low end music scene was able to exist in a relative vacuum for over a decade, almost entirely undisturbed by the vultures (us), with mke locals banging out about a million quarter note claps before the rest of the world even took notice. of course that bubble burst last yearish thanks in part to the virality of hyper prolific youtube weirdo certified trapper. and now we have ayoolii, a clearcut child of trapper who dropped a few hundred of his own homebrew videos this year. to be honest i lost the script on his output back in like march but this one from january stuck with me as a potent post-labor anthem, a back pain banger, a good track to play eight times in a row for an energy burst while you do the dishes
6. bandmanrill f/ d4m sloan - "dam son" (mc vertt)
with both this and the 41 write up i had to pull myself back from the ledge of writing fifty thousand words on the rise (and fall?) of club drill over the past few years, maybe that will come later if i ever get my shit together (never happening), for now let's just say that the fusion of street rap and traditional mid atlantic club music ("jersey club" if you need to oversimplify things but it's philly's too, and baltimore's originally) was the best thing to happen to east coast rap production since pete rock horns (rip pop smoke and anyone that influenced him but let's be real newark has always been a better musical city than london.) "dam son" is a relatively minor track from this whole movement but it burns and nicely close a loop on the whole geographical tangent, uniting three of the micro genre's pioneers - bandmanrill who was the first to break the club/rap fusion in jersey, his main collaborator mcvertt (also the producer behind both "just wanna rock" and 41's aforementioned "bent") and philly's d4m sloan who, along with since deceased rhyme partner skiano, prefigured the whole thing with "baby shark" and raps like a demon giving birth to an even bigger demon (i am now realizing this could describe like half the rappers on this list but that feels right because we live in hell). it's mostly the beat on this one though, with mc giving the classic jersey sequence new life via new orleans funeral brass and the sounds of guns cocking. i'm not at all tired of this drum pattern yet, it can and will go on forever.
7. ken carson - "lose it" (legion & gab3)
at the risk of being okay boomered to death with a fortnite rifle by some twelve year old boy in fifteen hundred dollar sneakers i have to admit that i am not especially interested in the form or content of ken carson's rapping but yes i am definitely more than happy to hear him or anyone flop around decently as fuck over the fried alien zoomer brick squad reboots that playboi carti's opium axis of producers have been serving up. credit to ken for at least managing to stay out of the way on a track as blown out ridiculous as "lose it", which is basically "swing my door" + intention. "rage" as a genre signifier seems reductive for a lot of this shit at this point, but still it gets close enough to accurately tagging the mood. "the only way I express myself is through my music." wait maybe i do like his bars.
8. kashh mir f/ mello buckzz, moni da g & amari blaze - "$4800" (?)
one crucial fact that i think gets lost on all the washed twitter dads lamenting a statistical death of rap in 2023 is how much of the best music being made in the genre so frequently emerges from the unplaylistable, chart-untraceable space of youtube performance/freestyle videos. the smack dvd era has proven to have a long tail of influence on the platform (certainly more resonant than anything the bl*g *r* served up, in terms of either distribution models or taste profiles) and today the traditional just-a-beat-and-a-rhyme rap cipher is more alive and visible than it ever has been. spend a few minutes clicking around any of these channels that seem to drop a dozen quasi-freestyles a day - on the radar, from the block, hazard lights, etc. - and two things will become instantly obvious - 1) this is absolute center of joy and energy in the genre, miles removed from whatever xanned out mumble rap strawmen those dads are imagining, with rappers of all dispositions bursting with enthusiasm (if not always talent) 2) the women are more often than not rapping circles around the men in basically all categories. my favorite lip synched performance clip of the year hits the intersection of both these points with some hard as fuck chicago ladies kicking a really real murder rap/dirty rap posse cut. the same lineup had a bigger hit earlier in the year with the calmer "boom (mouskatool)," or at least big enough of a hit to earn a probably unnecessary latto remix, and that's a fine song too, but they are all completely alive and going the fuck off on "$4800", beat sounds like something that shook out from mouse on tha track's mpc in 2008.
9. xaviersobased -"patchmade" (kashpaint)
there is surely an entire book to be written about the cursed evolution of the word "based" - from a derogatory term for literal crackheads to hyphy gen berkeley skate rats reclaiming it proudly as a cool kid boast to lil b the based god, the weirdest of those skate rats, popularizing it as his personal maxim for internet-age hippyish positivity to scum of the earth alt right losers again inverting it as a sad sack not-so-secret handshake - so it was a tremendous relief to learn that xaviersobased, a 20-year-old rapper from manhattan's upper west side who has been having a moment in the soundcloud underground, took his name from lil b directly ("i can't fuck with n****s if they right wing"). and he is a true based boy, in the sense that there is an infectious, positive, freeing, creative energy to just about everything he does. interestingly, as a rapper he owes less to lil b than he does the more meandering melodic modes of nth wave post-based sound/cloud rappers like bladee and black kray, guys who picked up on certain aesthetic elements from based world but bent them to more introverted ends. i guess it skips a generation because "patchmade" is a decidedly pro-social song, thanks in part to kashpaint who does the choppy nu cloud rap-mario world haunted house music -dj mustard thing that has been big on soundcloud for a moment (micro genre obsessed internet kids will straight up call this stuff "jerk rap" but i'm not going to do that because it feels slightly disrespectful to the first wave socal jerk pioneers whose entire cultural footprint was washed out due to the full memory failure of the myspace era [and and you might remember that the original form of jerk music was a direct repackaging of... hyphy gen berkeley skate rat/rap aesthetics so i guess it is all connected in a way]). the track originally came out in the fall of 2022 but it gently bubbled up in the tik tok trenches earlier this year and was only revealed to those of us olds who get all our rap off youtube auto-plays after that anyway anyway as you do get old it is good to occasionally look at the people around you and ask them "how you livin' life with no passion"?
10. rylo rodriguez f/ lil yachty - "taylor port junkie" (nico baran)
i'm just completely mystified by the pocket that rylo finds on here, spinning the "jumbotron shit poppin" flow off into almost inconceivable heights, peak juvenile territory. is this the best dr*k* deconstruction since "the blanguage"? or is it something else? yachty has a production credit on the drak original and him turning up here plus kicking roughly the same cadence on his own "solo steppin crete boy" is strong fuel for the popular speculation that he ghostwrote all of the above.
11. kp skywalka - "bippin hearts" (turn me up ju ju & hustlebeats)
i heard dc's kp bipped the word bippin from bmore and here i thought he bipped it from the bay instead the word works on here either way or even as a completely soaked exercise in semantic satiation.
12. tisakorean - "rando" (tisakorean)
the most difficult question i had to ask myself all year was "can i pull off a 'silly hoe' hoodie?"
13. r.a.p. ferreira - "asiatique black wizard lily funk" (vast.ness)
look i understand that it's dark and hell is hot and the popular website ratesyourmusic needs a constant flow of proggy apocalyptic shout rap to keep their servers running but sometimes i just prefer my cerebral abstract hip hop to come with a breezy little beat and a hook that i can hum quietly to myself.
14. nba youngboy - "bitch let's do it" (d-roc, juppybeats & chasely)
if youngboy has million of fans i am one of them .if youngboy has ten fans i am one of them. if youngboy have only one fan and that is me . if youngboy has no fans, that means i am no more on the earth
15. doja cat - "paint the town red" (earl on the beat, karl rubin, jean baptiste & dj replay)
maybe the only radio rap record that was better than fine this year (unless you want to count "players," which rolled over from its 2022 release on a busta rhymes remix) and, paradoxically, the only track from scarlet where doja actually made good on her long trolled promise of becoming a backpack rapper to spite her fans for having fun. sure it is closer in spirit to cringy early 00s crispy major label dilated peoples-type failed crossover backpack rap than ras kass but the big difference is this one didn't fail to crossover. i'm still waiting for her "nature of the threat," though it probably will be the wrong kind of based, given her track record.
16. gizwop - "money and murda" (mixby23)
you might think the dmv flow is one single thing when in fact it is one million micro variations on that single thing, i love this type of shit the most when the production drifts back to its natural/unconscious roots in bounce beat go-go staccato and forces the rappers to squeeze their already stacked bars into an even tighter space.
17. lil yachty - "strike (holster)" (teddy walton & aaron bow)
last year yachty became a meme by taking the wok to wherever, this year he became a ~prestige artist~ (pollen playlist/urban outfitters vinyls cut out bin/coachella second stage/still getting a mid-negative pitchfork review tier) by churning some passably good abelton psych and whining about ~the state of hip hop~. it is quite a shame that these two polarities are the only portals through which an aging young rap artist can reenter the conversation because in the in between yachty has also figured out how to make some genuinely great standard issue rap songs. it is a bit much having him on this short list twice but i need to live my truth.
18. that mexican ot f/ paul wall & drodi - "johnny dang" (tobiali)
if paulwall has million of fans i am one of them .if paulwall has ten fans i am one of them. if paulwall have only one fan and that is me . if paulwall has no fans, that means i am no more on the earth
19. rick ross & meek mill f/ teyana taylor - "above the law" (dj khaled & beat novakane / dr. dre)
every now and again meek has to remind us that he is as good at rapping as he is bad at posting. he is very good at rapping. i don't especially care about the other voices on this song but it is always nice to hear tha beat from "tha shiznit."
20. doc reevez - "once in a while" (?)
in 2023 i finally managed to crack my youtube algorithm wide open in such a way that it now regularly recommends sub-100 play rap songs. obviously it now serves up more misses than hits but i'm content with that because once in a while it will surface some borderline transcendent outsidery shit like this half drunk fully formed bedroom rap by a shirtless man in a yankees fitted "saying nice things that put smiles on faces."
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