Cletus Strap, “nonchalant” f/ Earl Sweatshirt

It was about two years ago when Earl Sweatshirt, asked who he’d been listening to, shouted out a young, hungry Cletus Strap. The fellow L.A. rapper feels like one of Earl’s stylistic descendants: relaxed in delivery but precise on the page, keeping his writing dense without ever sounding overworked. From the moment Earl gave him that co-sign, a collaboration felt inevitable.

The first voice on “nonchalnct” actually belongs to Khameelah “staHHr” El, who introduces herself as a French producer called Bon. She opens the track with a comic rant about rappers—their reckless physicality, their weed smoke, their Grabba, particularly in the presence of real adults. Eventually, though, she caves, takes a hit, and briefly understands the appeal of rapper weed before snapping back to her original conclusion: “Rappers suck.”

It’s a sentiment you hear from plenty of rappers now, especially the kind who proudly insist they are not rappers at all. They position themselves as word grifters, language scammers, digital hustlers—people who understand how to work a computer but not necessarily how to honor an art form with a deep and serious lineage. In this vein, rap becomes a vehicle for moving ephemeral bullshit to media-illiterate, and sometimes literally illiterate, audiences.

That is what makes Cletus Strap refreshing. He sounds like someone who actually enjoys rap as a form: its cadences, its compression, the strange little turns of phrase that can make a bar linger. On “nonchalant,” when he says “rappers suck,” Cletus may be talking about the self-centered nature of performers in general. But it also lands as a rejection of rappers who treat the medium less like an art and more like a hustle.

The beat provides a near-perfect lo-fi California canvas for both Cletus and Earl to explain themselves. “We don’t gotta wait for the rain to go and cry/You were trying to hold that shit against me until I die,” Cletus raps, sounding wounded but unbothered, an emotional contradiction that suits the song’s title. Earl lends the track with a reminder to keep your metaphorical blades sharp. In an era when so many rappers seem determined to prove staHHr right, it’s reassuring to hear the underground still turning out oddballs like Cletus Strap, and to have them embraced by the ones that came before them.

D’Leesa, “Digital Girl”

This summer, I’ve kept returning to the DIY world of Atlanta singer D’Leesa. Her videos look like they were made in her bedroom because, more or less, they are. So is everything else: the writing, the performing, the mixing, the mastering. You get the picture. She does the whole shit. “Digital Girl” is my favorite of her recent releases. It’s funny that someone I have only ever encountered through a screen can feel so tangible—like the kind of person you might run into on an ordinary afternoon, if you are lucky enough to live in a city where chance encounters still make up part of daily life.

SOB x RBE, “Ten Summers”

SOB x RBE came out of North Vallejo in 2016 sounding less like a rap group than a pressure system. Yhung T.O., DaBoii, Slimmy B, and Lul G had the kind of chemistry that does not need a committee meeting to explain itself: four young rappers with different voices, all of them moving like somebody had already told them the city was theirs. Their name—Strictly Only Brothers x Real Boi Entertainment—was cumbersome in the way local legends often are. The music was not. They even earned a spot on the Kendrick-curated Black Panther soundtrack.

Then the machine stalled. Individual careers, tensions, and the usual centrifugal force that pulls young groups apart took over. SOB x RBE’s last run together came to feel almost too brief in retrospect: an eruption, a label deal, national attention, then silence. That silence lasted seven years.

“Ten Summers” is the return, sans Lul G, who was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison in 2023 stemming from a shooting that left one person dead in 2019. His presence is sorely missed, but the group seems to mostly work without him there for the time being. DaBoii is the group member who made the most noise as a solo artist in the years since the group’s breakup, with the biggest artistic losses going to Yhung T.O. and Slimmy B, who both seemed to have turned into feature artists in the wake of the groups split.

The track works as an announcement of the group’s return, but by no means does it promise a return of the same chemistry or quality that made the original SOB x RBE era so special in 2016. It’s an OK song that leaves me excited for what’s to come, but I’m not expecting much. Even the video is a nod to their early days, harkening back to “Paramedic!” on an iPhone screen, and bringing E-40 in for a cameo, tying their return to both their breakout moment and the Bay lineage that always surrounded them.

fakemink, “Love Is A Dog From Hell”

fakemink has officially gone from a star in the London underground to all-but mainstream act who’s blown up twice over at this point. He’s released an official debut on a number of loosies over the past few months. The debut has a couple great songs, but isn’t perfect. I wonder what a perfect album from an artist like fakemink looks like? Since he’s always best consumed when you stumble upon him through YouTube or Tiktok. “Love Is A Dog From Hell,” feels like a return to form for me. It’s the less-glossy fakemink from before he entered album mode, albeit with an overly-wrought little reminiscent of his debut, The Boy Who Cried Terrified.

The Rap-Up: Let's Get Rigorous