Lest you are to be led astray, this is not a map of some of the hottest season’s worthy drinking establishments in a city near you. No, this thing basically wrote itself on the heels of an impressive string of new exceptional hip-hop exploits, all released within short succession as we enter everyone’s favorite time of the year. The list is limited to eight selections dropped between May and July (yes, there’s a bit of a season’s cheat in there). It’s eight because that is also New York Knicks‘s small forward OG Anunoby’s official jersey number, whom a day after the uprising Manhattan franchise acquired Mikal Bridges from across the East River—reuniting La Cosa Nova from their Villanova Wildcats college heydays—reportedly came to terms with the pending free agent on a five-year contract worth more than $210 million.

So as June winds down, and Spike Lee celebrates the 35th anniversary of his critically-acclaimed joint Do The Right Thing via a block party on the very same street the film was shot in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, we would have been remiss not to elevate these superlative rap records. Kicking this whole thing off with marquee Detroit rap group Slum Village’s first new album in almost a decade, F.U.N. The J Dilla-surviving outfit’s tenth studio LP came out at the very beginning of May, but might in fact be the most true blue summer record of all in this batch. Faithful to its titling acronym—admittedly containing multitudes—the 12-track project packs a slew of sticky and immediate killers, no fillers; most of them disguising conscious lyrical urgency with disco dancey flows, as well as uplifting beats in earnest. F.U.N. is immaculately produced, its sound lavish and glossy, and if one’s to pass judgement on substance, nearly all of the songs hold quite a lot of compositional water too.

A tastefully handpicked line up of guests—including Larry June, Cordae, Karriem Riggins, and Robert Glasper—carefully elevates the sonic palette across the half hour of unhinged slappers on the project, without ever taking the boat out too far for the exploit to not have the usual Slum Village trademark stamp on it. Yes, the cover art is inexplicably ghastly and boyish, something you’d rather expect landing on a crestfallen young adult book sleeve, than on the Michigan veterans’s long awaiting comeback joint—but hey, it’s not like Slum Village have anything left to prove to anyone in the game at this point. This summer, expect to hear some of these numbers on the airwaves of any hip-hop stations that do the right thing.

Moving on, just a week after F.U.N., on the 10th of May 54-year-old rap game statesman Ghostface Killah saw fit to grace us with his twelfth solo studio project, Set the Tone (Guns & Roses): and boy it’s an adorned banquet ready for feast. Earmarked and distributed by Nas‘s influential imprint Mass Appeal, the album features co-sign appearances from fellow Wu Tang Clan peers Method Man and Raekwon, as well as Busta Rhymes, Kanye West, and the label boss himself—amongst many others. Unlike Slum Village’s neatly packed and focused thirty minutes of new material, Set the Tone is more bloated, pushing a full hour of runtime across its nineteen records (although four are interludes). Yet, its highlights are infectiously undeniable, like the New York City meeting of the mob minds on “Scar Tissue“, the gentle and sultry “Plan B” (featuring a standout vocal performance by Harl3y), or the silk sonic achieved on “Touch You“—tastefully interpolating the classic 00s R&B benchmark “Let Me Love You” by Mario.

Shamefully, the project seems to have flown a tad bit under the radar of most, and has left critics and mainstream fans alike largely unfazed. But not around here. This thing is a bona fide flawless exercise in feel good hit of the summer hedonism and excess. Stuffed with optimism, charisma, and flamboyance for good measure. Do not let this slip by you just because it’s not on your TikTok For You Page. Speaking of music that isn’t on your FYP, but definitely should, our third rec takes the impressionistic painting brushes and its inherent conceptualism up a few notches, courtesy of North Carolina-native Rapsody. Issued seven days after Ghostface’s exploit—yes, early May was stacked fam—Please Don’t Cry is the Roc Nation recording artist’s fourth full length offering. It’s as rich and textured as rap albums come: more and more a rarity in today’s commercial hip-hop climate, this is the album people wanted Rapsody to make, and now the dog has caught the car on this one.

Please Don’t Cry follows five years after the 41-year-old MC’s treaty on gender studies waxed on Eve (2019), and it’s our deep and bold storyteller time tip of note in the bunch. Conceding the heavy and costly comparison to drop, similarly to Kendrick Lamar‘s To Pimp a Butterfly, singling out individual standout tracks on here is somewhat of a fool’s errand. Instead, this is a wholesale course meal meant to be savored in vulnerable confluence. On the one hand, there’s a meta fourth wall to the project that couches the blood, sweat, and tears of Marlanna Evans amidst a cathartic macro concert arrangement of hip-hop, R&B, neo-soul, and jazz. In the same breath, each tune is a microcosm of emotional states and styles in and of itself—bookended by the narration-centric thematic centerpiece of “She’s Expecting You” and the sugary keys of the epic spoken word plea of “Forget Me Not” (featuring a deliciously warped sample of BROCKHAMPTON‘s “SUMMER“). In between, there’s a formidable tale as old as time, one of self-discovery through exposure, through fearless expression for the first time. Please Don’t Cry finds Rapsody at her best, not holding back: it’s not for the faint of heart.

Similarly not suitable for the faint of heart is the reckoning of what is going down in the God-forsaken Caribbean country of Haiti right now. Just as the umpteenth forced foreign intervention is settling into the land in the hopes to stabilize it amidst a political vacuum and a guerrilla ruling through warlords, native transplant via New Jersey Mach-Hommy is riding on the coattails of his definitive homeland tetralogy installment, #RICHAXXHAITIAN. Out the same day as Please Don’t Cry, 17th May, one day before Haitian Flag Day—we weren’t kidding about May being stacked…—the album is Mach’s fourteenth to date. It’s a gesamtkunstwerk of insurrectionary socio-political vignettes, simultaneously doubling as the Haitian-American rapper’s most catchy and accessible. The oeuvre is a multi-lingual, multi-genre, and multi-cultural affair, cross-pollinating autochthonous Haitian traditions with gritty posse street rhymes, typically associated with the New York Tri-state area.

The Griselda Records-affiliate keeps it grimy throughout the seventeen tracks sequenced on the digital version of the album, clocking in at just shy of fifty minutes of runtime, but goes particularly hard on cuts such as “SONJE“, “COPY COLD” (amplified by a superlative tell-all verse by Black Thought), and “GUGGENHEIM JEUNE“. Elsewhere, he attains higher levels of earworminess—not exactly something we’d have thought we’d use to describe Mach-Hommy’s music—on “SUR LE PONT d’AVIGNON” and the titular lead single, aptly produced by fellow Haitian descendant KAYTRANADA (who is out with an impressive new tape of his own, just not strictly speaking a rap one to land on this list. Also no Knick wears #9 at the moment). Regardless, #RICHAXXHAITIAN is another full body of work experience for you, no cherry-picked finger food. It demands above-average listening prowess and command, but its rewards are so fulfilling that one might find themselves leaving the tape both spiritually and cerebrally re-aligned.

We sound like a broken record at this point, but the month of May shockingly managed to squeeze in one final musical coup de grâce before turning the calendar page. Long Beach rap laureate Vince Staples returned with his Def Jam swan song offering Dark Times on Friday the 24th, marking his sixth LP, a couple years after his double dipping with Vince Staples and Ramona Park Broke My Heart (2022). Perhaps the most singular and forlorn recommendation in this summer batch, the 35-minute statement comes as yet another reflective and contemplative series of essays. Less a cohesive concept album than a string of powerful short stories, the collection ventures in what’s arguably the vastest sonic range ever touched by the former Odd Future syndicate. While for all intents and purposes still filing this under a loud West Coast hip-hop file cabinet, it’s worth noting how numbers like “Shame on the Devil” flirts with jangly alt-pop instrumentals, while “Freeman” pushes experimental garage guitar licks way past the point one’d expect on a mainstream rap record.

Fair warning, if Slum Village’s F.U.N. is the most summer record on this list, Vince’s Dark Times is the least sunny one of the crop. I guess one could’ve figured that much from looking at their, album titles? Sometimes the proof really is in the pudding. However, fret not argonauts, since Vince’s got you and your feet covered with hot bops such as “Étouffée” and “Little Homies“—coincidentally the best, gnarliest, and most well rounded tunes on the whole record. In promoting the album, the 30-year-old LA-native asked fans not to overthink his songs, all to aware that is easier said than done when you happen to be one of the sharpest and critically acute pens of this generation’s rap cohort. Yet, that’s what makes this project a wicked collection of summer bars, too—aside from being Vince’s greatest, it’s also unassuming and easy listening to the ears, without sacrificing the usual poignancy and street wit folks have grown accustomed to expect from him.

Our sixth suggestion dropped halfway through June, a month that usually does not mess around when it comes to raising the mercury bar. In keeping with the sweltering heat brought by the official calendar kick off of the summer season, NxWorries’s highly-anticipated sophomore project Why Lawd? keeps us sweating from all pores. The American hip-hop super duo comprised of singer, rapper, and record producer Anderson .Paak and producer/songwriter Knxwledge followed up their critically acclaimed cult debut Yes Lawd! eight years later with an ultra crafty helping of 19 new joints. Released under legendary underground hip-hop label Stones Throw Records, the project manages to top its lauded predecessor, doubling down on quality songwriting, impeccable deliveries, and a trademark vintage sound that somehow still reverberates as fresh and unique, in spite of how deeply influential it’s been throughout the past decade.

Slowly rolled out throughout the past two years—lead single “Where I Go” featuring H.E.R. originally debuted as early as October 2022 (!)—and teased for even longer than that, the studio effort from the talented hip-hop duo was well worth the wait. Coasting through 45 minutes of runtime with the swagger and effortlessness of an off-season mixtape, this thing is extremely front-loaded, with one gorgeous slapper after another clocking in from second cut “86Sentra” through track number nine “FromHere“. A-list guests such as Charlie Wilson, Rae Khalil, and Earl Sweatshirt, as well as upheld catchiness make Why Lawd?‘s side B still well worth sticking around, in spite of a few dubs hinting at an even stronger record in there with a more focused editing. Nonetheless, cue this up if you’re in the market for some sexy, irreverent, and unhinged fun, all while summoning the Lord.

Lupe Fiasco‘s ninth studio LP Samurai is our penultimate tip off. Released just fresh outta the oven at the time of writing, this is a different kind of half hour to spend this summer. According to the groundbreaking Chicago MC, the project is “a loving & living portrait to and of one of my favorite artists, Amy Winehouse“. Because, sure, why not? The American rapper, record producer, and university professor’s successor to his otherworldly Drill Music in Zion (2022) has been highly anticipated—safe to say he did not phone it in. Once again entirely executive-produced by Drill Music chief sound orchestrator Soundtrakk, the concept for the record was grown from a voicemail left by the late English R&B singer for her producer Salaam Remi before her passing. In the note, the London-born singer/songwriter expressed her penchant for coming up with little, beautifully alliterated battle raps at the time, even likening herself to a Wu Tang Clan-inspired samurai.

Channelling all of the above, Lupe allowed for the story and album to take on a life of their own, kicking dances off with the title track as lead single halfway through May, before teasing the full project one more time with the infectious victory lap of “Cake“. The LP masterfully couches blistering highs and crushing lows all within eight records and half an hour of material, condensing subaltern scenarios and sketches of what a spitting Winehouse could have sounded like. Cuts such as “Palaces” at number four on the tracklist prove how easily the 42-year old alternative hip-hop pioneer can pen tunes so gorgeous they almost hurt, while “No. 1 Headband” acts as little reminder that he’s not forgotten how to have self-reflective fun, either. If you’re only sampling one project from this list of eight, and hinge on intellectually stimulating wordsmiths, make it this one.

Actually, maybe, make it Common and Pete Rock’s The Auditorium, Vol. 1. The only catch is that it’s not out yet, so don’t take our full word for it (methodical purity has left us long ago…). What is certain though, is that if we are to trust the first three teasers unearthed hitherto, “Wise Up“, “Dreamin’” and “All Kind of Ideas“, this is poised to be the signature hip-hop album of the summer, probably year. Marking the fifteenth solo studio LP for the Chicago conscious rap extraordinaire, The Auditorium, Vol. 1 is lucky enough to be enjoying Pete Rock’s unparalleled production chops throughout its projected fifteen cuts. A golden age East Coast hip-hop meeting of the minds, chopped and screwed in heaven. The full album is just mere days away, slated to drop everywhere on Friday 12th July. Here’s what we know for sure: it’s the summer, and there will be bars—guess the whole write up could’ve just been that verse.

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time.

AV

There’s a target on Mach-Hommy’s back. Dead or alive. Reward unknown; although the protraction of techno-feudalism and post-colonial hegemony are probably solid enough guesses. You ask the Haitian-American rapper and record producer yourself. As revealed in his recent public service plea, following shortly after the release of his fourteenth solo album #RICHAXXHAITIAN, there appear to be obscure industry forces at play attempting to curtail the propagation of his message conveyance. Self-released on the 17th May, one day before the momentous annual celebration of Haitian Flag Day, the 17-track project completes the New Jerseyan’s autochthonous album tetralogy—also inclusive of H.B.O. (2016), and 2021’s Pray for Haiti and Balens Cho (Hot Candles)—and was preceded by the eponymous lead single in early May.

Too bad that Google managed to botch the title track’s music video premiere on Mach-Hommy’s own YouTube channel, offering no conclusive explanation for it at all, leading to assume salacious intents behind the ‘unprecedented’ glitch. Too bad that mere days after the album’s public streaming release on DSPs, it mysteriously evaporated from leading outlet Spotify—the latter citing a takedown request from the artist’s camp itself, categorically denied by the Griselda syndicate in the aforementioned video explainer. In both cases, literally involving the largest streaming platform in the world (YouTube), and the on-demand audio service with the highest amount of global paying subscribers (Spotify), the explanations furnished left little to write home about.

In fact, Google’s troubleshooting yielded a complete and laughable non-starter. As outlined in the clip by Mach-Hommy, the internal investigation conducted by multiple layers of YouTube reps upon his flagging of the loss of admin privileges on his own account, as well as the temporary erasure of subscribers during the music video premiere window, returned a pathetic ‘we’ve got no clue as to what happened there, sorry’. Conversely, Spotify dug deeper into its more generous void of incongruous wiggle room in delivering their version of the root cause analysis, owing to the (wholly purposeful) digital record industry’s protocol entanglement. As mentioned, after both the Swedish streaming giant and an unnamed digital distributor washed their hands off by claiming the withdrawal request came from Mach-Hommy’s people, the East Coast MC was informed that his product, the #RICHAXXHAITIAN LP, was missing its Universal Product Code (UPC). An ontological fallacy, for not only was the release perfectly available on all other DSPs at the time, but as Mach rightfully cites in the video, the project wouldn’t have made it to Spotify servers in the first place without it.

Where affairs get even more nefarious is in the aggravating insult provided by the parties at play, who mentioned a now-deleted post by an faceless, nameless X user, interpreting #RICHAXXHAITIAN‘s disappearance from Spotify as a marketing stunt from Mach-Hommy, and fomenting doubts as to who watches the watchdogs in the online pursuits of the truth. The X user alleged that the MC’s strategy was to entice fans by sampling the album as a taster over release weekend, in the hope that they would turn to his webstore to purchase exclusive physical formats—going for a much higher price point. Once again, all of this getting debunked by the artist himself. Putting two and two together, one can’t help but think this is some sort of poetic injustice for a lyricist as concerned with historical revisionism, reparations, the Haitian diaspora, and the plague of colonialism in his ancestral country as he is. After all, retaliations might have assumed newer and more impenetrable forms in the modern age, but they are surely far from a holding pattern of inaction.

This all transpires as being particularly suspicious on account of not just the prolific rapper’s imperialistic establishment antagonism, but also his worthy industry literacy within contemporary digital music practices. Yes he is an actual multi-lingual prodigy thanks to his diverse cultural provenance, yet have you considered that the contemporary record industry’s intentionally dubious language is an idiom he can tally up as yet another atypical string in his bow? When he took legal DMCA action to have all of his works removed from online lyrics providers such as Genius in 2019, he knew he was stirring up a pretty big hornet’s nest. You will likely not be surprised to learn that Genius has long been finessing a number of licensing deals with DSPs under the hood; with one of the largest ones being with, guess whom? Spotify.

This is perhaps a good moment to afford us to elaborate on such content provisioning agreements. We wish we could go into more specifics, but please trust us when we say that we get Mach-Hommy. Without even delving into licensing deals involving the actual sound recordings couched within digital releases, aka the masters we all end up listening on the client side, the narrower lyrics and compositions provisioning business itself is riddled with enough jungly inaccessibility. Not unlike the wider record industry ecosystem, it’s a self-referential distribution funnel washed in a sea of conduits and intermediaries. Rightsholders—such as the self-released and self-published Mach-Hommy—are typically forced to strike deals with certain providers supplying other providers to at least a few degrees of separation before even making it to the end-consumer platforms such as Genius.

Not only does each of these agents retain a significant double-digit kickback on any royalty exploitation event, but within the lyrics consumption realm specifically, these are the kind of publishing deals operating under so-called ‘most-favored-nation’ (MFN) terms. In other words, allowing no room for negotiation or clout at the dealings table whatsoever. What’s even more disheartening within such copyright systems and their application within modern digital platforms is that legal frameworks around royalty rates and statutory regulations are a total mess. Most royalty payments are still remitted via lump sum settlements and upfront reconciliations, with little to no consideration for the actual mechanical reproduction figures for each work. In a way not too dissimilar from Mach’s warlord-stricken gang-centric Caribbean homeland, each end-user platform is free to enact their own price-regulated cartel, benefitting from the lack of international regulation and governance around fair trade.

Yet Mach-Hommy resists. He educates himself, learns the language of the oppressor, and fights with whatever he can. That’s why he’s wanted. That’s why he has a target on his back. And a very concrete countermeasure he enacts is seizing back control of his own art. What he does is that he increases the average consumption price point for each of his superfans, by selling physical formats for three-to-four digit $ price tags. For those versions, he retools the tracklist, too. In #RICHAXXHAITIAN‘s case, track number two “ANTONOMASIA” is titled “SOBRIQUET”, enlisting a guest verse from Tha God Fahim instead of Roc Marciano (allegedly a vox populi decision, as the rapper held a poll during a listening party earlier in the year). “BON BAGAY” at number four is a vinyl-exclusive, while the streaming-available “SONJE” is pushed back on the sequencing to act as the album’s coda. Crucially, “SUR LE PONT D’AVIGNON”, indeed available on streaming services, is wiped off the vinyl version as a quintessential middle finger to French post-colonial forces. Elsewhere on the waxing, “XEROX CLAT” gets retitled to “XEROX TWATS”, while “COPY COLD” and “PADON”—renamed “PARDON” with a Mach-Hommy verse in Tha God Fahim’s stead—are backtracked by a different instrumental beat than their digital counterparts.

In a press statement accompanying #RICHAXXHAITIAN, the wordsmith made the following clear:

I’ve always wanted to rep for Haiti and the cultural and intellectual richness we’ve provided the world. From our musical styles like kontradans that have influenced world music, our natural resources which provide so much raw material for so many important advancements in technology, our thinkers that pioneered philosophical movements and Black pride, and our spiritual leaders who kept the religious traditions of Guinea alive and intact, the religious traditions of Ayiti…

Musically, the album is a masterpiece. It’s a dense, wordy, intricate, disparate, and sticky affair—all at the same time. There’s a glacial undertone throughout the production that exhumes a dejected haziness fitting like a glove atop of Mach-Hommy’s boneless and contorted flows. Complication here is being offered as an act of resistance. Those who really listen, get it. In reviewing the record, good ole Professor Skye made the case for obscurity and incomprehension as a purposeful creative strategy for Mach-Hommy to fence off shoehorning and diluting industrial gentrification. While at the same doing justice to the richly profound social and cultural heritage of Haiti. It’s a valid heuristic, one that enables the New Jersey-native to always be one step ahead of reductive law enforcement. In his line of work, that happens to be private hedge fund-backed technology companies, purporting themselves as the arbiters of an emancipated creative ecosystem, fostering democratized access to all art. Sur le pont, d’Avignon…

We’d like to thank you sincerely for taking the time to read this and we hope to feel your interest again next time. And don’t forget to pray for Haiti.

AV