Pitchfork’s weekly rap column covers songs, mixtapes, albums, Instagram freestyles, memes, dances, weird tweets, fashion trends—and anything else that catches our attention in the world of hip-hop.
I haven’t cared about Lil Yachty’s rapping since his debut mixtape, 2016’s Lil Boat. Following that breakthrough moment, the Atlanta rapper spent years trying to become a chart-topping pop star. But he has finally realized that was never the right path. Lil Boat 3, his May album, is the best thing he’s made since 2016. It’s simple: Just Yachty and his famous friends rapping and harmonizing mostly over colorful Earl on the Beat production. (My personal favorite is “Split/Whole Time.”) But Yachty’s greatest accomplishment of the year actually hasn’t been his solo music–it’s been his ability to strengthen the bridge between Atlanta and two fast-emerging street rap scenes.
Since his 2017 Tee Grizzley collaboration “From the D to the A,” Yachty has been on a mission to connect Detroit and Atlanta. This year, he doubled down on that goal, releasing two tracks with Detroit’s Sada Baby: the vicious back-and-forth “SB5,” and “Kourtside,” a song on Sada Baby’s Bartier Bounty 2 that finds the pair riding a fiery RJ Lamont instrumental.
Yachty has even branched out and joined up with an even smaller scene popping up in Flint, Michigan. This week, he released “Flintana,” a classic Michigan-style rap song and music video filmed in Atlanta, accompanied by three rising Flint rappers (YN Jay, Louie Ray, and RMC Mike). Yachty’s attempts to keep pace and match punchlines with the Flint trio bring out the best in his rapping. And he’s helping them out, too: His presence is bringing more eyes to one of the hottest cities in hip-hop. Yachty has found a sweet spot.
A drive from Flint, Michigan to Detroit will take you about an hour, so it’s no surprise that Flint’s current scene was brought to life through that connection. Peezy, the de facto leader of Team Eastside, one of Detroit’s legendary rap groups, co-signed Rio Da Yung OG last year. Since that moment, Rio’s offensive, punchline-based storytelling has become the blueprint for Flint street rap. Rio’s 2019 breakout song “Legendary” is a breathtaking experience: in one anecdote, he steals a video game system from his girlfriend’s son and sells it. But he can be kind of sweet, too. “I rather pay your student loans off, I’m not a Birkin getter,” he raps on “Movie,” one of Flint’s best rap songs this year.
YN Jay calls himself the “Coochie Scout,” his upcoming mixtape’s rumored title is Coochie Land, and he renamed his birthday as “Coochie Day” on Instagram. The Flint rapper also happens to have one of the hottest rap songs in the Midwest right now, and, of course, it’s called “Coochie.” It goes something like this: “Ooh, I hit her from the back, I beat her doonies down/She said I fuck her good, I make her coochie smile.”
Detwan Love
I’m not sure Detwan Love wants to be a rapper. Take a scroll through his Instagram and he appears to be more set on his career as a streetballer. But when he does rap, his conversational flow is entrancing.
It’s no coincidence that arguably the two best Flint rap songs of the year—“Coochie” and “Movie”—both feature Louie Ray. He’s the perfect complement to the larger-than-life personalities that are breaking out in the scene, as his casual demeanor makes his punchlines sound even more wicked.
(see: Just Another Day at the Office With Outrageous Rapping Mailman Bfb Da Packman)
In your early 20s, every moment in a relationship feels life-changing, whether it be the first or hundredth time you’ve held hands or the tears you didn’t even realize you were capable of shedding. On “About Love at 21,” a cut from Liv.e’s breakout album Couldn’t Wait to Tell You…, the Dallas-raised, Los Angeles-based singer perfectly captures that feeling. She longs for the moments in a relationship that may seem inconsequential at the time, but you really appreciate in retrospect.
Charisma can be hard to find in drill, since the subgenre relies on too-cool posturing. What made Brooklyn rappers like Pop Smoke and Fivio Foreign rise above the rest was their ability to splash goofiness onto bleak scenarios, and that’s what Ivorian Doll has going for her, too. The London rapper’s new single “Body Bag” is a cold standard UK drill rap song brought to life with a great music video. A heartless verse like, “I don’t fuck around with no dickhead gyal who talk a bag of shit pon road/Walking ’round in your big drip but I heard that shit’s on loan,” becomes extra memorable when you watch her spit from inside a lifesized Barbie-style box, surrounded by disemebered doll parts. (The Nicki Minaj comparisons will be inevitable.) Regardless of which drill scene you prefer—Chicago, Brooklyn, or London—Ivorian Doll deserves to be in the conversation.
One of the best beats on Westside Gunn’s Pray for Paris is “Versace.” The drums are soft and a pair of vocal samples fight each other until they ultimately end up intertwined. Similarly, on Tha God Fahim and Mach-Hommy’s new single (which was pulled from the internet) “Versace Church Van,” it’s almost as if the two emcees are kicking their verses a capella with only a chopped-up soul sample to fill the empty space. Both “Versace” and “Versace Church Van” are produced by Jay Versace, a semi-retired internet comedian, YouTube personality, and Vine star who is currently making looped beats that would make crate-diggers of the past smile.
Like many, my first introduction to the 22-year-old Jay Versace was through video clips posted from his Pleasantville, New Jersey crib. Typically they were short comedic skits, but the ones I came across the most often were of Versace in a wig, animatedly lip-syncing R&B and soul classics like Patti LaBelle’s “If Only You Knew.” Years later, the warmth of Versace’s production makes sense: his musical taste was being communicated even when he was a comedian. Like Versace’s mentor Knxwledge, Versace’s beats are not just rudimentary flips. They’re rich but subtle, a skill that has made them appeal to Westside Gunn, Fahim, Mach, and very soon to be many more.
Cashcache makes music for atmospheric fantasies–the rising producer’s beats could soundtrack the happy ending of a Disney princess movie. But for now, Cash only works with BoofPaxkMooky and a handful of other close SoundCloud collaborators. On Garden, the newest mixtape from the rapper/producer duo, Cash’s bubbly production drowns Boof’s choppy flow in sweetness. This can be heard on “Lettuce,” where Boof cooly delivers simple but catchy lyrics over a twinkling Cash instrumental. It sounds like it could play out of a mobile hanging above a baby’s crib, and it’s hard not to smile when you hear it.
Melvoni has the best voice of all the New York rappers who sing about trauma. In another era, the Brooklyn rapper would have probably been the lead of an R&B boy band. But it’s not 2005, therefore Melvoni wails his melancholy lyrics alone, accompanied only by gloomy pianos. “I look in the mirror with my eyes closed/I don’t like the shit I see when they open up,” he sings on “Oh My,” a song that finds him reflecting on pain he can’t seem to overcome. It sounds gut-wrenching coming out of a voice this sweet.
“PROTEKT ALL QUEENS” is the message written at the bottom of the Bandcamp page for Knxwledge’s new mixtape, WT.PRT.16. The mixtape is a tribute to women in hip-hop, on which the prolific L.A. beatmaker uses his signature loops to reimagine songs and freestyles. Under Knx’s direction, Flo Milli’s “In the Party” sounds like it’s being performed at halftime of a college football game alongside a marching band. Kash Doll’s lively “Ice Me Out” is chilled, with a funky bassline that sounds like it’s the final song of the night at a cigar smoke-filled jazz club. He even goes back in time, lacing a Brooklyn woman most infamous for saying “Fuck ISIS” with a grimy New York City-style beat. This is essential Knx.
(Note: There will be no Ones or weekly column next week. I’m taking the week off to immerse myself in the Lil Keed album.)
