Weekly Fix #24 ('20)

Welcome to the Weekly Fix, where I go over everything that I’ve listened to that has come out within the past week. I’ll give a little blurb about the project/single with my feelings on it thrown in there, throw some descriptors and other artists names to give you an idea what the project/single is like, and link to all applicable streaming services/online stores where you can find the music. Click here to see a list of previous Fixes.

Week #24 (’20) was a slower week relatively speaking. Almost no underground artists make an appearance here, an oddity for sure considering most weeks contain a minimum of two or three, but we had some other artists step up to the plate to deliver some great music. The newbie country-rap-trap sensation RMR, iann dior, and the eternal Drakeo the Ruler (FREE THE RULER) give us a god amount of content to chew on until the onslaught of next week arrives.

Alright so I’ve started a new post that comes out weekly called Art Appreciation, and the responses to it so far have been very positive. It used to be lumped in with the weekly Playlists, but I felt like I had a lot more to say about the great art that goes along with this music shit, and that the artists behind these pieces deserve just as much credit for setting an impression as the music does. Click here, or use the link down below, to see the couple Art Appreciation posts I have up right now, and look forward to finding some dope artists in future releases.

Next week is a stacked week if I ever saw one. There’s some youthful energy with Smokepurpp and Tee Grizzley, R&B energy with Teyana Taylor and A Boogie wit da Hoodie’s deluxe edition of The Artist 2.0, and that old RZA energy with Napoleon da Legend and Rome Streetz. Joe Moses and Wale also make next week one of the most voluminous in recent memory; tap into my Upcoming Heat page too see what we have coming both tomorrow and in the future (lots of new stuff announced this week).

Thank all of you amazing people for reading my shit here on Tha Soup Dude’s Kitchen. I’ve been seeing a lot of positive feedback to my content lately, and I can’t tell you how much it’s appreciated. More than that, I’ve been getting a lot of people telling me that they’ve found someone new to love by reading on TSDK… that is the ultimate goal here, and it keeps me going to hear that people are discovering new music. Keep expanding your minds, listening to new shit, learning about this genre we all love. Peace.

Here’s a link to the Week #24 Playlist (’20) for y’all

&

Here’s a link to the Week #24 (’20) Art Appreciation post

-----PROJECTS-----

RMR – DRUG DEALING IS A LOST ART

Not since Young Thug dropped BEAUTIFUL THUGGER GIRLS have I been fascinated by the prospect of country/pop/hip-hop crossover, and not since then have I heard anything as convincing that this combination is not an abomination. Thug did the idea solid service on his album all those years ago, but this debut project from RMR doesn’t have the baggage that Thug had, the expectations to live up to. This project sits at an airtight 8 tracks (however the major single DEALER is placed on here twice, both original and remixed), and in that time RMR sets himself apart as having a golden ear for melodies, a great array of producers behind him to sell the organically twangy and grounded instrumentals, and even the reach to grab features from all corners of the genre, from the newer trappers (Future and Lil Baby) and those reaching into the past (Westside Gunn). You get guitars, some live piano ballads, and crisp drums that continue to define this developing sound in hip-hop. There is a heavy Don Toliver vibe here (as well as some SAINt JHN), so if you have any inkling of appreciation for dramatic and warbly lead vocals, a spread of catchy beats, and melodies for days, then this project will be an easy listen.

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music

————————————————

Tsu Surf – MSYKM

2019 was the year Tsu came back into the album game, and it’s been a strange ride. I wasn’t a big fan of his Seven 25 project, feeling like it was too Meek Mill inspired to be able to take it seriously on it’s own merits. But his next project, the joint project with California’s Mozzy called Blood Cuzzins, while not being ground-busting material, was leaps and bounds better than his previous effort. I felt like the west-coast beats and stylings fit Tsu’s style a hell of a lot better, and his confessional yelling had more of an emotional impact over the slower synthy slappers of the Bay. It’s that same energy that he brings to the table on this newest project, but it’s clear that he’s stepped up his album game. There are many songs on here that succeed off of the strength of his writing and song-making abilities, something that was sorely lacking in last year’s endeavor, and while he started off his career as a well-respected battle rapper, it’s taken until now for him to prove to me that he can write as well on a constructed track as he does in a live spitting session. Good beats that would fit in seamlessly with the modern reflective western sound, and features from solid guest names like Benny the Butcher, Mozzy, and Dave East all come together with a more focused Tsu Surf to create his most compelling project to date. If you like the shouted deliveries of Meek Mill & Sauce Walka, and the emotional potency of someone like Lil Durk or Mozzy, then this project will be for you.

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music

————————————————

Plex Diamonds – Gotham City: The Album

I had never heard of this guy Plex Diamonds before, but I’m fucking with this project right here HEAVY over the past few days. The production is loud and boisterous, reminding me a lot of the kind of dissonance and chaotic looping of the Richmond scene, with crazy strings and piano playing creating this amazing sense of darkness and cinema. The overall sense of haziness from the deeper mixing is cut through by sharp looped notes, sometimes colorful, sometimes gritty. Plex himself, being a cat from Brooklyn, doesn’t let down at all in the bars department, riding the beats with a slower and more nonchalant flow, spitting about the rough-and-tumble lifestyle of living in the famous borough. I will say that, vocally, he reminds me a lot of a Harlem rapper: think people like Juelz Santana or Jim Jones, with a brittle voice that has this street-wise quality to it. I’d say if you like those Harlem legends, the production profile of cities like Richmond and Buffalo, and a great cast of guests including Ace SL, Bub Rock, and Rome Streetz, then check this album out, and go support the guy on Bandcamp.

Bandcamp

————————————————

iann dior – I’m Gone

I expected more from this, but I respect it as a varied showing from one of hip-hops fastest-rising up-and-comers. There are some cool song ideas that draw from a lot of other genres like Punk, more 2000’s rock and emo, and shades of pop that, although they don’t blend together in the best of ways, shows that iann’s ambitions cover many styles of music. I’ll say that, whenever he gets into his juvenile rap voice, he sounds incredibly similar to Lil Skies, but his more melodic and emotional deliveries are slightly more unique, with shades of Lil Peep and JuiceWRLD that give his voice a little more weight and presence. He has flow, and I think the kid has the chops to really impress on this front if he pushed himself a little harder. The beats, while they are all clean as bleach, also show a little variety in styles: some are more grinding club bangers, some sound like they’d fit snuggly in a Top 40 playlist, and some completely steal the show (looking at you, Prospect) with their amazing sample choices and crisp percussion (Wheezy is a god). I think this project is a great starting point with the young man, sort of a sample platter of where his career could go from here depending on what sticks. It’ll be up to his next project to really define his trajectory.

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music

————————————————

Drakeo the Ruler & JoogSzn – Thank You for Using GTL

Considering the circumstances, the fact that this album exists, executed at this level of quality, and only has a handful of mixing issues is a miracle. But it is a miracle that has resulted in an album that is not only passable and listenable, but also one that actually slaps and is incredibly enjoyable. You see, Thank You for Using GTL features new verses and hooks from Drakeo the Ruler, who, at this moment and during the recording of this project, is incarcerated. All new Drakeo material was recorded over GlobalTel jail phones, and all of it has that disconnected and staticky quality of being recorded in this manner. While there are a couple flow hiccups, which is to be expected given that the man isn’t in a fucking studio, Drakeo somehow still has all of the charisma and street-goblin-like snark that he would have in a traditional setup. The jail-phone quality makes this harder, realer, and truer than anything I’ve heard from him before. Big props also needs to go out Joog, who’s undertaking here is grand to say the least: to come up with a spread of beats that had to be low-key enough to not overtake the unmixed jail vocals, but also have that very distinct LA street/Bay-Area-inspired slap to it I’m sure was a very difficult task. If you like guys like ALLBLACK, Nef the Pharaoh, or Guapdad 4000, then this project will be for you.

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music

————————————————

-------SINGLES-------

Pop Smoke (Feat. Rowdy Rebel) – Make It Rain

The longer I’ve sat with Meet The Woo 2, the more a feeling that we’ve lost someone that was meant to be hugely important to this genre sets in, and tracks like this don’t help that feeling. The upped BPM, the aggression, the haunting and shimmering beat, and a stellar performance from the late Pop Smoke all make this into my favorite single from him to date. You listen to something like this and you can hear the innovation in the genre; it’s truly depressing that Brooklyn Drill is kneecapped permanently by Pop Smoke’s passing. The thing about his music is that everything seems dire and important, and there’s few throwaway moments in his songs, demanding attention always from a great combination of a magnetic voice and a slight familiar but still exotic beat pattern. That the featured verse from Rowdy Rebel (who, like Drakeo up in the Projects section, is also incarcerated) is coming straight from the jailhouse, and has the SAME energy and hunger as the posthumous Pop Smoke, is merely icing on this amazingly filling track. If you like any sort of street music, Drill or not, 50 Cent, or newer brand of club music, then you need to listen to this. Looking forward to this posthumous Pop Smoke album, a bittersweet feeling if there ever was one.  

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music

————————————————

Lil Baby – The Bigger Picture

I think a lot people across the internet aren’t giving Baby a fair shake. Sure, they are singing praises about this song and how important, topical, and focuses it is in furthering the Black Lives Matter movement: rightfully and deservedly so. But people are talking about this song as if it’s in some sort of vacuum or an outlier of a track. I mean sure, he’s never been this gung-ho about pressing topics in current events, but he has plenty of material in his back catalog that reaches into those emotional depths, and his rapping has never been off-point since I’ve started listening to him. Moral of the story: stop hating on the kid. Anyways, this track is fantastic not just by Lil Baby standards (which are high) but also by just rapper standards in general. To make a song that is catchy, easy to listen to, heavy on the knowledge but light with the graphic representation of hate, and strikes a tone of hope and forward-thinking is something that even the most “woke” of rappers would have a hard time pulling off. You get the gist of the different sides that are playing into the madness, but you still get the nuances and lack of clarity in these situations (he says “it’s bigger than black and white / it’s a problem with the whole way of life”). I already had a mountain of respect for Lil Baby, but consider that mountain effectively doubled, a “giant fucking mountain” if you will. If you like protest music, ATL trap, piano-based beats, and like… Talib Kweli or some shit, give this track a listen.

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music

————————————————

NLE Choppa – Shotta Flow 5

I have the same thing to say about this track as I do about the previous four Shotta Flows: this shit is hard as a brick. The beat? Hard. The flow? Hard. NLE’s voice, which does this cool lack of breath thing at one point in the track? Hard. The hook? Hard. The name of the track? Well I could have done with some innovation there but what can you do. There’s just something about this kids voice, like a Memphis-born 2 Chainz, that is cartoonishly villainous, with a wild and rambunctious nature captured perfectly in a medium paced flow with a shouted and disrespectful delivery. Even though this is a “throwaway” single that probably won’t land on an album, the quality shows that the man just has a natural talent, and it will only take one solid album effort to launch his career into the stratosphere. You’ll be down with this if you like Three Six Mafia, any of the south Florida kids like Smokepurpp or Lil Pump, and maybe some Louisiana like Boosie and Wayne.

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music

————————————————

Spillage Village (EARTHGANG, JID, Jurdan Bryant, etc.) – End of Daze

This track is a five minute epic, that features a rotating cast of colorful characters that flows from one emcee/singer to the next, driven along like cattle by this modern pop/country beat in the vein of some cowboy sad shit. The beat is dejected, solemn, like a funeral procession, lamenting the world and it’s beautiful things as it heads step-by-step in a march towards the end of days. Some of the members like Johnny Venus and JID take a more humorously delivered approach, but Mereba and the Jurdan Bryant are tapping directly into that melancholy. Despite the gray tone, it’s never truly dark or hopeless; a track that’s more about telling it like it is and recognizing the ways of the world. Like all of these members separately would, this track has a lot of southern influence to it: think Outkast and Goodie Mob. The flows and rapping on here are all on point, and make some compelling statements on today’s madness. It is a posse cut, but doesn’t necessarily seem like a posse cut as all of the members kind of blend in to one another (which can come across as both good and bad), but everyone in the cut gets the time they need to shine.

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music

————————————————

Smokepurpp – Pop Shit

Purpp has an album dropping this upcoming week, and he’s dropped a handful of singles that have my attention. Several of them, like this latest one, are collaborations with producer and fellow Floridian Ronny J, who’s brand of blown out trap has been somewhat watered down as the years have gone on in favor of more mainstream friendly trap music (albeit with a little unique seasoning to keep some sort of individuality). It seems like, at least for Ronny, we’re hearing a sort of return to form in regard to the original sounds of the southern Soundcloud movement, because this beat sound like it would have come off of the first Deadstar tape easily. It’s simple, cavernous, and uses the completely bonkers sub-bass as a cudgel to beat you over the head with blurts of sound. Smokepurpp can match the energy, and the repetitiveness/aggressiveness do a lot to take me back to his older work whenever he first burst on the scene, a lot more than Deadstar 2 did (which was waterlogged with a lot of singing and melodic ideas). There isn’t depth to this track: you listen to it, you get hype to it, and you enjoy it. If you like Denzel Curry, Lil Pump, or NLE Choppa, you will definitely like this.  

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music

————————————————

Lil Keed (Feat. Gunna) – Fox 5

By far my favorite single from his upcoming tape, and surprisingly Gunna isn’t even my favorite part. Keed really diversifies his bonds on this one, hitting a ton of different flows and inflections that keep you entertained constantly. Sure, most if not all of these tactics come from the Young Thug playbook, including the tried-and-true favorite cookie monster voice that works so well with Thugger that it’s a no brainer that his musical progeny would also excel at it. Lil Keed really hits gold on the hook, with a lot of great memorable moments being created both by his frantic delivery and completely ridiculous things he’s saying. Gunna is here, and while the human chameleon can adapt to any melody or tone and knock it out of the park, I would say this is one of the less memorable features from him in recent memory (I still love it! But there’s a very high bar to hit with Gunna). I love how the beat has this childish and playful nature, and there’s this vocal sample to rides the beat up and down, like a vocoded voice of Keed making oooohs and aaaahs or some shit; it’s the brand of weirdness that I’ve come to expect from YSL. Obviously, if you like Young Thug or anyone like him you will fuck with this track, along with most other pop-trap stuff you’ll hear nowadays. If you like artists that are strange but have a lot of varied things about them to love, then give this a shot.  

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music

————————————————

DaBaby (Feat. Roddy Ricch) – ROCKSTAR (BLM REMIX)

Not much to say about this one other than I respect DaBaby using this immensely popular song (It’s still #1 on the Hot 100 as of writing this) to convey a message of black solidarity. He doesn’t get too terribly deep into the issues at hand, not really dating the song with current events and tragedies as much as he is speaking on the general injustices that face the black community, using himself at times as a reference point. Some people are going to see this as a grab to get popularity points by jumping on a bandwagon, but if you had a #1 song that everyone was listening to, basically an outlet to most people listening to popular music, why would you not take the opportunity to speak on something larger than yourself? Anyway, the rest of the song is literally the same, this remix just adds a verse before the original song started; maybe it’s not the most elegant addition but it gets the job done. If you like the phrases “All Lives Matter” and, even better, “Blue Lives Matter” then this song will not be for you by any stretch of the imagination (and in fact you need to close my page and go educate yourself; hip-hop is secondary to being an empathetic human being).

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music

————————————————

Yungeen Ace – Heartbroken

While the track plays a lot like a typical YoungBoy NBA or Lil Durk track, it has a little bit more of a pop-appeal with the fantastic melody attached to the hook and a beautiful trap beat with these cool guitar flourishes in an excellent chord progression. The hook is short, memorable, and sugar sweet, the two verses don’t hit you with anything too groundbreaking but there’s some genuine passion and drive behind the words. There’s a little bit of clutter with harmonizing adlibs in the background, filling out the track with a lot of sounds that make the track seem that much more important. At the end of the day, the melody sells this track and then some; shower singing music for real. If A Boogie wit da Hoodie, Roddy Ricch, or Quando Rondo ever sparked your interest, this track will be right up your alley; super melodic, melodramatic, and colorful pop-trap.

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music

————————————————

Hopsin - Kumbaya

Whenever Hopsin isn’t being racist, cringy, or whiny, he makes fantastic music. I’ve come to learn this and embrace it, because it allows me to enjoy tracks like this, great off of the technical skill displayed and the banging beat behind it. I like how, as time goes on, Hop ventures further out of his comfort zone with these more trap-flavored instrumentals; I guess since Em hopped on some on Kamikaze it’s ok for all of these “real hip-hop” warriors to start doing it (which there’s nothing wrong with that I definitely appreciate it, just odd is all). The bars are solid, with some references to COVID and being Biggie and Tupac reincarnated to round out a well-written and even better rapped single. The mans enunciation is what gets me the most; I know it’s often used as a way to put down “mumble rappers”, but if you acknowledge that both mumble rapping and enunciation are fire, then you can enjoy twice as much music! Yeah but Hopsin can spit crystal-clear verses better than most people in the game right now, and for that he has my respect (and for the Asian sex parlor track he has that respect revoked for all time). If you like rappidy-rap, technical spitting, battle-rap, and Eminem, then you’ be doing yourself a disservice not listening to this.

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music

————————————————

Joe Moses – Really Out Here

The beat is slightly disappointing; maybe coming off of that Drakeo project I got used to some really good west-coast slaps. It’s slower, taking it’s time crawling down the boulevard like an Impala simply shifted to “drive”. Joe tries to match the energy, but he’s too aggressive and menacing to really slow himself down credibly, which isn’t as much of a bad thing as you might think. You just know what you’re getting with a track like this: the pimpin, the gang-banging, the Blood references, etc. Modern riding music follows a predictable pattern, but at least if you fuck with it you’ll never be disappointed. If Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, YG, or The Game are in your rotation, then check out Joe Moses too.

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music

————————————————

Kodak Black (Feat. WizDaWizard & Mike Smiff) – VULTURES CRY 2

On one hand, I hate this. On the other hand, I can’t stop listening. The melody on the hook is atrocious, but I just can’t bring myself to stop liking it; it’s like your child who brings you macaroni art and you genuinely believe the shit is some sort of cultural piece worth preserving, but in reality it’s just some dogshit. I don’t know the two men accompanying Bill Kapri on this cut, but they are actually pretty alright. That Wizard dude can rap that’s for sure. I wish I had more to say about this track… oh yeah, the beat, it’s a cool one. Very pointed keyboard notes that decend and ascend again, like Kodak traveling through space in a TARDIS. If you like so-bad-it’s-good singing, some cool unknown trappers, and often wonder to yourself who picked this sorry ass beat, then give VULTURES CRY 2 an honest and sincere listen.

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music

————————————————