The Rap-Up: Dusted Chicken

Steven Louis highlights new tracks by Los Kemet, Bby Kell, T.F., Kenny Mason, Isaiah Rashad, and more.

Los Kemet, “GPB”

Most three-letter acronyms are bad—a bunch of non-governmental organizations or corporate gibberish. “GPB” is none of that. It stands for Gangsters, Players, Ballers, all good things. And Los Kemet hits the trifecta with a rubberized flow and hydroplane command. Raised in Jackson, MS and now based in Austin, TX, Kemet’s latest is a slab cruise through interstate molasses.

Produced by Gutty and Max He, “GBP” evokes reserve southernplayalistic energies. Guitars chuck along with mystic bounce, while a saxophone bubbles below twice-fried 808s. Kemet is rocking a Jerry Rice Raiders jersey, lest we ever forget that the greatest wideout of all time claims Crawford and went to Mississippi Valley State.

“It’s like a power or a force that gets a hold of you. I was raised in Mississippi. All I knew was Mississippi, Mississippi, Mississippi. Anybody from Mississippi will tell you, you don’t think about New York, Chicago, L.A.,” Kemet told POW’s Will Schube in 2023. “GBP” stays truer still, paddling through delta waters, not backward or forward but sideways.

Isaiah Rashad, “DO I LOOK HIGH?” f/ Julian Sintonia

It’s Been Awful is anything but. The pride of Chattanooga, TN spends much of his new album in a warm and controlled shadowbox before hurling himself out of the ring. It’s soulful and sordid, earnest without righteousness. “Do I Look High?” is the music’s superego. It rhymes “innocence” with “simple then” and puts Superman on load management.

Produced by Keem the Cipher, this psychedelic third single gets a suitably fluid visual. Rashad, stoned and sunburnt, is spliced with hopeless hitchhikers and radio static. Furtive stares go unrecognized, left to trickle away in dry heat. It’s a series of meaningful nothings. Julian Sintonia’s hook is slight but stretches far beyond its blocking. And Rashad sounds either wholly depleted or cosmically reborn—knowing him, it’s a bit of both.

Bby Kell, “2019”

We’re staying in the south with Atlanta’s Bby Kell, who assumes the princess crown and then covers it in slime. She’s playing with house money because “U Don’t Have to Call” is an epochal heater. But Kell makes it her own through wild-card delivery. She pivots and lurches off of a Fulton County twang—it’s unique and hilarious. “Hustle my blood and my bones” spills out like jamboree. “‘Cause they don’t know what I got on my feet!” croaks out through sobs.

The summit is Kell’s tribute to No. 44. “I feel like Obama / I ain’t get to smoke with Obama / Fuck, I miss Obama / fuck, I love Obama / If I meet him, I’ma call my momma / shit, I mean my grandma, she the one that like Obama.” Somewhere, Arne Duncan frantically books a flight to Hartsfield–Jackson.

Kenny Mason, “Bounce Wit Me”

Fellow ATLien Kenny Mason returns with “Bounce Wit Me,” cold-fusion crunk and neon candy blended together. Mason is a rock star in a bottle rocket; FearDorian and COUPE equip him with an adjustable exoskeleton. The layered vocals create something like stadium echoes, and they set the song up for its rarely-earned beat switch. As our protagonist shows here, it’s so hard to not look cool while rapping in front of a bulldozer.

Mason outs himself as an elite ball-knower—he takes the safety off and checks for Budda Baker (84th for the position on Pro Football Focus). The “bounce wit me, bounce wit me” refrain works for a walkout, but it also sweeps into the solitary outro. The devil has cue cards. The plug is a pendulum. And the black bar is bending to the poles under heavy spirits. A full-length BULLDAWG is set for May 12 release, with features including Dominic Fike and Paris, Texas.

Student 1 & Demon Marcus, “kevinkevinkevin”

In which two men buy a bicycle, then decode the forbidden truths—the readership’s standard Thursday night. Say “Kevin” three times and, well, this happens.

Student 1, an Ethiopian-Eritrean rapper from Minnesota, glows and grooves across gossamer funk. Producer Demon Marcus is here to spot him, and he hits some inspired pointer dances in front of strobe lights. These two are having a lot of fun, to the point that it spills into picture-in-picture boxes. We end on a stray “I’m gonna get you bro” and a neighing explosion. “kevinkevinkevin” is music for tandem dissociation. Student 1’s truant is due on June 19.

T.F. & DJ Muggs, “Dusted Edition — Cha Cha Chicken”

Muggs’s dusting is neither chopped nor screwed but that elusive third thing. It’s more beige than purple, and more paranoid than sedating. Snares really snap. Background fuzz becomes strangely menacing. The prolific DJ did three “Dusted Editions” last year—his Soul Assassins 3, the Champagne for Breakfast triptych with Madlib and Meyhem Lauren and Rome Streetz’s Death & The Magician. This latest retouch chamberizes T.F, South Central ascendant. Slow spirals are undercut by revving motorbikes.

Dusted poultry? What is this, the Cheez-It crumb-crust turkey leg from the Citrus Bowl? No, it’s never that. T.F. instead unlocks the padlock at the trap spot to flood L.A. with “Cha Cha Chicken.” Curry salmon and Cuban medallions are thrown in for good measure. Muggs’ piano roll was already sinister on the original version, but this update is a new kind of unsettling.

“I just want to make music with my motherfuckin’ middle finger up,” Muggs told me for this site back in 2018. “When you reach in and go outside of yourself looking for something, you get lost. You lose your path.” The crate-digger still knows where he’s supposed to be—the beautiful abyss.