The Rap-Up: Week of February 18, 2025

Image via Lil1700adrian/Instagram

The Rap-Up is the only weekly round-up providing you with the best rap songs you need to hear. Support real, independent music journalism by subscribing to Passion of the Weiss on Patreon.

Steven Louis won the NBA Slam Dunk Contest on Saturday night.

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The Reaper is out, and he has Clint Mansell-type violin pulls on the private plane? Our attention has been sufficiently commanded. Despite the horrorcore spirits around him, “The Biggest G” is a tremendous celebration for a young star yet to experience unqualified freedom. He did his first juvenile bid at 14 years old, and was behind bars three more times before his 18th birthday. A gun charge last year saw him tried as an adult for the first time, and what was expected to be a 30-day sentence devolved into a contentious 12 months, all while his music leveled up to dizzying heights.

“I’m always going to jail, so like, my career just happens to always line up with bids. I ain’t spiritual, I’m not religious, but someone clearly wants a n— to make it,” Jaaybo told me from San Joaquin County Jail last summer. “Because I’m not dead, I’m not checked out. The fans still love me and a lot of people still speak highly of me. Other artists have gone to jail and then fell off. Someone’s clearly rooting for me.”

Jaaybo’s come-up would make Franz Kafka rage-quit and throw the controller through a wall. He caught a case as a desperate, poor kid in a desperate, poor city with ballooning child poverty rates. He was then thrown in and out of prison as the prior charges compounded, while those same illicit hustles earned him fans and fascination through music. Get caught with a pistol and add to the rap sheet; get caught without it and become a rap mural on Nightingale Ave.

“The Biggest G” has Jaaybo flashing his diamond grill and stunting on the tarmac, joyousness befitting a “first day out” commemoration. The EBK chain got bigger and icier; the Amiri store on Rodeo Dr. probably got its youngest client ever. The prototypical Stockton supercharged bass rattles around here, but the steel drums that play out every four bars is a new flourish. Don’t get it twisted, these raps are hateful – death threats, blood talk, one throwaway moment of homophobic vitriol.

This isn’t about “rooting” for Jaaybo, but acknowledging his inevitability and recognizing what cannot be simply locked away. The jet is now parked on his 2100 block. We can try to ground or search it at our own peril.

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X4 sounds like he has to rap. That’s not a statement on his drive or hustle – both certainly seem in place given his ascent through Los Angeles right now. Rather, X4 sounds like a teacher caught him rapping in the back, then made him stand up on his desk and recite it for the whole class. His flow is muttering, winding, almost reluctant. If you’re unfamiliar, the Rollin 40s rapper is an eye-rolling hood trophy with a penchant for minimalist bangers, and “Choose” is a terse two-minute jog through everything he does best. Baby semi-autos abound; unnamed opps get stuffed into chunky Backwoods; lips are sewn and stitched shut. X4’s delivery loops around the piano key crashouts, an ouroboros of hushed taunts and smirking stick talk. On this one, he’s as intimidating as he is absorbing.

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Stockton’s Lil1700adrian gets out of bed, refills the double cup and gets right to the work. “Money Flow” is a stimulant to count racks on at three in the morning. So much of the incumbent Stockton underground operates through pump fake flows and brutalist key mashing. Here, Adrian goes for soulful and meticulous, with an extra layer of duct tape around the plastic handle. It’s damn-near Detroit coded. He flashes $100,000 in cash while promising to still move like he’s broke. He puts money on his own head, then puts Ling Ling on Do Not Disturb. “Momma want her son to change but I’m too gang influenced,” he admits. “If they don’t let me through the door then I’m banging through it.” More to come, it seems.

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“Frontline” transports us from Sacramento to Hawaii. It’s a stern 10-toe anthem from a locale long exoticized. Juws, our gracious host, puts smoke in the air and distributes red rags to everyone in attendance. What do we do if the door in front of us lacks a keyhole? We kick that shit down, of course. There are faces reflecting in the puddles of tropical rainwater. The siren of the beast sounds the same on the mainland. NorCal’s Rico has lived a harrowing life — his father was incarcerated, his mother was in the unforgiving grips of addiction and his brother died behind bars when drug-carrying balloons burst inside him. Rico himself was in and out of CPS and different lockups while navigating Black-Mexican hood politics. Hawaii feels like a merciful place for the link up – proportionally, it’s the most multiracial state in the country; aesthetically, it’s the same familiar trenches. “Frontline” is melancholic but breezy, distant yet familiar.

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This is the Los Angeles update to Big L’s “Ebonics” that we didn’t know we needed. “Where you from” is not a question but a declaration and informal inquisition. “Arkansas” is not, in fact, the Razorback state, and “T.U.N.A.” can’t be found at Sugarfish. There’s no actual choice in “choosing up.” One “parties” via insufflation. “Staying dangerous” is how we actually remain safe. Drakeo the Ruler taught us the ways of the chilli baba and affirmed that being a joint is fantastic. But the Eastside’s Zoe Osama has a new one for us: “if somebody say ‘check it out,’ never ever go.”

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Maybe the best Nate Dogg sample in years. Long Beach’s DW Flame has one of the most explosive and incendiary deliveries in the game right now, contorting gruffness into an NFL Street “Gamebreaker 2” power move. What one foe can scare a man that regularly took three-on-ones? $tupid Young salutes LB’s Cambodia Town and drapes yellow tape around the neighborhood. The smokers amble down Cherry Ave. and the Eastsiders are taking rolling admissions on all fades. Nobody does it better.

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