Album Cover via Rich Homie Quan/Instagram
Steven Louis validates parking.
It’s been one month since the passing of Rich Homie Quan, a generational firebrand whose influence will forever reign from Atlanta to the Appalachian foothills to the banks of the Mississippi. In a short but prolific career, Quan notched seven charting Hot 100 singles, soundtracked a college football season and helped craft one of best mixtapes in history. His death from an accidental drug overdose is numbing, another soul stolen by America’s ever-mutating public health crisis. RHQ is survived by his father-turned-manager, Corey Lamar, and five children — Layor, Alayna, Khosen, Royal and Devin. The estate released his first posthumous album over the weekend, 35 tracks that encapsulate Quan’s searing sense of melody and percussive trap flow. Here are a few standouts from Forever Goin In.
With synths that induce stratospheric pressure changes and fluttering 808s that kick into overdrive, “Unlimited Budget” hits like an uptempo club mix of “Milk Marie.” Come for a guts-out hook that will make an Alamo A&R punch through office drywall, and stay for a delightful Barry Larkin reference. This beat sounds like a Final Fantasy boss battle, launching into cruising altitude to match Quan’s galactic tenderness. “Thought it was over, it wasn’t,” he sings. It never will be.
Another one recalling the dizzying heights of Tha Tour Part 1 — with the slasher’s delivery of “I Know” and the slinking charm of “Tell Em.” Quan was always a rapper built for accelerated drum patterns and outside-the-tackles frenetic runs, and “My Bag” gives him pop synths that accentuate his star quality without moving him from the trap pocket.
“I aint pop a Perc in a week, boy I think a n— going through withdrawals / I ain’t done a show in the city, time to pop out cuz a n— miss y’all.” It’s hard to listen to, and a reminder of how much more he had to offer his audience.
Minor key croons that seemingly start composing the text to your ex; plucky strings that sound sourced from a monastic temple. This may be my favorite song on the project. Onomatopoeia call-and-response raps have been a comfortable crutch for the massive cottage industry of Young Thug imitators, but the “skr skr skr skr skrrrrrr” here feels earned when delivered through Quan’s bluesy growl. The AirTag gets applied to a lost mind. Wait until you hear why his lady needs to see a specialist.
My pick for the best pure rapping on Forever Goin In, with RHQ pulling up with a Glock 40 in the hatchback Ferrari. He flexes about owning a small municipality’s worth of properties, and reminisces on a particularly buxom flame from Albany, GA. He corrals chamber echos, elastic bass and dirgeful piano rolls to get a laugh-out-loud joke in — comparing tipping velvet to both eating cheesecake and bidding on eBay. Rhyming “audition / hard liquor / bartender / Clark Kent her” is Quan at his nimblest.
This is hopefully Quan’s first posthumous hit of many – with collaborator 2 Chainz revealing that they had recently talked about shooting the video. A six-pack of flavors on his own, it’s worth remembering how dynamic RHQ was as a collaborator. Truly rap’s equivalent of an efficient and speedy leadoff man, he sets a pace that gives the slower feature verse a far more concentrated gravity. Quan admires the peach trees in his backyard, while Chainz says that he bought his lover a new anus.
I believe this is an Isley Brothers sample sourced from Brazilian-American producer Leor Shevah, but Quan makes it uniquely his with insane syllabic density — every line fills to capacity, cramming and grafting words onto the next downbeat. Quan remembers when His Brother and their friend Dre were jumped by the entire baseball team, presumably at his alma mater Ronald McNair Sr. High School. He also remembers pulling up in their defense, and turning that baseball team into track stars.
As teased above, it is through this song that I learned Quan was a scholarship-level centerfielder and leadoff hitter, a position and style of play perfectly mirroring his rap presence. “Mi Hermano” is delivered like a hundred-member HBCU marching band accelerating toward midfield, stopping sporadically for squealing and cacophonous release before resuming the meticulous steps like nothing happened. A perpetual call to arms and a promise to Never Stop Going In.
For a more joyous look to the future, we turn to 16-year-old Star Bandz as she builds out her first smash hit. “Yea Yea” isn’t even my favorite “Feelin It” flip from this year, because that would be Paco Panama’s gem right here. But Star Bandz is magnetic, and when she says “I’m sixteen and doing shows, rocking out like a guitar,” we can’t help but cheer her on.
The Chicago ascendant makes an impassioned plea for mayor, gets compared to 2011 Derrick Rose, and throws in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reference well beyond her years. “I ain’t got no kids, but on my kids, stop playin’ with me” is a bar, take your objections to Cook County Small Claims Court. Veeze just woke up from a bed made of $50 bills. He’s almost certainly the first recording artist to rock a Detroit Lions Grover “Ox” Emerson jersey (1931-1932), or maybe it’s a custom one for 7 Mile. Who is to say?
To evoke the weirdest and funniest politician tic in quite some time, 41 is the Grime Daily of New York City, which is the Manchester of America, I think? If Star Bandz is Derrick Rose, then Jenn Carter is Jalen Brunson. Everyone in this video was born in 2004 or later. The raw energy here could power a limited series reboot of the War of 1812 — with Nemzzz as George Downie in a JK Attire tracksuit and Kyle Richh as James Madison smoking galaxy gas in a fronto wrap.
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