Pitchfork writer Alphonse Pierre’s rap column covers songs, mixtapes, albums, Instagram freestyles, memes, weird tweets, fashion trends—and anything else that catches his attention.
At last, the Kendrick–Drake feud seems to be over, as Drake retreats like a comic book villain after a thwarted worldwide takeover to his Toronto lair or a Caribbean resort to regroup. (Or maybe not.) We can now turn our attention to much cooler, and, to my ears, much better, music bubbling in the hip-hop underground. Look for it and you’ll find a great new boom of Chicago drill, jerk in the Dominican Republic, and, fortunately, Duwap Kaine still doing Duwap Kaine stuff. It’s been a good six months for tapes rooted in their region and ones that are blurring territorial and genre lines. I managed to trim down my list of favorites to 13 projects, and I purposely selected ones that I haven’t previously written about.
Big Steff: Get Yo Scat Dirty, Vol. 2
2024 is another good year to be a Milwaukee rap head. If you want the soundtrack to your block party, Myaap, 414BigFrank, and J.P. have you covered. If you’re in your feelings, fire up Mari Boy Mula Mar’s “It Girl” or LBF Jay and Big Homie DreCash’s joint tape, Rush Hour. And, if you need a little bit of motivation in your life, go with the money-chasing epics of Deadend Quan’s What Dey Talkin Bout, Ghost 53206’s FreeBandz Menace, or, the best of them all, Big Steff’s Get Yo Scat Dirty, Vol. 2. Steff’s mixtape is Milwaukee slap at its best: hard-hitting grooves and more drug dealing sagas than you can find in the Power multiverse. The slick-tongued, Buick-driving fly guy can make you feel like you just hit the numbers, especially on “Monkey in the Middle” when he erupts, “Rich nigga, I like rich hoes, I do rich shit/You can tell by my wrist, nigga, I took real risks.”
Fucksnowrr: #NotADeluxe
There’s so much bass-boosted, crashing noise surrounding Fucksnowrr’s aggressive, no-holds-barred raps that it’s almost like he’s spitting over the Fast Five heist scene. There’s beauty, though, in the details, with beats, mostly from Back From the Dead 2 disciple Balenci02, that twinkle and sparkle before they burst into an explosive fireworks show. The instrumentals have a mystical tinge that’s soothing even when they’re tearing a hole through your eardrums. Through it all, Fucksnowrr is rapping fast and hard. If these beats can’t slow him down, nothing can.
NMNL: ##PaKBaileJerk2K24 ##45*16
All regional barriers are down on ##PaKBaileJerk2K24 ##45*16. You get Maybach Music tags; New York drill gunshot ad-libs; Trap-A-Holics drops; Xaviersobased-esque jerk beats; dembow lunacy; melodies that blend SoundCloud sadness with bachata sweetness. This is all from the mind of NMNL, a rapper and producer who comes from Santiago de los Caballeros in the Dominican Republic. Honestly, I can’t believe this mixtape exists. Sample-heavy instrumentals, fully loaded with all the stuttering and fade out effects you could dream of, will have you dancing. You just might forget if you’re in a Bushwick warehouse or at a raucous set in Santo Domingo.
WoochieWobbler: Is My Future Bright? EP
Is My Future Bright? is all about one of those intense, all-consuming relationships that flame out after just a couple of weeks. You know, the ones that, once it ends, you feel like you’ve woken up from the kind of scientifically-induced coma Michael Crichton once wrote about. Atlanta crooner WoochieWobbler has that madness down; through six lush, peachy tracks she gives us all the ups and downs. Falling head over heels on “425,” and blocking his number on “Just me + just U.” A sexually charged, SahBabii-coded dream on “Soul Twin” (I love when she coos, “Eat my pussy, it taste like lollipop”). And pure heartbreak on “No fear.” All the fun and terror of falling hard is here.
Cise Greeny: Master Sword
Listening to Master Sword is like sitting next to Cise Greeny while he flips through his camera roll, sharing a New York memory to go with every photo: the walls he used to tag, bumping Clue tapes at 12 years old, the girl from Jackson Heights he used to romance. Combined with hard-earned life lessons, casual everyday observations, and a splash of spirituality, the Corona, Queens, MC’s mind is overflowing with thoughts. It’s all made easy on the ears with his brisk yet smooth flow and relaxing beats that have a little thump when needed.
Duwap Kaine: Goldmine
You know that big exhale you take before jumping off a cliff into a body of water or as the roller coaster operator double-checks your seat belt? That’s what I do before clicking on any Duwap Kaine song. I just never know what I’m in for. (It’s been that way since he was 14. He’s now 22.) That’s, of course, true of Goldmine, my favorite Duwap tape in a minute (even if last year’s high-octane Duwap So Based holds a special place in my heart). Click around and his shapeshifting Auto-Tune randomness goes from paranormal dance songs (“Party Music”) to transporting him to a Bay Area rap album from 1995 (“Crackin Homie”).
Loe Shimmy: Zombieland 2
Drugged-out, pain-stricken soul meets laidback, money-getting South Florida rap on Zombieland 2, a project only Loe Shimmy could pull off. He’s like if Veeze sang the blues, which is to say, not many others sound exactly like him. Maybe you could point to some Kodak sauce on the groovy “Murda Dance,” but the track’s shoulder-bopping snaps turn the song into damn-near futuristic new jack swing. His stripped-down ballad “Pray for Peace” might remind you of Philly’s Skrilla, too, but Shimmy makes it his own by singing (!) like he’s in church. And he’s up on the slurred vocals of Chief Keef on “Wok & Minute Maid,” but the way he goes into serenade mode is all his own—a song tender enough to soundtrack the first dance at your bugged-out wedding. If none of that is enough to convince you that Shimmy is on some other shit, then maybe this will: Even Lyrical Lemonade–core rapper BLP Kosher sounds pretty good in his orbit.
BoofPaxkMooky & Dylvinci: In a Tree
Put In a Tree in the plugg canon because it might be the greatest plugg tape since Flee’s Xool Summer. BoofPaxkMooky, who sounds like he’s rapping with a massive Ed, Edd n Eddy jawbreaker in his mouth, floats over Dylvinci instrumentals as warm as sand on the beach. But what really differentiates the North Carolina’s duo plugg from other modern takes on the sound is how it isn’t just dreamy, but also super funky. Look no further than “Each His Own”: Mooky’s got his elastic melodies on a string like a good off-speed pitcher, and Dylvinci’s beat is chill but also worthy of a stank face. It’s the kind of tape you want to throw on as soon as the sun comes out.
Semiratruth: The Star of the Story
The Star of the Story is an album that’s grounded and intergalactic all at once. Chicago native Semiratruth’s warped, distorted meditations unfurl relatable musings (urine-scented train cars; texts getting left on read) on top of warm, glitchy beats that could make you hallucinate the longer you listen. Semira’s last solo project, 2021’s I Got Bandz for the MoonLandin’, proudly wore its cosmic Sun Ra influence on its sleeve, and so does The Star of the Story, which steps up their production chops with bleeps, bloops, rings, and buzzes that make it feel you’re putting the coordinates into the mothership. (Or, at the very least, messing around with the computers from WarGames.) Sometimes their voice sounds like an echo in the distance, something like phantasmic whispers. But even as the album really lifts off, Semira brings us back down to Earth with real-life worries: “Can’t focus for shit, gotta pay the rent.” I feel them.
HavinMotion: Motion
HavinMotion is part of a wave of DMV crank that has taken the doomsday menace of the regional subgenre and softened it with R&B samples and bright pianos. But while KP Skywalka has used that switch-up to be a loverboy, and Nino Paid treats it like the therapist’s couch, HavinMotion stays true to the get-rich-quick punchline rap that has long dominated the scene. His stories of dealing on the corner and long, tense drives hoping not to be pulled over, on his first project, Motion, aren’t far off from the neighborhood crime chronicles of a Paco Panama mixtape. The lightness HavinMotion brings gives it a distinct spin.
JuanieeGC & 42Boo: Bankboiiz
Sorry, but this list needs more than one Milwaukee rap mixtape, and I’ve got to go with Bankboiiz, a collection of 10 high-speed twerk anthems by JuanieeGC and 42Boo. You may recognize these guys as the background dancers hitting In Living Color fly girl choreography in BigFrank music videos, specifically “Eat Her Up,” and they are nearly as good with their voices as their feet. They’ve got enough party instructions and quotable chants on this tape that, if we look hard enough, we might find the next (dirty as fuck) “Cupid Shuffle.”
Jay5ive & 917 Rackz: Sweepa Baby
Over in New York, drill is chugging along just fine. Normally, I don’t pay much attention to the mixtapes, since it’s a single-oriented scene, but Sweepa Baby caught me off guard. The rare New York drill mixtape that is a single rapper and single producer locked in with no frills or wannabe A Boogie throwaway moments. On the mic is Jay5ive, usually the least interesting member of the hot Upper West Side group SweepersEnt. Here though, his throaty, melodramatic rhymes sound extra motivated by the thudding gutter beats of 917 Rackz, a mid, white drill rapper from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, who has (thankfully) pivoted to producing. It’s far from perfect, but, together, they make the sort of ghostly, tragic New York rap that gives me a similar feeling to bumping a Tragedy Khadafi album.
VonOff1700: #FreeMyHoodFuckYoHood
Drill has crossed every border possible, but don’t forget where it all comes from. Chicago newcomer VonOff1700 came onto my radar earlier this year with a nightmarish remix of Gucci Mane’s From Zone 6 to Duval classic “On Deck,” and keeps that momentum rolling on #FreeMyHoodFuckYoHood—definitely one of the great mixtape titles of the year. Rapping like he was shot out of a cannon—in a way that reminds me of a young G Herbo—his stories are dark, violent, vivid, and often uncomfortable. Every now and then, he drops in a bar that I can’t shake: “I don’t think I’ma ever get old, I’ma keep gettin’ younger and dumber,” he raps on “Free Brick Freestyle”—those same words could work just as well in a Western about a young outlaw on the lam, as they do leaving the mouth of drill’s newest torchbearer.