The New Album You Need to Hear This Week

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All City Jimmy, HOLLYWEIRD

Anyone who knows anything about battle rap, Los Angeles, beat music, or the art rap explosion of the early 2010s knows that All City Jimmy is one of the most talented MCs alive. Formerly known as Nocando, the Scribble Jam champion and Low End Theory co-founder has spent the last decade constantly mutating, merging his Project Blowed lineage with finely honed pop sensibilities and a blanket fearlessness. HOLLYWEIRD, his second album in as many months, is a blacklight fugue of low-stakes betrayal and Biblical thirst. He debuted these songs at a small gathering last week, initially introducing each record and letting it play uninterrupted. But eventually, Jimmy relented to Aceyalone’s demand that he rap, and rattled off a stark, shocking seven-minute piece that culminated with a verse written two decades prior, on the day of his first daughter’s birth. Recommended if you like: Strippers, but as people, and also as strippers.

Further listening

Chanel Beads, Your Day Will Come: This is deceptively engrossing, but I’ll be honest—the best part about it is that it’s got the same album title as this guy’s last album. What a bit. RIYL: Alex G and haunted houses.

LAZER DIM 700, The Rule of Success: LAZER DIM gets taxonomized, fairly, as a creature of the internet, where that means his style, mimics the freneticism of information overload and a jagged collage of front-facing videos. But The Rule of Success is at times patient and gentle, adding dimension and even more humor to his repertoire. RIYL: If all of the young guys who have debuted after 2020 give you hives, you should still give this one a shot even if your default is MF Grimm.