Blu & August Fanon - "Simple"

San Pedro's prodigal talent is basking in maturation here, linking with Brooklyn’s August Fanon for a slight and soulful ode to quadragenarians. Blu’s cover art beams with springtime warmth and quiet revelry – he’s celebrating 40, doing the dad thing, posting up and looking content. The video is a quick wash/dry cycle, encasing such dense raps in simple, brilliant color waves (Blu’s cherry-red Lacoste shirt with the blue Dodgers hat and the laundromat’s aqua-and-lemon walling). Director Jajuan Bryant really did his thing – the best of Blu’s work extracts something beautiful, deeply felt, even synesthetic from dusty, humid mundanity. Our protagonist accelerates his growth arc into 73 seconds, from scrapping with neolithic tools to banging beats on public school tables to making a living off music. “I’m gon’ be defined by my piece of mind, not the piece of iron I was firing to acquire it / you know what time it is,” he concludes. Fanon’s production is somehow both triumphant and nostalgic.

Fellow Brooklynite Sene is up first on the extended version. He goes birdseye on societal decay and fondly remembers a time before today’s bigger, dumber Gilded Age. Or, “when peasants had a shot to get their guap up.” Chester Watson, a precocious and reticent rap hero like Blu was, takes us home with divine metaphysics. “And back on Earth I’m stacking it up, brandishing bank strips.” Altogether, it’s three strains of stoicism with one shared truth – that getting older is a funny sort of gift.

Boldy James & Antt Beatz - "Off The Richter" (feat. Baby Money)

As a lifelong Knicks fan, I dutifully must go anti-Mitten for the next two weeks. New York has drawn the Detroit Pistons in the opening round of the NBA playoffs, so all appreciation for the Motor City is momentarily on ice. White Buffs are dumb – that price tag doesn’t come with rims around the lenses? Sam Richardson, stop ducking – I’ll 3-0 you on any stage, even The Shelter if I have to. This young, frenetic Pistons squad is honestly kinda likable, but the franchise’s owner, diamond-certified ghoul Tom Gores, profits off prison telecom services. So, due to my religious exemption, I cannot say that Boldy James is one of the best in the game right now. I can’t recommend his new project with Antt Beatz, nor this standout heater with Detroiter Baby Money. I can’t hype Boldy’s four-syllable schemes that ice pick through the refrain. I can’t describe this as music to leap tall buildings in a single bound to. ”Trap with the hottest, they spit it like a welding line / the fact of the matter is I move that bag in record time” is … nope, I won’t say it. Not at least for another … uh, six games.

Lord Sko - "Randy Moss"

Say what you will about the tenets of Mecca-era boom-bap revivalism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos. Washington Heights’ Lord Sko is way too young to be this nostalgic (he’s 20 years old, so the New York he was born into was more Marbury/Crawford than Ewing/Starks). The latest mixtape does indeed justify the Coogi, though. Sko’s PIFF has a sedated bar-war with MAVI on “Bong Rips,” a White Owl stoop jam with Grand Puba on “Girbaud Talk” and a “Funkee Intermission” featuring Del himself. “Randy Moss” hits all the Lebowski notes – Saddam Hussein grins at the bowling alley, ashes whip in the cliffside wind, with dream sequences and White Russians and even the German nihilists at the end. Sko raps like he knows he’s onto something. Here’s to Walter Sobchak in some scuffless Timbs.

Wakai - "Goofy"

The Baton Rouge cloudsurfer glides on this anti-goofy PSA. This is like if the Cool Breeze verse on “Slump” dropped LSD and went soaring down I-85. Luke MacKenzie’s guitar ripples and Billere’s beatwork is weightless. On his latest drop, this month’s Inbetween Trouble, Wakai takes risks with his flows and orbits high concepts through lo-fi coding. “Goofy” sweeps the embers from a well-deserved cosmic burnout. It’s a cloudy-eyed outline of a more righteous life. In lesser hands, “don’t surrender your key” is some nonsense from a self-help book all of our moms read. But from Wakai, it feels essential and specific.

Mike Jones & LaRussell - "Back Then x Still Trippin"

Sending us out with earnest vibes. I think we should let LaRussell be the President.

The Rap-Up: Week of April 14, 2025