Eloh Kush & Left Gunnz "TOOTH & NAIL" [SINGLE]

Sol Messiah produced it, which is the reason the track exists in this form. The two have history Dart Vader, a fifteen-track collaborative album, came out in 2024 and an outlet describing this one called Messiah's work "superb speaker stylistics" and the verses "razor sharp bars," which is their assessment and not ours; the audio is not in front of us. Eloh Kush, born Kushaun Watson in New Brunswick, New Jersey, is a founding member of the Angelz Inc. collective and has been one of the more prolific figures on the East Coast underground for two decades the credit list runs through Ransom, Nucci Reyo, Supreme Cerebral and Scienz of Life, and he has put out at least three projects this year alone. With Left Gunnz he works as the duo God & Gunnz, and the pair also host the God N Gunnz Podcast, which is a fair description of how the relationship functions: two people who talk for a living and release records when the talking produces something. One timing note. Coverage of the song ran in mid-October and the video followed a day later, while the single's official listing carries a date at the end of the month. Which of those is the release and which is the rollout is not something the sources agree on.

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Mike Life + Jimmy Green "Night Of The Living Dead" [ALBUM]

Nine tracks, just under thirty-three minutes, released yesterday at nine pounds. The credit block is two lines: Mike Life wrote and performed every vocal, Jimmy Green made every beat and every cut. The note underneath it is the part most albums would not print "This is a dark LP. We've both worked through some issues over the last 18 months and we put them into this album." It carries an explicit-content warning and stops there. Jimmy Green is the documented half. He is a UK DJ, record collector and beatmaker who has been doing it since the nineties, with a catalogue that runs through the Green Kanine records, a Blacula soundtrack project, remixes for artists far outside this lane, and a two-part DJ mix series called UK State Of Mind covering classic UK hip-hop from 1998 to 2006. That is a person with a deep bench, and "all beats and scratches" on a nine-track album is a lot of work for one set of hands. Mike Life is, at present, a blank. No biography, no previous releases, nothing that survives checking and searches turn up several unrelated artists instead. So the record arrives with one fully visible author and one invisible one, and the note's "we" is doing the work for both. The tracklist follows the title's logic without making a costume of it: "Sleepwalker" opens it at 4:42, "Devil's Gate" and "Warrior Class" sit in the middle, "No Way Out" runs 4:30 near the end, and "Awake" closes it which, read in order, is a descent and a way back rather than a set of horror skits. The page tags it boom-bap, soulful and underground, which is the label's description of itself and not a listening note; no audio was available here.

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Leanah Cane "Frequency" [VIDEO]

Another video from Sample Gang 5, which is now the fourth one to come through after "Ganster Lean," "Ruthless" and "Love Me Like You Do" with Bernadette Price. Mixed, as all of them are, by Sdee. The series is the point. Sample Gang started in 2020 and has run through a numbered volume, a second, a third, a 3.5 and a 4.0 before arriving at five six records in six years on the same principle, which in independent rap is closer to a catalogue strategy than to a run of singles. The name says what the method is: crate records and sample flips, built by somebody from the Bronx who has put out nineteen-track albums and fifteen-track albums without ever appearing to hurry. Earlier entries were produced by Bombfluid and, on "Ganster Lean," by Cane directly; no producer is credited on this one. "Frequency" is short 2:22 and built on a hook that does the work of a whole statement: "People say they love you, all they do is throw shade / they talk behind your back in all the secrecies / I never really need you in my frequency." It is a song about narrowing the circle, and the second verse sharpens it: "You used to be cool, nowadays I don't respect you. Working on my energy." There is a "trapped in the matrix" line, a wire reference, and a closing repetition of the hook rather than a third verse. At under two and a half minutes it leaves nothing on the table. One note for the desk: HHHEADZ's previous coverage of this artist uses feminine pronouns, while the public composer credits list David Brewster and the video's own channel and transcript reference "Billy." Those cannot both be right, and this piece uses no pronouns at all rather than pick one.

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ShadowX "Human Abattoir" [ALBUM]

Ten tracks, thirty-nine minutes, six dollars sixty-six. The guest list is the reason to pay attention: "Cannibals" features Insane Poetry, the Los Angeles group formed in 1988 that is generally counted among the first horrorcore acts Grim Reality came out on Nastymix in 1992 and moved more than seventy-five thousand units, and Cyco has kept the name running ever since, most recently on Killing The Mic this year. Keagan Grimm takes the other feature, on "Shear Madness." ShadowX describes himself in three lines: "Lyrical Horrorcore. Strictly For The Wicked. King Of Nothing." There is no credit block. No producer, no release date, no mix or master, no artwork the page is a tracklist, a price and, unusually, the complete lyrics to every song. That last part is the only real way in, and what the words do is more considered than the genre's reputation suggests. "Factory of Anguish," which opens the record at over five minutes, is constructed as a guided tour of an industrial slaughterhouse "let me be your guide in this industrial labyrinth / where the most unspeakable suffering happens" and it keeps that conceit running for four verses rather than burning it out in one. Bodies on conveyor belts, victims "lined up in single file and led to their doom," a closing couplet that turns the factory into a workplace joke: "keep your nose to the grindstone until no face is left." The titles carry the same register "Where Hope Goes To Die," "Rites of Marbas," "Hellscape," "Despair" and at thirty-nine minutes across ten tracks it is a long record for a genre that usually runs short. Whether the production holds up for that length is not something that can be assessed here; no audio and, again, no producer credited.

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Ace SL "St. Lazaro" [SINGLE]

Seventy-eight seconds. That is the whole release, and it is the shortest thing to come through one of these batches shorter than an interlude on most records, and issued as a single in its own right. Ace SL works out of Brooklyn, where the profile motto is "Choose Wisely," and has been releasing steadily since 2021: F.M.T.Y, then Piece of Mine with Tru Comers, then PERIDOT this summer, with a run of singles in between. The through-line is the producer Karbine, who handles most of the catalogue, who put Ace SL on both volumes of Street Politics, and with whom he made a joint album last year. Karbine is not credited on this one nothing is credited on this one so he belongs in the background, not on the track. Beyond that, there is very little to report and it would be dishonest to pad it. No producer is listed for "St. Lazaro," no label appears on the release, and the title is not explained anywhere. Ace SL has also turned up on Teeg Austin's The Squared Circle this year and put out a remix single with Rome Streetz, which places him in a specific Brooklyn-to-street-rap lane without telling us anything about this particular track. What can be said: a Brooklyn MC with three albums and a fixed producer relationship has released a seventy-eight-second single with no credits attached. Whether that is an album teaser, a statement or a fragment is not something the release says.

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Swamp Thing & T.O. Huxtable "Final Year" [VIDEO]

Swamp Thing have a ritual and they keep it: a dark, B-movie record every Halloween, three MCs Timbuktu, Chokeules and Savilion out of Toronto, and T.O. Huxtable on every beat. Murder House is the next one, out at the end of the month through URBNET, and this is the video from it. One thing needs saying before anything else. The video is called "Final Year" and runs 2:52. The only track unlocked on the album's pre-order page is called "One Year Left" and also runs 2:52. Either the title changed between the press push and the upload, or there are two songs of identical length nothing public settles it, and the band's own previous single was announced under the "One Year Left" name. Both titles belong in the account. What is not in dispute: Huxtable produced the entire record, which is now five albums deep into a working relationship with the trio, and the guest list is a roll-call of Canadian underground veterans More Or Les, Jesse Dangerously, Ghettosocks and Bazooka Joe. The band's discography runs back through Granny Knuckles, Slap Slap, Golden Crab and World War Swamp, and this is the seventh or eighth project depending on how you count it, each arriving within days of the same holiday. The physical edition is where the personality is: mystery-colour vinyl, a CD, and a double cassette set that puts World War Swamp on tape for the first time in fluorescent orange and green, bundled with patches, a sticker and a keychain. Eighty-two views on the video, which for a band this established says more about how Halloween records get discovered than about the record.

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MonstroCity "Trick or Treat" [SINGLE]

One track, two minutes forty-five, one dollar. The note attached to it is three words and an onomatopoeia: "Halloween themed record....Boo!!" MonstroCity is a Miami operation, and the person behind it is the constant. Mic Sessionz also known as Thoughtz Optik RNF, also known as The RNF Status has been making music since 1999 and has passed a hundred releases, which the page is happy to quantify: 102 of them, all available as a bundle at an eighty per cent discount. He wrote this one with someone credited only as Werk, then recorded, mixed, mastered and art-directed it himself, which is a one-person workflow and explains the pace. There is a wrinkle in the lineup. When MonstroCity released City Limits in 2022 it was described as a duo of Mic Sessionz and Arch Angel; this single's writing credit names Werk instead. Whether that is a personnel change, an additional member or a different spelling of the same person is not something the pages will confirm, and it is worth flagging rather than guessing at. The tags the page uses are more interesting than the note: boom-bap and hardcore hip-hop, yes, but also Christian hip-hop, gospel hip-hop and inspirational rap, alongside Miami. That combination is rarer than it sounds, and it is the only real signal here about what the record is reaching for. A Halloween single from a Christian rap catalogue is not a contradiction so much as a choice, and at a dollar it is an easy one to test.

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Taj Austin "ALI LIKE ALI" [VIDEO]

The fourth installment of "Saturday Rap Cafe," which by now has a readable structure: one piece a week, no stated end point, and a different producer each time. Rzu opened it, then Khrysis, then Jake One. This one is by Nothing Neue, who is the first name in the sequence without a paper trail no previous credits, no profile, nothing to check which after three weeks of increasingly established producers is either a deliberate change of direction or simply a friend. At 1:40 it is the shortest format imaginable, and Austin uses it the way he has all month: compress rather than stretch. The title line arrives early "Ali like Muhammad, Ali like my Herschel" and the verse moves from there through African suburbia, "aerial views never seen inside of Ursula," and a seasons cycle that ends on "by autumn come the ash / we didn't been through all these seasons yet we always seem to last." The closing couplet is the thesis: "Courage for my open heart. Balance with an open mind." He ends on "Peace stay Ali like Ali." Austin is one of four MCs in Coast Contra, the Los Angeles group he formed with his twin brother Ras Austin alongside RioLoz and Eric Jamal, a crew that built its reputation on rap craft rather than a gimmick. Running a weekly series alongside that is a way of staying in the studio without waiting for a group schedule, and calling in a different producer every seven days keeps it from settling. He is funding it directly and taking feature requests by email, which tells you the scale it is operating at.

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V. Nova & Black Sparx "Take Your Wings" [ALBUM]

Twelve tracks, thirty-eight minutes, out today on a producer's own imprint out of Brooklyn. V. Nova wrote everything; Black Sparx composed and produced everything. The description calls it "a Hip-Hop collaborative project," which is accurate but undersells the asymmetry this is one writer and one beatmaker, and the beatmaker's name is on the door. Black Sparx has been doing this a while. His credit list runs through Vic Spencer, Guilty Simpson, Dynasty and Sean Price, his own producer project put Guilty Simpson and Vic Spencer on consecutive tracks, and he scored music for the documentary To Catch a Dollar. V. Nova, also Brooklyn, has spent recent years working with TTTIIIZZZ and Ex-Prez "New Sunrise," "50 Years of Hip-Hop," "Brooklyn Universe" and made a record called Hidden in Plain Sight Volume 2 that he described as a tribute to nineties New York sound. One thing does not add up, and it is worth saying plainly. The credit line reads "all songs written by V. Nova and featured guest" and no featured guest is named anywhere on the page. Three of the twelve tracks are instead headed "V. Nova, Black Sparx," as if the producer were a second performer; the other nine carry no performer tag at all. Either the features went unnamed or the album is more of a two-hander than the credits say, and neither can be confirmed from the page. What the running order does show is intent. "Generation Alpha" opens alone at 2:38, "Lady Thanos" is the longest thing here at 4:28, and the record closes on "Fighting Chance" at 2:51. Ten of the twelve tracks sit between two-and-a-half and four minutes. That is a producer's sense of pacing, not a rapper's.

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DJ LOTMIX : LOTMIX SHOW - S8 Ep09 - Rap En Français - REP PRINCE WALLY

LOTMIX SHOW - S8 Ep09 - Rap En Français REP PRINCE WALLY par Dj LOTMIX

feat PRINCE WALLY | A2H | L'AMI CACCIO x PRINCE FELLAGA  | RON BRICE | GRAIN DE CAF x OXMO PUCCINO | PIT BACCARDI | GRADUR & more

Prod by THA TRICKAZ | FLAGRANT DELIT | JUST MUSIC BEATS et d'autres

feat PRINCE WALLY | A2H | L'AMI CACCIO x PRINCE FELLAGA  | RON BRICE | GRAIN DE CAF x OXMO PUCCINO | PIT BACCARDI | GRADUR & more

Prod by THA TRICKAZ | FLAGRANT DELIT | JUST MUSIC BEATS et d'autres

 

De La Soul "Itzsoweezee (Hot) [feat. Yankee B.] [De La Soul Remix]" [SINGLE]

A remix from 1996, issued as a single in 2026, because Stakes Is High is thirty years old and is being reissued in an expanded edition remastered, with a bonus disc, through A.O.I. Records and Chrysalis. This is one pull from it, and it is a strange and deliberate choice. " Itzsoweezee (Hot)" was the second single from the album and the one track on it rapped entirely by Trugoy the Dove. He died in February 2023 at fifty-four, after several years of congestive heart failure he had spoken about publicly. Pushing the remix the version that carries Yankee B., originally the B-side of the 1996 single as the standalone from a thirtieth-anniversary campaign means the group is leading with the song on which Dave is alone, and with a version of it that very few people own. The remix is credited to De La Soul themselves, with Ken "Duro" Ifill engineering. It opens by naming its allegiances rather than boasting: "Brick wall dedication / Yankee B affiliation / Attic representation / Beatminerz up in the location / Native Tongues appreciation." The chorus asks the question the album was built around "If money makes a man strange and dollars make the world go round? / we got to rearrange" and it lands differently three decades on than it did the first time, when the group was watching their own label situation turn into exactly that problem. Yankee B.'s contribution is the reason the track exists in this form, and he has essentially one credit to his name, which is this one. Whether the single carries the original 1996 master or a fresh mix has not been stated anywhere; the remastering is documented, a new mix of this particular track is not.

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Starvin B x Seasra23 "7 TRAIN LUNGS 2" [ALBUM]

A sequel, and a late one: the first 7 Train Lungs came out in 2015, produced by Seasra23 for Starvin B, recorded in Queens and mastered in a studio that put its name to it. This one arrives more than a decade later with the same two men in the same roles Seasra23 on every beat, Starvin B on the microphone, Top Shelf Muzik as the imprint and seven tracks in under twenty-four minutes. The album's own note is unusually direct about what is at stake. It describes Starvin B "reflect[ing] on a career as a serial face puncher," and then says that heart surgery has forced him "to confront the possibility of retirement." That is the label's framing, not a medical statement, but it explains the record's shape: the tracklist is a route, not a collection. "Roosevelt Ave" opens it, "Atlantic Ave Terminal" brings Ruste Juxx in at the third stop, "Viral Tap" with Mic Rippa sits in the middle, and it closes on "Concrete Clouds" at just over two minutes. In between: "Dreams Die in Queens" and "USA Jacket." The 7 train runs above ground through the whole borough, and the record uses it as a spine. Top Shelf Muzik was formed in 2011 by Apokalips The Archangel out of Jackson Heights and Seasra23 out of Woodside, and the label's own history is written on its page in capitals B.A.R.S, Underdog of the Year, Breaking Barriers, Another Side of Me. Starvin B, born Brendan Noer, is a Sunnyside/Woodside MC with a catalogue that runs through Soul Museum, Melting Pot and Sorry For Your Laws, and Ruste Juxx and Mic Rippa are the two guests whose names carry beyond the neighbourhood. There is a salute to DJ AKIL and Chez Rocka at the end of the note, and no formal credit block which, for a record this clearly organised, is the one thing the page does not do.

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