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.
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 BoutGhost 53206’s FreeBandz Menaceor, 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.”
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.
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.
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