Terror Van Poo "OLE ASH KUSH" (feat. Pretty Bulli) [VIDEO]

Terror Van Poo and Pretty Bulli have put a video to "OLE ASH KUSH," the Stu Bangas-produced track that's been circulating as part of the Bernadette Price EP. ReemoFilmedIt directed. Bangas the Boston producer whose credits run deep through the underground supplies a hard, uncluttered beat, and the two voices trade across it without a hook doing much work. Just under three minutes, no fat on it. Pretty Bulli's verse is the sharper of the two. The song itself has been covered here already; this is the visual, and it's worth a look for anyone who followed the EP. Beyond the credits listed there's little new verifiable material no label, no mix details, no transcript available so this stays short on purpose.

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Wu-Tang Clan, LEE YOUNG JI, Jay Park & E SENS "C.R.E.A.M. (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Remix)" [SINGLE]

"C.R.E.A.M." has been reworked for the new Call of Duty, and the reason it's more than a licensing sync is the choice of who was asked to rework it. RZA produced the remix with Martin Wave of Parasol Music, and the new verses come from three of the most prominent names in Korean hip-hop LEE YOUNG JI, Jay Park and E SENS delivered in a mix of English and Korean. Method Man's original hook stays exactly where it was. Why this pairing exists The game's campaign is partly set on the Korean peninsula, and the remix is the musical counterpart to that: the original "C.R.E.A.M." is used in the opening cinematic, this version runs over the end credits. RZA's framing is worth quoting because it explains the logic better than the marketing does the song "brought our group to new heights worldwide," and hearing it come back from "a new generation of rappers from the other side of the globe" is the point rather than the side effect. The track The production keeps the Charmels-derived piano figure and rebuilds around it rather than replacing it, which is the right call you don't improve that loop. What changes is the centre of gravity. LEE YOUNG JI opens fast and technical, flipping the "southside" geography onto Seoul. Jay Park follows. E SENS takes the last verse and does the heaviest lifting: "Cash still rules the fuckin' world / C.R.E.A.M. got my money but I ain't sell my soul" which is a genuinely interesting thing to say on a track that is, functionally, a brand partnership, and he knows it. Three minutes twenty-five, out through Epic Records. It's a game tie-in and it should be assessed as one: a competent, well-cast reworking that gives three Korean MCs a global placement, not a new Wu-Tang record. On those terms it works.

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WateRR x Wavy Da Ghawd "Bigger Than Arsenio" [VIDEO]

WateRR and Wavy Da Ghawd released Did You Miss Me in the final week of September fifteen tracks, about forty-five minutes, the follow-up to Washed Ashore and "Bigger Than Arsenio," track three, is the song getting a video now. WateRR raps out of Chicago's South Side and Wavy Da Ghawd produces, and the duo format is the point: this is one emcee and one producer working as a unit rather than an album with guests bolted on. The record is built around a talk-show framing, and you can read it straight off the tracklist it opens with "The Varnell Hill Show," and "Madonna in the Green Room," "Varnell Origins" and "Lake Varnell" are placed through the running order like segments. "Bigger Than Arsenio" is the most direct expression of it. The hook escalates "This is bigger than music. This is bigger than rap. This is bigger than that. Bigger than Arsenio" and the Arsenio Hall reference does two jobs at once: it names the format the album is borrowing and it sets the ambition. Wavy's production is the strongest part of the record. He builds warm, layered loops and leaves the drums unhurried, which gives WateRR room to work in a conversational register rather than a technical one. Bub Styles, Ty Farris and Imani Nichele take the guest spots across the album. Worth noting honestly: the concept is more interesting in theory than it is sustained across fifteen tracks, and the interludes don't always earn their place. But the rapping and the beats hold up on their own, and "Bigger Than Arsenio" is one of the songs where the framing and the music actually agree.

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DOZA THE DRUM DEALER "SUPERDozie / DOZIE:Soulful DELUXE" [ALBUM]

 

Doza the Drum Dealer has built one album and then produced it twice. That's the whole concept, and it's a better idea than it sounds. One version, DOZIE:Soulful, is sample-based. The other, SUPERDozie, contains no samples at all same songs, rebuilt from the ground up. Doza describes the relationship between the two the way you'd describe an argument with yourself: it's about what the sample is actually contributing, and whether the record survives without it. It's the same question a producer asks in private a hundred times, made public as a thirty-two-track package. The Brooklyn context Doza comes out of Brooklyn and heads up the Narcotechs. His production credits run through Raekwon, M1 of Dead Prez, Flee Lord, Saigon, Ill Bill, Hus Kingpin and Paul Cain, and his stated influences are the obvious and correct ones Premier, RZA, Pete Rock, Easy Mo Bee, Havoc. He grew up around working musicians; his father played, and an uncle did time in Kool & The Gang and the Bar-Kays. That upbringing shows up in how the no-samples version sounds: not like a sample emulation, but like an arrangement. The release itself Thirty-two tracks, produced, mixed and mastered by Doza alone, with D. Goynz and Kaeson Skrilla featured. The vinyl runs fourteen tracks seven per side and is limited to twenty-five copies. The CD is also capped at twenty-five. The full deluxe edition, with two extra tracks and all the instrumentals, is sold direct only, and SUPERDozie is scheduled to reach streaming platforms at the end of the month meaning the sample-based version and the instrumentals stay off the DSPs entirely. There's a listening party for the record scheduled the day after release. This is a producer's album for people who care about production, and the dual-version structure makes it more interesting than a standard beat tape: you can hear the same song twice and argue with it. For anyone following the Narcotechs orbit, this is the most substantial thing in the catalogue.

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PREZ ART "Scenic Route" [VIDEO]

PREZ ART comes out of the Chicago area and works with Sound Scandal Music Group, the imprint that's pushing the record. "Scenic Route" is a single off Take Notes, an album that's already available, and the video is the new element here shot and directed by DA WRECK, with production by RIOTSSMG. Beyond that, verifiable information is thin: no production credits beyond the beat, no mixing or mastering details, no tracklist published, and no biographical material available for a rapper who appears to be working entirely outside the press cycle. That's worth saying plainly rather than papering over. What the record itself offers is roughly three minutes of straightforward, unhurried Midwestern rap no hook gimmick, no guest verse, a single voice over a single beat. For listeners who work through Chicago's independent tier artist by artist, this is one to log.

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Ben Hedibi & uMaNg "Help Less" [VIDEO]

Toronto producer Ben Hedibi and Salt Lake City emcee uMaNg have a collaborative album called Stray Dogs arriving at the end of the month eighteen tracks, their first full-length together and "Help Less" is the first single and video off it. The title does the work before the verse does. uMaNg spends the record on the mechanics of being judged by people who aren't making anything: "They don't rap, they just review / Tell 'em: help less." Then the darker turn "Tired of my own thoughts, so I dug my own grave / Poured dirt on my dreams and I blamed the whole game." Hedibi's production underneath is soul-based and slightly unsettled, the kind of loop that keeps shifting weight so the verse never quite settles into it. The second verse sharpens. "Snakes on the path, but the grass stays cut" is the best line on the record, and the closing movement flips the pitbull idiom the whole album is arguing with: rappers doing a poor dog impression, "I'm a nightmare livin' in your dream." It's a genuinely uncomfortable closing image and it lands. What's promising here is the pairing. Hedibi works in the haunted-boom-bap register that Canadian producers have been quietly excellent at for a decade, and uMaNg writes dense and imagistic without losing the thread multi-syllabic, horror-adjacent, but anchored to a subject. Two veterans, no label machinery, and an album that's been built across a national border.

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Sankofa x August Fanon "A Tree Grows" [SINGLE]

Sankofa works at a rate most rappers would find alarming. Since 2020 he's put out dozens of projects, and the format is almost always the same: one MC, one producer, one album, done. Monster Factory with G Fam Black, Show & Tell with Gensu Dean, Planet Rock with Draztik. He comes out of Fort Wayne, Indiana, which is not a city that generates much coverage, and the volume is partly a response to that. "Calm on Purpose," the full-length he made with Houston producer August Fanon, came out in July thirteen tracks, under forty minutes and "A Tree Grows" is the track getting the visual treatment now, three months on. The pairing makes sense. Fanon is a patient producer, the kind who lets a loop run long enough that the drums start to feel earned rather than dropped, and he has a working relationship with G Fam Black that suggests he likes MCs who write inward. "A Tree Grows" does what the title promises: slow, organic, an opening that stays open. Sankofa's delivery is measured and conversational, the opposite of the rapid-fire approach his release schedule might imply. That contrast is the whole appeal a rapper who could release anything choosing to release something this considered. For heads who like the one-MC-one-producer album format, Sankofa is one of the most reliable names working in it.

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Shydak "Rapratikant" (feat. NGS) [VIDEO]

Shydak has been releasing Parisian hip-hop since 1995 and runs his own Disklexique imprint, and "Rapratikant" is a veteran's complaint about the difference between making rap and practising it. The title is a pun the hook spells out: "Ils font du rap mais sans s'impliquer" they make rap but without being involved and then, the claim: "je suis pratiquant," I'm a practitioner. It's a familiar argument, and the writing is what keeps it from souring. Shydak works in tight, balanced couplets and builds the verse around a maritime conceit crews, rafts, quitting ship for a hit, the captain's hat you have to know how to wear which turns a rant about authenticity into something closer to a fable. The sharpest line is the one about pissing where you drink. NGS takes the second voice, and the track alternates rather than stacking, so the record stays a conversation. The credit that matters here is on the turntables: Deejay Anhonym handles the scratches, and cut work is still rare enough in contemporary French rap to be worth naming. No producer credit is listed for the beat itself, no mix details either what's audible is a loop built to leave the centre open for two MCs and a scratch chorus. Raphifilm shot it. Just over two minutes, out through Disklexique. For listeners who want French-language boom bap from someone who predates the current wave and is still arguing with it, this is a good entry.

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J Scienide vs Morlockko Plus "Slow Burner / Genghis" (feat. Sonnyjim & Morlockk Dilemma) [VIDEO]

The billing is a geography lesson. J Scienide records out of Washington, D.C. by way of Charlotte. Sonnyjim comes from the UK. And Morlockko Plus the producer behind the beat is Falko Luniak, better known as the Leipzig rapper Morlockk Dilemma, who has been releasing production under the Plus alias since 2011 and who turns up here twice, on the boards and on the mic. How this circle formed The connection isn't new. Luniak and Sonnyjim released the full-length Less Labour More Fruit in 2025, an album that pulled in Samy Deluxe, CRIMEAPPLE and Lee Scott alongside J Scienide who took "Five Minutes." What Morlockko Plus has effectively built over several years is a hinge between German and Anglophone underground rap, and "Slow Burner / Genghis" is that hinge working at speed: three MCs, three scenes, one beat. The track Luniak's production is the tell. Where RZA reached for soul and funk, Morlockk Dilemma has always gone for obscure film and library music, roughly 1965 to 1985 and this beat has that slightly off-centre, slightly staged quality, the sense that the sample was never meant to be a hip-hop record. The drums are placed under it rather than over it. J Scienide opens with the travelling verse Venice for lunch, splitting the bill, going Dutch and then undercuts it with the line that gives the track its name: it's just a slow burner. Sonnyjim takes the second movement and does his relaxed, food-obsessed thing ("I let the pasta simmer," "the tree smells like Madagascar vanilla"), which sounds effortless and is not. Morlockk Dilemma closes in German, and the switch in language doesn't break the record because the beat never resolves either way. pretty.dirty shot the video. Vinyl for the project goes up for presale this week through Kapitalismus Jetzt. For anyone who has been watching this German-Anglophone axis develop, this is the most concentrated version of it yet.

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Dex the nerd who loves Jesus "Holy Barz" (feat. TNV & Bill B.) [SINGLE]

Christian hip-hop has its own infrastructure its own press, its own charts, its own ecosystem and Dex the nerd who loves Jesus works inside it rather than aiming across at the mainstream. "Holy Barz" is his new single, produced by Bedroomflips, with TNV and Bill B. taking verses alongside him. The setup is a three-MC record over a boom-bap beat, which is a deliberate choice in a lane where trap and contemporary R&B production dominate. The stated subject matter is redemption, resilience and purpose, and the title does the framing holy bars as both a boast and a description of intent. Dex has been releasing steadily through the last couple of years: "Pray About It," "A Sinners Mercy," "Battlefront (Spiritual War)," and now this. What's worth noting for listeners outside the CHH world is that the technical standard doesn't drop. Three verses on one beat with no hook cushion is a structure that exposes weak writing, and this is built as a cipher record rather than a worship song. For heads who dig boom-bap and don't care where the rapper goes to church, this is a solid three minutes. For anyone tracking the genre, Dex is a name that keeps appearing.

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Henri "Shinin'" [VIDEO]

Henri's debut album Welcome To The Show has been out since the spring, and he's been releasing videos for it the way other people release singles one at a time, as a serial. "Shinin'" is the ninth instalment of that short-film run, which is a real commitment for an album that already has a DJ Premier lead single on it. The video is a proper piece of narrative rather than a performance clip: Henri wakes handcuffed in an unidentified room, gets strapped to a chair by two doctors, sedated, tested, hypnotised, escapes, wakes up strapped down again, escapes for real, and ends in an alleyway with the briefcase he's been protecting the whole time. SPR Kane shot and cut it; POI Entertainment produced and co-directed, and the whole thing is distributed with Fat Beats. Cozyy and Apache appear. Stoic and pilotkid produced the record, and they build it bright a clean, melodic loop that gives Henri room to do the thing he does best, which is sound like someone talking himself into a better mood. The hook is literal: "I don't know what you want from me / so I'mma keep shining." The verses are full of small, concrete details whiskey drops, building nights in New York, moves in the ATL and the flow stretches and compresses rather than sitting on the beat. Henri comes out of Alabama, which is not a state that produces many Fat Beats debutants, and that distance shows up in the writing: no regional posturing, no scene obligations. SPR Kane mixed and mastered, and the vocal sits right on top. Nine films in, the serial has become the more interesting project. Worth watching in order.

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Beedie "Hell In A Cell" (feat. Boldy James) [VIDEO]

Beedie's Beedromania came out twelve months ago, and the video for "Hell In A Cell" arrives almost exactly a year on which is either a coincidence or a very Pittsburgh kind of anniversary present. Either way, it's the right track to revisit. The concept, one more time Beedromania is built on a single comparison: modern rap behaves like professional wrestling. Fifteen tracks, interludes included, cut like a card entrance music, promos, a backstage interview, a finishing move. The production roster reads like a pay-per-view billing: August Fanon, Wino Willy, Nicholas Craven, illdigger, Stu Bangas, Nice Rec, Brainorchestra. Skyzoo, Blu, Fam Ross and JvGGY Hendrix take the features. Beedie recorded the whole thing at The Panther Den, Big Jerm and Beedro mixed it, Kevin Nix mastered it, DJ Brace cut it up, and the vinyl was pressed by Hellbender in Pittsburgh. Why this track Nicholas Craven produces, and he builds the kind of loop that already sounds like it's waiting for something bad to happen sparse, cold, drums placed to leave space. Beedie opens with a message to someone inside, which is the record's real subject: not the ring, but the phone call you can't make. "I heard your bed was close to over. Might be home before the summer time." Boldy James takes the back half and does what he does, which is sound unimpressed by everything including his own good fortune. Detroit to Pittsburgh and back, and neither of them raises his voice. Then the outro: a hardcore-legend voice introducing himself, complaining about nearly breaking his back when the Undertaker threw him off the top of the cell, and then nearly doing it again nodding along to the beat. It's a joke, and it's also the album's whole argument in thirty seconds the spectacle and the damage are the same thing. Louis Petrone, James Hill and Phillip Thompson shot it, Marcos Ochoa cut it, Beedro and Phillip Thompson directed. If you slept on Beedromania the first time, the anniversary is a good excuse.

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OGUN (GOD OF IRON) "HEXAGRAM TEN CHAMBER OF WINGZ" [ALBUM]

 

Ogun describes himself as owner, artist, producer and DJ of Wargun Militia and a Wu-affiliate, and he has somewhere near a hundred releases behind him which means Hexagram Ten Chamber of Wingz isn't a debut or a comeback. It's an instalment. According to the release notes it's the first volume of a series and the prequel to a forthcoming United Kingdom Yellow Jacketz LP, and it's dedicated to DUSK, described as the newest member and General of the Yellow Jacketz. DUSK also produced the whole thing. The mythos, taken seriously That combination an in-world dedication to the person behind the boards tells you how to listen. This is the Philadelphia rap equivalent of a kung-fu serial: Killa Wasp Familia, Yellow Jacketz, Shaolin, hornets and stingers, revenge cycles. Titles carry parentheses like chapter headings "SHAOLIN VS WASP (CHALLENGE OF THE BALANCED)," "REVENGE FOR MY FATHER (THE SMILING KNIFE)," "THE GIANT KILLER HORNET (HEXAGRAM TEN)." There's even a track called "THE WASP MESSIAH (MEDIA MONOPOLY)," which suggests the whole insect theology has a point beyond world-building. It would be easy for this to collapse into noise, and Ogun's output rate makes that a live risk. What keeps it standing is that the framework is load-bearing rather than decorative the titles promise a plot and the sequencing delivers one, moving from the chamber through challenge, revenge and the hornet to the wasp messiah. The record itself Ten tracks, thirty-three minutes, produced entirely by DUSK, with DJ Razor Blade Sharp and DUSK featured. Two tracks push past four minutes "THE GIANT KILLER HORNET" and "THE WASP MESSIAH" and they're placed at eight and ten, so the album gets heavier as it closes rather than front-loading. There's a UK record in the middle ("PEACE UNITED KINGDOM (UK IN THE HOUSE)"), which is either a wink at the next instalment or a straightforward transatlantic nod; with the series heading toward a United Kingdom Yellow Jacketz LP, probably both. No mix credits are listed, no artwork credit, no city on the sleeve. For anyone who has been following the Wargun Militia catalogues Swarmers, the Ramen Noodlez tapes, Yellow Jacketz Chamber this is the chapter that explains the rest.

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Taran Richards & GnT "GnT | GIFTED" [VIDEO]

Revolutionary Records operates out of the North West of England, and "GnT | GIFTED" is the label doing what small labels actually do putting two regional MCs on a beat and letting the record stand without a campaign. Taran Richards and GnT share the billing, Bootleg built the beat, and Thundersound Productions handled the visuals and shared recording, mixing and mastering duties with Hollow Earth Productions. The track opens on a sung hook rather than a verse: "Yesterday I nearly sold my soul / I walked away / I took control." That's the whole thesis, and everything after it fills in the cost. Richards works in a clipped, conversational register, piling up spiritual imagery fire the world can't extinguish, forty days and forty nights, parting seas like Moses without ever tipping into sermon. The best line is the plainest: "Every breath I take is a gift from God." GnT's contribution sits in the call-and-response, and the two voices trade short phrases rather than full verses, which keeps three and a half minutes moving. Bootleg's production is unhurried and loop-based, mixed so the vocals sit forward appropriate for a record that's essentially a confession with a chorus. GnT records out of Carnforth and Richards out of Lancaster, and the pair have been releasing together for a while now; the chemistry sounds like it. Nothing here is aiming at the mainstream. For listeners who dig regional UK scenes rather than London press releases, this is worth the three minutes.

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Meyhem Lauren "Radikon" (prod. DJ Muggs) [VIDEO]

Two things make Meyhem Lauren's Table For One unusual before a note of it plays: there isn't a single guest verse on it, and it's the first release on his own label. Eleven tracks, a rapper who has spent his career trading bars with half the underground, and nobody else in the booth. "Radikon" is the DJ Muggs track, and Muggs gives him exactly the right frame a slow, freighted loop with the low end sitting heavy and the drums placed so that Meyhem's drawl has somewhere to sit. It's a beat that rewards a rapper who doesn't hurry, and Meyhem has never hurried. He opens on wine and air ("Let the warm air out, it tastes better"), then moves through inventory: "We got flavors. More packs than Newports stocked at Apple Vegas." The chorus is two words and a thirst "Crack the Radikon, lord, I feel thirsty" and it repeats just often enough. What's interesting is how little he does with the space. No second verse to show range, no guest to break the monotony, no hook built to travel. Just a rapper in a pocket, moving from Vegas to Queens to Cali to Miami, closing on gold medals and Tonys. It's a flex record with the flexing turned down, which is more effective than the loud version. The rest of the album's production comes from The Alchemist, Buckwild, Daringer, IceRocks, Ghost Dave, Real Bad Man, Ern Dogg and Don D, and the track titles "Win Son," "The Centurion Lounge," "Jerk Turkey Wings," "Deadstock Pasta" suggest a record about eating well alone. Gusto Gold Productions shot the video. Eleven tracks, no features, one voice. That's a statement whether or not it was intended as one.

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Tali Rodriguez & CLOAQxDAGGER "Devoid of Orbit V.7" [ALBUM]

 

Seventh instalment of Tali Rodriguez's Devoid of Orbit series, and the change this time is structural. According to Rodriguez, production on previous volumes came from elsewhere; for V.7, CLOAQxDAGGER the duo of Mathias and Crack Sizzlack handled the music and the mixing and mastering. His own comment on the arrangement: "hooray for that." You can hear why it would matter. An album where the people who built the beats also set the levels tends to sound like one object rather than a collection of sessions, and seven tracks is the right length to test that. The Atlanta MC keeps his vocals at the centre of it credits list him on vocals, CLOAQxDAGGER on music, with no division of labour fudged. Three guests come through: Money Mogly on "The Gains," and G Fam Black and P-Ro together on "The Anthem," which at just over four minutes is the longest record here and the one most likely to justify its length. The rest are short "The Splinterlude" is an interlude at one seventeen, and most tracks land between two thirty and three fifteen which keeps the album as a single sitting. P-Ro also did the artwork. Rodriguez lists affiliations with Knuckle Dragguz and Wxtch Wxlvez. A series entry from an artist who keeps making them, with the production finally under one roof. If you've followed Devoid of Orbit this far, this is the volume where the sound should lock in.

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Jackpot Scotty Wotty "Parkhill Nightmare II: Four Horsemen" (feat. Killah Priest, Shabazz The Disciple & Frukwan) [VIDEO]

Jackpot Scotty Wotty's "Parkhill Nightmare" arrived at the end of last year with one MC. The sequel brings three more, and the billing is the concept: Killah Priest, Shabazz The Disciple and Frukwan of Gravediggaz, four voices on one beat, each describing the same apocalypse from inside it. Four riders, one beat Shaka Amazulu The 7th produces, and he builds for atmosphere rather than for impact a slow, minor-key loop with space at the edges, closer to a score than a banger. That's the right call for material like this. Scotty Wotty opens with the narrative verse: martial law, camps, a bathroom, a chainsaw, and the decision to die rather than renounce. It's horror as political fiction, and he delivers it flat, which makes it worse. Killah Priest takes the second turn and immediately raises the register "To me MCing is more than just rap," then a run of priestly, baroque imagery delivered with the unhurried authority he's had for thirty years. Frukwan follows with the most concentrated verse on the record: "Death is underrated. Roll the decapitated," and a steady accumulation of body counts, shadows and closed rooms. Shabazz closes with the loosest flow of the four, half-spoken, and gets the last word on Park Hill. Why this matters The Staten Island MC (Park Hill, specifically) has been a rumour in hip-hop longer than he's been a documented presence RZA has name-checked him for years and the company he keeps here is the argument. Killah Priest and Shabazz came out of Wu-Tang's outer circle; Frukwan was in Gravediggaz, the other half of 1994's horrorcore explosion alongside the Flatlinerz. When all three show up on one record, they're not doing a favour. Saïd Kanoun directs the animation, and it's genuinely eerie rather than cheap. The track is on The Legend, The Mystery, The Myth, out through Black Stone of Mecca. If the rest of the album is built like this one concept, four riders, no compromise it's worth clearing space for.

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Wolfman Jeckyll "Blue Collar Blues" [SINGLE]

Providence, Rhode Island's Wolfman Jeckyll describes himself as a lyricist and beatsmith, and he's been releasing like someone with nothing to prove and a lot to get out Body Bag Tapestries, The Dust of What Once Was…, two Meets the Nerds volumes, the Night Terrors collaboration with Bugsy H., WOLF GANG, and a limited 7" for "A Win Is A Win," which he produced himself. "Blue Collar Blues" is the new single, self-released, three minutes twenty-four. No producer credit is listed for this one, so the write-up stays with the title and the catalogue: Jeckyll's lane is dark, loop-based boom-bap with the vocal pushed to the front, and he works in the grainy register that's made him a fixture of the New England underground, where he also runs with Goon Union. The title sets an expectation work, wear, and a complaint you can't file and three and a half minutes is enough time to make it rather than announce it. No video, no announced album, no artwork note. Just a single from an independent who has put out more records in four years than most artists with a deal. For anyone digging the Rhode Island and Massachusetts end of the East Coast underground, this is a name worth having on the list.

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Datkid "Virus" [VIDEO]

The first thing to get straight: Very Heavy Lead isn't out yet. The album is scheduled for late November on High Focus Records, Datkid's first full-length for the label in five years. "Virus" is track sixteen, out now as a single with a video shot by Illinformed and Jenna-Louise Crooknorth. The production is the story

Illinformed and Dumb Logic produced the whole album together not splitting tracks between them but working the same rooms, playing instruments, building each record jointly. That's an unusual method for a UK boom-bap LP and it's audible. "Virus" has the weight of a live take: the drums sit slightly behind where a sampled break would land, the bassline moves, and the whole thing breathes in a way that loop-based production generally doesn't. It's a darker, dirtier sound than a straight crate-dig record, and it suits Datkid. The verse, and the joke He spends the track as the contamination. "I got the poison. Don't let me get into your head," then: "we rain down very heavy lead" the album title doing double duty as a pun the record earns rather than announces. The writing is Datkid at his most Bristolian: absurd, specific, and funnier than it first sounds. "Catch me rapping like a Christmas elf and sleeping like a crack user." "I peel your pride back like a satsuma." "Nice things, I spoil them." The flow is loose to the point of sprawl, and he never raises his voice; the menace is entirely in the imagery. The outro is the trick: a sampled voice discussing lead poisoning as an occupational hazard nausea, nerve damage, hallucinations as a clinical diagnosis of the rapper we've just heard. It's a smart, dry way to close a record called "Virus." Where it sits

Eighteen tracks, and the features are a who's who of the UK underground rather than a guest list: Jack Jetson, Bil Next, Leaf Dog, Eric The Red, Smellington Piff, BVA, Sean Peng, Jman, Crossbow T, and Young Zee the Fugees and Eminem collaborator on "Fresh Out." Two posse cuts close it out. Five years since WAKMO is a long time in a scene this fast. If the rest of the album holds the standard of its sixteenth track, the wait will look justified.

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Daniel Son x Asun Eastwood x Futurewave "Catch A Limit" [VIDEO]

Toronto's Daniel Son, Asun Eastwood and Futurewave first did this as a trio back in 2018 with Physics of Filth, and "Catch A Limit" confirms that the chemistry wasn't a one-off. Futurewave produces; the two MCs take it from there. The beat is textbook Futurewave: a grim, textured loop with the drums pushed forward, no melodic comfort, built to make a rapper sound harder than he is. Both MCs know how to use it. Daniel Son rides the pocket with the confrontational, slightly slurry delivery he's been refining across a decade of collaborative albums, and his closing lines are the record's sharpest: "The fall never comes from an enemy / cuz it comes from the friends who pretend to be." Asun Eastwood born in Belize City, raised in Toronto counters with a tighter, more clipped cadence, packing internals into short bars and leaving air between them. The two don't sound alike, which is the point. The hook ("Who got the light? Who got the spark?") is a chant rather than a melody, and it recurs often enough to structure the record without softening it. Lucas Espinola shot it, Son Tzu cut it, and the camera work is as unglamorous as the beat. "Catch A Limit" is the latest single from NOM DE GUERRE, the trio's album due later this month through Wav.God Music, the label Futurewave runs with Daniel Son. Two singles in after "Clean Up Nice" and "Dejounte Murray" this is shaping up as the most significant thing any of the three has put out since the first record.

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Real Bad Man, Gabe 'Nandez & ICECOLDBISHOP "Trifecta" [SINGLE]

Three names on the marquee and no wasted syllables between them. "Trifecta" is a single on Real Bad Man Records, the imprint Adam Weissman runs out of Los Angeles a label that has spent the last few years putting out limited-press records with a consistent sonic signature: hypnotic loops, heavy drums, and enough negative space that an MC has to bring something to fill it. Which is what makes this pairing worth noting. Gabe 'Nandez spent last year on Sortilège with Preservation, one of the densest rap records of 2025, and writes in compressed, image-heavy bursts. ICECOLDBISHOP comes from South Central and has never fitted a lane: Generational Curse arrived in 2023 after sitting unfinished for years, was recorded before a one-album deal with Epic, and earned its reputation on word of mouth rather than on a campaign. He's worked with Denzel Curry, Boldy James, Ab-Soul, Larry June and McKinley Dixon, and his delivery moves through more tones in a verse than most MCs manage in an album. Put both on a beat built around restraint and the contrast becomes the record one rapper compressing, one expanding, neither yielding. Three and a half minutes, no features beyond the billing, out on Weissman's own label. The constellation is the story, and it's the kind of single that makes you check what else the imprint has lined up.

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AWKA FUNKE x SMONKY x MAD PLUGH "NO PROBLEM" [VIDEO]

Every credit on "NO PROBLEM" is listed, and one of them is the reason to care: DJ ROPO on scratches. Turntablism is rarely credited explicitly in underground releases anymore, so when a record names its cuts, it's telling you how it was built. MAD PLUGH handles musical production with the beat credited to MAD PLUGH and SMNK BEATS, MORBAS BEATS mastered it, and three artists share the billing. The track is Spanish-language boom-bap out of Chile. AWKA FUNKE comes from Cartagena, a coastal town near Santiago, and has been part of the country's boom-bap scene for a few years now Carta Para, then A Sol y Acierto, and a spot on the sprawling Chilean posse cut "El Sur Es Hardcore – Hijos del Boom Bap" alongside Cevlade, Grafy, Jonas Sanche and others. That scene has been building patiently and gets very little international coverage, which is a reason to pay attention rather than a reason to skip. The record runs on a ticking-clock hook "y este tic tac suena, no hay ningún problema" repeated often enough that it becomes the argument: pressure exists, it isn't a problem. The verses move between the everyday and the declarative, delivered relaxed over a loop that never quite resolves, and the scratches sit in the seams rather than on top. Franko Jiménez directed the visual, with stills and lighting from JOTVPE MP4 and lettering from NOCHANCE.CL. Clean, unfussy, no set pieces. Three minutes of craft, fully credited, from a scene that deserves more listeners than it has.

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??? x BONEWESO "THEHIDDENSPLASH 2" [ALBUM]

 

The artist's name is "???" three question marks, as credited on the release. Behind it is a Dominican-American MC from Lynn, Massachusetts who goes by The Hidden Character, and who started rapping inside the Mini Mansion, the circle around Estee Nack. He met Nack over a decade ago through family; Nack, in his words, is basically a father figure. Nack also gave the green light for this project in the first place. Who BONEWESO is The other half of the billing is the reason this record exists. BONEWESO is family relatives and cousins in common and he is forty-nine, which makes him the oldest figure in the Mini Mansion circle. He came up in the 2000s producing reggaeton, dancehall and mainstream hip-hop, with hits for Don Omar and Wisin & Yandel during what he calls reggaeton's golden era. Nack is the one who pulled him back toward rap, introducing him to artists like Roc Marciano. He made hundreds of beats in a short stretch and only started releasing them in 2024 first with Systematically We Were Never Free, the Estee Nack album he produced in full. That's an unusual route into the underground, and it explains the production. This is boom bap made by someone who spent twenty years programming for dancers: the drums have swing rather than just weight, and the loops are cut for momentum. The record Eleven tracks, just under half an hour, five guests Codenine, Writeous Ruler, Chynabaejing, Nyeusi Loe, FTB Boogz and a sequencing that alternates solo cuts and features almost perfectly. Titles are all caps, one or two words, no vowels spared: "I.S.L.A.M," "BAREWITNESS," "MAGICIANS," "BOMBSAWAY," "CASECLOSED." A fan note on the release page flags "TOUCHDOWN" as a favourite, and it's easy to see why. No mix credits and no statement came with it. That's consistent with a project whose artist name is a punctuation mark: this is music that expects to be found. Coming from the Mini Mansion, it usually is.

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Flatlinerz "Graveyard Grey (DIG)" [VIDEO]

Before there was a genre called horrorcore, there were the Flatlinerz. The Brooklyn trio Redrum (Jamel Simmons), Gravedigger and Tempest put U.S.A. (Under Satan's Authority) on Def Jam in 1994 and the name for the style came with it, which is a rarer thing in rap than most origin stories manage. "Graveyard Grey (DIG)" is a minute and a half of new material from the group, arriving with Halloween timing and horrorcore.net in the credits. There's no production information and no announced project behind it, so the clip stands on its own: dark, comic-book menace, hockey masks and body counts, delivered with the theatrical relish the group has always worked in. The beat is minimal a pulse and space and the verses are barked rather than rapped, which is the correct register for material that has never asked to be taken literally. For anyone whose horrorcore education started with Gravediggaz and stopped there, this is the other half of 1994. The Flatlinerz aren't a reference act showing up for a paycheck; they're where the reference comes from.

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DA Donnieboy "The Tower, Vol. 1" [ALBUM]

Six volumes. That's the number DA Donnieboy is working with The Tower currently runs from Vol. 1 through Vol. 6 on his own pages, with Volumes 4, 5 and 6 all landing this month. If you were expecting a single album with a rollout, you have the wrong artist. What Vol. 1 actually is Fourteen tracks, forty-two minutes, Detroit, self-released through LevelBeyondOmega. Donnieboy also known as Don Adonis, and affiliated with Configuration Records works as a host rather than an auteur here: ten guests across the tracklist, including Nacelous Mis, Gmac, Mic Audio and Fro Magnum Man sharing one record, DJ Ace on another, and LJ Lady Jane, GabrielTheMessenger, NAM NITTY, Wilderness. and ONIONZ BEATZ filling the rest. That's a crowded bill, and it sets the album's character communal, arranged, built around people he records with constantly rather than around a concept. Titles lean heavy and devotional ("Hymn of Him," "Crimson Dawn," "Empty Funeral," "Osirus"), and the sequencing opens and closes on those, with the harder material "Durag Music," "Blue Summer," "Intriago" in the middle. The method The Tower volumes aren't his only output. Donnieboy has also been running Grand Theft Hip-Hop 365: Slobber Knocker, a weekly series with Nacelous Mis that has passed fifty instalments, plus the Smoke Train records. No production credits are listed on any of it, and no statement explains the strategy which, at this volume, is itself the strategy. Six albums in a matter of weeks is either discipline or compulsion, and the only way to tell is to listen. Vol. 1 is fourteen tracks of Detroit independent rap made without a machine and without a gatekeeper, and it's a cheaper bet than most records you'll hear this month.

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Hus Kingpin "100 Days Away" [VIDEO]

Hus Kingpin put out WAVO FOREVER earlier this year eleven tracks with Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Kurupt, Killah Priest, Planet Asia, Tricky and Wu-Syndicate on it and followed it with a 36 mix, a Threesome 6 full-length and a Kingpin Remixes volume. A ninety-second record is a small move in that context, which is exactly what makes it worth noting. "100 Days Away" is from the third instalment of his Secret Tape series, produced and cut by Tito Da OG. It's a fragment rather than a single: a loop, a verse, a repeated line "I put my hands on the wave and pray" and it's over before a hook would have been useful. The writing is impressionistic, closer to mood than to narrative ("I could walk through the middle of your dream"), and the Kingpin voice is the one he's had since Hempstead: staggered, grizzled, sitting just off the beat rather than squarely on it. Born in Brooklyn and repping Hempstead, Long Island the same strip of ground that produced Roc Marciano he has spent a decade perfecting a distant, refracted New York sound without making commercial concessions. The Secret Tape material is where he keeps that sound loose. Ninety seconds. If you've been following the 2026 run, it's another entry. If you haven't, start with WAVO FOREVER and work backwards.

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Massiah Kaine "God Complex" [SINGLE]

Massiah Kaine raps out of western Massachusetts, which puts him close enough to the New York tradition to inherit it and far enough away to not have to perform it. "God Complex" is his second single in recent weeks, following "Ground 0 (Freestyle)," and it's the second preview of an album called Midnight Mass that still has no announced date. Scottzilla handles production, and the beat is boom-bap in the working sense: a hard loop, drums that sit on top rather than under, no melodic cushion. That puts everything on the vocal, and Kaine responds with the aggressive register he's been leaning into bar-heavy, enunciated, built from stacked short lines rather than long flowing ones. The title is the thesis. He spends the record asserting scale, and the best stretch is where the assertiveness curdles just enough to sound like doubt. The sequencing matters here: "Ground 0" was the reckoning, and this is the rebuild. Where "Ground 0" dealt with inherited family trauma and what he owes his own kids, "God Complex" is posturing as armour and any MC who's honest about why he needs armour is worth a listen. Undated album, two strong singles. On this evidence, Midnight Mass is worth waiting for rather than rushing.

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Money Mogly & Brass Balls "Boom & Bang" [VIDEO]

First video out of A Cruel Summer, the seventeen-track album Money Mogly made with Orion and DJ Exes and "Boom & Bang" is one of three records on that project where DJ Exes shows up, which makes it one of the album's structural anchors rather than a deep cut. The hook is a children's-game taunt: "My guns go boom boom and your guns go pow." It's knowingly silly, and it works because the verses around it are not. Money Mogly raps in dense, associative bursts that barely pause for the chorus Wu-Tang tickets bought with a school voucher, a biopic on the movie browser, a gladiator in the Colosseum and the movement from image to image is fast enough that the record never settles into a groove it can't get out of. He has a habit of burying the best joke at the end of a run: "I buy Wu-Tang tickets with my school voucher" is funnier the second time. Mr. Beleaf directs, shooting largely in and around Lot 11, the Miami skatepark on NW 2nd Street, with a cameo from Prince Divine. It looks like it was made by people who had access to a place and a camera, which is the correct scale for the record. The album itself has been out since the start of the month and already got a full write-up here. This is the visual for the track that most wants one a hook you can chant and a rapper who treats the beat like a sparring partner.

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Fam Ross "Vampires at the Door" [EP]

Four tracks, eight minutes, and every record lands around two minutes. Fam Ross has spent the last several years working as half of Pen Lordz, the duo with Arsinel behind Pen Lordz 3 and the fifteen-track 41Zoo, and this EP reads as the solo counterpart to that body of work same economy, narrower scope. M.GERM? appears on two of the four, opening on the title track and closing on "Spatulas," which gives eight minutes a frame it wouldn't otherwise have. The titles lean horror-comic rather than street "Cyclops in the Drop," "Sun Down Town" and the sequencing alternates solo and featured records cleanly, which suggests the guest spots were placed rather than accumulated. No production credits are listed and no city is attached. What's audible from the structure alone is a project built for one sitting: no track long enough to lose momentum, no skits, no intro. At eight minutes there's no room for filler and no room for a statement either. For listeners who came in on the Pen Lordz records, this is Fam Ross working lean. For everyone else it's a cheap way to find out whether the duo's economy holds up without the other half.

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Chris Crack "If You Ain't From Here, Don't Come Here" [VIDEO]

Seventy-nine seconds. Chris Crack has built a career on records that short the Chicago rapper and producer has spent years releasing at a rate that resists cataloguing, and "If You Ain't From Here, Don't Come Here" is another entry in that system: a soul-loop fragment, a nasal stream-of-consciousness verse, and a hook that doubles as a property line. The title does most of the work, and Crack delivers it deadpan rather than aggressive. Two lines carry the record: "Don't believe the media, they lying cuz it's pretty safe," and, sharper, "White people got all the answers until you ask them where they from." Whether the track is about gentrification, about scene tourism or simply about not wanting company, it lands as the same statement some things aren't yours to walk into. Shot and edited by 10photos, no concept, no second verse. Crack has never needed one. For listeners who like their rap unpolished, funny and over before you can decide whether it was a joke, this is exactly that.

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Terror Van Poo "Ole Ash Kush" (feat. Pretty Bulli) [SINGLE]

 

New York's Terror Van Poo brings in Pretty Bulli for a single that runs just under three minutes, with the beat by Stu Bangas and that credit is the context. Bangas produces out of Boston and has spent 2026 working closely with this circle: he handled the whole of Kissing The Ground For Sinners, the collaborative EP Terror Van Poo made with Brooklyn's Bernadette Price, plus her "Trust in God" single. So this isn't a cold placement. Bangas builds grim, sample-heavy loops with drums mixed to knock, the kind of production that assumes the rapper has something to say and doesn't need a melody to say it over. Terror Van Poo has been working in that register all year, and the pairing has settled into something reliable rather than occasional. Pretty Bulli takes the guest slot. No mix details, no artwork note and no announced project came with the release, so the record stands on a producer, a New York MC and a hook which, at two minutes fifty-two, is roughly the right amount of equipment. For anyone who came in on the Bernadette Price EP, this is the same working method in single form.

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Jamil Honesty "Follow Me" [VIDEO]

The video is the news here, not the record. "Follow Me" comes from M.E.M.O.I.R.S., the Jamil Honesty and JrSwiftz album that landed in September 2025 and is now a year old the visual, directed by Skype Williams, is the lead-in to a vinyl release on Thick Cr8s. It's a good pick for the anniversary treatment. JrSwiftz produced the entire album, and this track shows what that consistency buys: a cinematic, sample-based loop with room in the middle, the kind of beat that lets a rapper change cadence three times without the arrangement having to follow him. Honesty born on Staten Island, based in Baltimore works in long, tangled sentences, and his best lines arrive as asides: "Ain't no welfare just a resident evil," "Walking the block like Mufasa trying to start a guard's blue shock to move proper." The chorus hook ("I hope you follow me") is simple enough to carry the record, and he repeats it often enough that it starts to sound like a warning rather than an invitation. What gives the verse weight is the framing. He keeps returning to the formative years the reruns, the crack spot, the guilt and explicitly connects them to why he writes the way he does. "These are the formative years that maybe honesty probably be the reason I'm seizing to do it properly" is a clumsy line delivered with enough conviction that it works, which is very much this album in miniature. Ten tracks, one producer, one MC, no filler features. If you missed it the first time, the vinyl announcement is a decent excuse.

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Che Noir "Fame & Fiction" (feat. Black Thought) [SINGLE]

Che Noir's last single before It Takes A Village puts two generations of Philadelphia-adjacent discipline on one record: Black Thought of The Roots, and a Wu-Tang Clan producer's beat. Mathematics builds it the way he always has soul sample, drums placed with a surveyor's eye, nothing in the mix that isn't doing work and then gets out of the way. Two verses, two arguments Che Noir opens with the line that sets the tone: "I spit confessions that come with a hidden message." What follows is compact and unsparing OCD, therapy, storms she got through without depression, enemies taking swimming lessons. She writes in short, hard images ("skeletons in my closet can build Jurassic Park"), and her delivery stays level even when the content doesn't, which is what makes it land. This is a rapper who has spent several years assembling a catalogue without much noise, and the technique is now fully in service of what she's saying. Black Thought takes the second half and answers the title rather than the verse. His hook "entertained by fame and fiction" reframes the whole album as a question about what the audience is actually consuming. He moves through chipped dinner plates, shifting stakes, neighbours tripping on strange addiction, and lands on a diagnosis of the attention economy: "Thanks to the algorithm, both our ecosystems know we bound to keep it a thousand with them." It's one of those verses that sounds effortless until you count the syllables. The album around it It Takes A Village is built the way the title promises. Production comes from Havoc, Conductor Williams, Nottz, Chuck Strangers and Mathematics; the guests are Black Thought, Ransom and Bruiser Wolf, with Havoc also handling two tracks. Che Noir was born in Buffalo and works out of Atlanta now, and the tracklist reads like someone who stopped waiting for permission: twelve records, an interlude from Conductor Williams, and a closer with Bruiser Wolf. "Fame & Fiction" is the strongest of the three singles because it argues with its own premise instead of resting on it. If the album keeps that standard, the title will turn out to be a description rather than a slogan.

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Third Eyez "Third Eye Vision" [ALBUM]

Third Eyez is Roc C an Oxnard, California MC with production coming from inside the group, and Third Eye Vision is the kind of album that announces its priorities in the guest column. Twelve tracks, forty-five minutes, and a rolodex that runs from Guilty Simpson to Blu to Chali 2na to El Da Sensei, with RJ Payne, 7xvethegenius, MidaZ the Beast, Rockness Monsta and MC Nemesis filling the rest. That's a lot of names, and the risk with a lineup like this is an album that plays like a compilation. It mostly avoids it, because the sequencing puts the veterans where they can do one thing well rather than asking them to carry tracks. "Nowhere 2 Go" with Guilty Simpson is the obvious standout on paper and holds up on playback two voices with the same relationship to a beat, neither needing to out-rap the other. "Real Back 2 Hip Hop" stacks MC Nemesis, Rockness Monsta, El Da Sensei and Chali 2na onto one record and gets away with it by keeping the runtime tight. "Intro Muzik" gives Blu the longest stretch on the album at just over five minutes, which is the correct use of Blu. Roc C himself is the constant, and he doesn't defer: his delivery is plain-spoken and technical in the West Coast independent tradition, more concerned with where a line lands than with how it sounds. Production stays sample-based and unflashy throughout, mixed so the MCs sit in front. Out via URBNET. If your entry point to underground rap is the feature list, this album will find you.

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Radamiz "The Whale Freestyle" (prod. Mahershala Ali) [VIDEO]

Before a bar is rapped, "The Whale Freestyle" opens on a spoken-word sample a voice, unhurried and unaccompanied, saying that if a dog is biting a black man, the black man should kill the dog. It's a deliberate cold open. What follows is a two-minute freestyle that reads less like a display of technique than like an inventory of what survival cost. Radamiz structures the whole thing as a list of gratitudes, and the specificity is what keeps it from turning into a sermon. Thanks to the Eazy-E's, the bullets that missed his mother between Marcy and Tompkins, PS 59, the pickpockets who walked away with a broken promise, the three-in-the-mornings. The writing compresses hard "You get dead man walking, half rapper, half obituary" is the kind of line that lands because the rest of the verse refuses to raise its voice. By the time he gets to the Porsche 911 emergency line, the flexes and the grief are indistinguishable, which is the point. The beat is Mahershala Ali's, and it's worth being precise about that: Ali isn't a celebrity dabbling. He produced and executive produced all five tracks of Bottom Of Heaven I, released in August on Radamiz's own Big Enough Home, and he's said publicly that beatmaking not rapping is where he lives now. What he builds here is patient: a loop that leaves the centre empty, drums set back, additional sound design from History/H. Illa filling the edges. Recorded by FifthGod, mixed and mastered by Joe Grasso, and crucially mixed so the rapper is the loudest thing in it. Cinco Johnson shot and cut the video. No concept, no performance, just a man and a microphone. Two minutes and nineteen seconds that earn every second and the rare example of an actor-producer credit that matters less than the record.

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Killa Kali "Kings Krown 3 Dragons Blood" [ALBUM]

Killa Kali runs Poisonous Ring Regime himself, and Kings Krown 3 Dragons Blood is thirteen tracks and thirty-six minutes of West Coast independent rap with no guest list and no production credits attached the MC from Fresno by way of the Santa Clarita Valley presenting a record under his own imprint. The album arrives shortly after Kings Krown, Vol. 2, which means the series is moving faster than the usual album cycle, and it sounds like it. These are short records most between two and three minutes, drums forward, no extended outros built by someone who isn't waiting for a budget or a booking agent. The tracklist leans declarative: "POWER ALLAH," "GOLDEN WATER," "CRUNCH TIME," "5 HUNIT GRAND," "ON THE LOW." Two titles do the structural work. "KAL PACHINO" opens the record and "Kal Pachino Flip" returns to it at track ten, and the flip is the outlier at five and a half minutes nearly double anything else here, and the one place the album asks whether it has the writing for a longer form. That's the track to check first. No credits, no statement, no scene affiliation listed. What's on offer is a rapid-fire series entry from a West Coast independent who appears to be releasing on his own schedule, and who has been doing this long enough that the volume isn't the story the consistency is.

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Preservation & Gabe 'Nandez "Galleon" [VIDEO]

"Galleon" arrives as a follow-up single to Sortilège, the album Preservation and Gabe 'Nandez put out on Backwoodz Studioz and it extends that record's method rather than repeating it. Preservation builds a slow, salt-stained loop; 'Nandez raps over it like someone reading from a logbook he'd rather not have kept. The writing is the reason to pay attention. He opens on a hotel-ceiling scene "Familiar Florida ceiling covered in mad wine" and the images keep arriving in pairs: black fingernails picking cigarettes off the floor, black silhouettes doing pirouettes on the wall. It's dense without being decorative. The line that anchors the whole verse is economic rather than emotional: "Money is the last of the water before the storm. / Money is the first thing they charge you after you born." That's the album's thesis compressed into two bars, and he delivers it flat, letting the rhyme scheme carry the weight. There's a generational aside late "Generation Z don't know nothing about respect" which could curdle and doesn't, because it's immediately followed by the admission that the anger in his lyrics isn't forgetfulness. The verse then turns to ships and single-mindedness, which is what the title is about: a galleon is slow, heavy, and gets where it's going. Marley Chapman shot, directed and cut the video. Gabe 'Nandez remains one of the few MCs working at this level of image-density whose records still sound like they were written in a room rather than assembled from lines.

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B.a Badd & Revenxnt "The sun will set" [ALBUM]

Upstate New York's B.A. Badd and producer Revenxnt first surfaced this project in July with "Showtime" shot in Tribeca, directed by Gee.cts, and framed from the start as a full-length collaboration rather than a loose single. The sun will set is that album: ten tracks, twenty-six minutes, one MC, one producer, no committee. Who B.A. Badd is Born in Syracuse and based in Buffalo, Badd runs the E.B.E. Lifestyle imprint and has spent years assembling a catalogue the hard way A.R.T Work, Everybody Eats (1st Plate), Really HIM, and last year's Painted in Hunger, which Sypooda produced in person at Badd's Buffalo studio. He's shared records with Conway the Machine, Boldy James, Rome Streetz, Grafh, JR Writer and Cozz, and spent part of 2025 on Jae Skeese's Ground Level Tour. That's a working resume rather than a marketing one, and it shows in the company he keeps here. What the album does Ten tracks in twenty-six minutes means nobody is indulging a concept. Revenxnt produces all of it, which gives a short album the one thing short albums usually lack a consistent floor. The guests are used sparingly and placed well: Yung Stizz on "Pull Up," Mickey Factz on "Broken," Kota Savia closing on "Gunz on a balcony." Three features across ten records is restraint, and it keeps the record on its two principals. The sequencing is the tell. Two minutes in and out on most tracks, a one-minute skit at eight, and titles that point at mood rather than story "Nipsey Blues," "Villian," "Showtime," "Holiday season / No tomorrow." Badd's delivery is gruff and unhurried, closer to a report than a performance, and he tends to land the hardest line at the end of a run rather than set it up. Short, coherent, and made by two people who clearly decided what they wanted before they started. For anyone who came in on "Showtime," this is the rest of the argument.

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Garcia Vega "Hope Is Not A Plan" [EP]

 

Seven tracks, under seventeen minutes, out of San Antonio. Garcia Vega keeps the whole thing tight: one track over three minutes, two under two, and a title that reads like a rejection of optimism as a strategy which, in a seventeen-minute EP, is the right kind of thesis. The guests do the structural work. Mac Yames takes "Wicked Ways," Spit Gemz appears on "Black Avirex," and Tre Eiht closes out a remix of "Flawed Excellence" three voices from different corners of the underground, none of them phoning it in. What holds it together is that Vega doesn't hand over the records; the features are additional pressure, not relief. His own delivery sits low and level, closer to conversation than to performance, and he tends to land the hardest line at the end of a run rather than setting it up. "Speaking Spanglish" closes it in under two minutes, and the title is doing real work: this is a record from a Texas MC whose frame of reference runs in two languages without making it a theme. No producer credits are listed, so the write-up stays with what's audible sample-based, drums forward, mixes that favour the vocal. The physical release is the interesting part: a limited 7" pressing, and a CD that carries a bonus track. In a market where most underground EPs exist only as a stream, somebody still cutting a 7" is a decision.

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CRIMEAPPLE & MICHAELANGELO "Can't Let You Go" [VIDEO]

The video is new; the album isn't. "Can't Let You Go" is track eight on Pedigree, the fourteen-track CRIMEAPPLE and MichaelAngelo record that landed back in September via Manteca Music so treat this as a late single pull rather than a new chapter. It's a good choice for one. MichaelAngelo builds the beat around a soul loop with the hook left intact, and Crimeapple rides it in his usual register: bilingual, unhurried, more interested in the texture of a phrase than in landing a punchline. He slips between English and Spanish mid-bar without signalling it, which after all these records is simply how he talks. The writing is street-level without being generic France, Austria, Kosovo, Serbia in the space of four bars, sunglasses and a burger spot in the next and the point isn't geography, it's appetite. MichaelAngelo's production gives him a loop that never resolves, so the verse just keeps circulating. The New Jersey MC (born in Colombia, raised in Hackensack) has been prolific to the point of being hard to track, which makes the album format worth paying attention to: Pedigree is a sustained argument rather than another batch of loosies, and this track is a fair sample of it. Shot and edited by Syberiantyger, no concept to speak of. Two and a half minutes, a loop and a rapper who knows what to do with one.

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Equipto "The Weight Of Things: Vintage, Vol. 4" [ALBUM]

Equipto has been releasing music under the Vintage banner since Vintage Volume Won in 1999, and volume four arrives as a thirteen-track, forty-six-minute album on his own Solidarity Records the San Francisco label he runs as a platform rather than a roster. At nearly four minutes a track, this is a record built for sitting through, not for sampling two seconds at a time. The guest list tells you which scene you're in: Michael Marshall and Kelioso open it, Hugh E MC shows up on "My Poetry," and Otayo Dubb, Rome and Villiak fill out the middle. These are Bay Area working relationships, not booking-agent features, and the album sounds like it voices that know each other's cadences, verses that respond to what came before rather than arriving pre-written. DJ Pause gets a track credit on "FD's Conviction." What separates this from heritage rap is the subject matter. There's a song called "Arrest The President." Equipto came up in Bored Stiff and was one of the Frisco 5, the group whose 2016 hunger strike forced a conversation about the SFPD, and he has never separated the records from the politics. "The Weight Of Things" is a title that means what it says: a record about carrying history, community and the cost of both, made by someone who has paid in each currency. Sequenced with an intro and an outro, interlude included. Old-fashioned in structure, current in intent and one of the few political records this year that doesn't confuse volume with clarity.

Transparency Note: Content & research created independently by HHHEADZ. AI tools are strictly used for translation and language refinement.

Evil Ebenezer "False Creek Flats" [VIDEO]

Evil Ebenezer produced, shot and co-directed "False Creek Flats" himself, which is a lot of control for a two-minute-twenty record and it shows in how tightly everything fits. The Vancouver rapper cut the vocal at The Dark Blue House with Nato handling mix and master, and the result sounds like a room rather than a session: close, unhurried, with the low end sitting just behind the voice instead of underneath it. The title shares its name with a Vancouver district, and whether that's geography or metaphor, the record reads as place-bound the kind of writing that assumes you know which bridge and which block. Ebenezer delivers in a register between rap and singing, a habit that's been his signature for years and a Leo Award-winning video career's worth of practice. He doesn't raise his voice much. The intensity comes from how little the arrangement gives you to hold onto: a loop, a pulse, and a narrator who sounds like he's reporting rather than performing. Worth noting for listeners who default to US coasts: this is Canadian West Coast rap with its own lineage, and Ebenezer has been working that ground long enough that he no longer has to announce it. Jordon Chatten co-directs and edits, and the camera stays where the vocal is no gloss, no second location, no cast. Short record, clear authorship. If you've been sleeping on the Vancouver underground, this is a cheap way to wake up.

Transparency Note: Content & research created independently by HHHEADZ. AI tools are strictly used for translation and language refinement.