Metal Lungies

Mustard-lite minimal club bangers still have life in them.

TeeFLii proved he’s capable of more than ratchet bangers with his debut album Starr. But he’s still adept at making ratchet bangers of various textures as evidenced by a recent cut from LA rapper SBA1’s mixtape and a Valentines day EP. Get both below.

For his next trick, P.U.D.G.E. mashes together Horace Brown’s “One For The Money” and Frank Zappa. Last time it was a YouTube meme.

Maxo Kream of Houston delivers the year’s first great gangster rap album and serves fiends and 90s babies alike with street shit and Nickelodeon/wrestling references. If you want it without DJ drops, hit up iTunes/Spotify/etc.

An Auto-Tune dirge for all seasons.

Problem is savvy enough to foster ties in Atlanta, where rap’s creative mojo is strongest. The California rapper’s OT: Outta Town mixtape features everybody from Young Thug to T.I. to Jermaine Dupri. The strongest cuts are the 90s inflected opener and the song with Ca$h Out, who is low-key my favorite rapper right now.

Bay area slapper from Iamsu!’s Eyes on Me EP.

Want to see a real unicorn? Here’s a dope backpack cut in 2015. It appears on Cern & Ray West’s Dark days under the sun EP.

More than most rappers, Curren$y seems entirely reliant on having the right beats underneath him. Maybe his lifestyle raps only work at a certain frequency. In any case, this Joey Fatts cut is the best Curren$y performance in recent memory. “Same Sh%t” is mafia flavored but with a digital touch, the kind of nuance that makes Joey Fatts a valuable member of A$AP Mob’s extended family. Download it here, it appears on Fatts’ Ill Street Blues mixtape.

Knxwledge’s torrential output of beats on Bandcamp can make him inaccessible to even the most obsessive online music hoarders (hand raised), but he seems to have found a dream collaborator and guiding force in singer/musician Anderson.Paak. Together they are NxWorries and their first single “Suede” is divinely pimpish though Paak distances himself from the label. We previously took note of Knxwledge’s soulful predilections on Hexual Sealings in 2011. We are glad it wasn’t a whim.