Harley Geffner is ending the year still wanting to know if Project T-Pain is 03 Greedo’s best album?
This was originally going to be a winners and losers of 2025 column, but in the spirit of positivity and the new year, we will be focusing exclusively on the winners and best moments of the year in rap instead. There’s enough negativity in the atmosphere to fuel an army of satanic hellcats already, and we all know Young Thug and Milwaukee rap had down years.
That being said, these are some of my favorite musical moments, snippets, artists and themes of the year in rap, in no particular order. This is not a list of moments that moved the culture or exploded in mainstream rap, but it’s a testament to my personal taste and what moved me the most. In sum, it felt like a down year for rap compared with some recent years, but every year is a good year for rap if you’re looking hard enough. It’s not a dying medium, and conversations implying as much are either overblown, or not being argued in good faith. Rap is awesome, innovative, catchy, and continuing to evolve in new directions. There’s something for everybody, so let’s get to it.
T9ine was once one of the hottest young artists bubbling up as a teenager, with huge cosigns from some of rap’s biggest names. His career hit a major speed bump when he was arrested on attempted murder charges in 2021, and spent the next three years fighting them. His lawyers successfully argued that the prosecution’s case relied on cellphone tower data from CellHawk, a remarkably flawed company with very unserious guardrails against unreliable data. He beat the case because of the inconsistencies with the location pinning, but still went on to serve nine months on a guilty plea for dealing in stolen goods.
His once blossoming career was put on hold yet again, and now, his songs trickle out one at a time. This year, he released only three singles, making them feel like rare collectibles. Two of them had still photos as the cover art for the video on YouTube, and the most recent one has a video. He always had a knack for picking these beautiful, spacy beats and has a way of suspending his voice so it just floats through the cosmos. There’s been ups and downs in his life, as in anyone’s life, and he is a walking reminder to keep it cool. Play it down the middle, and let the chips fall where they may. That’s always what he sounds like rapping.
Yabbie was one of rap’s MVPs this year. Unheralded, but still one of the funniest and most consistent rappers out right now. He is prolific, and he and his crew of San Diego rappers seem to have the most fun of anyone recording videos since the wave of Flint-based jokestars in 2020 first emerged on the scene. He wears a chain with a big foot on it, all of his friends are his feet, he’s always stomping something or putting his foot somewhere it doesn’t belong. His favorite word and vocal signature is “YOP.”
In every one of his crew cuts, Yabbie stands out as the best rapper (sorry to his friends thought they are still quite good), with tricky tip-toeing the tightrope flows. In one video, he’s wearing a hulk hogan suit and throwing defunct recording equipment at a wall. In another, he’s throwing paper balls at an instructor teaching the class how to pimp, instead of simp. Remember that time they revived jerk music this year? I do. You never know what you’re going to get when you click one of his videos, and his YouTube channel remains a constant source of joy.
This was, obviously, the year of Skrilla. Just as last year was. His music continues to get weirder, his hieroglyphics more indecipherable, and his imitators less powerful. Yes, his lexicon is annoying middle school teachers across the country, but he’s also the most original rap stylist since Thug and Drakeo, and continues to wash every single feature. My favorite Skrilla moment of the year is from 1:05 to 1:32 in THIS song with Reese Youngn. He takes Reese’s bar ending in the Dragon Ball Z “kamehameha,” and zips it up, rapping “Kame kame you, I’m thumbin through the sack like Yu-Gi-You, I put a sack right on yo hat and they gon’ black when they see you.” Some rappers will talk about how their opps are scared of them. Skrilla will tell you he has no opps because they’re all “in the grapevine.”
For my money though, his best song this year was a double feature of Mozz Crib / Butter, shown at the top. Then he also proved that he can outrap anyone bar for bar, even when he goes for a more straightforward flow, like on “Shirt Off.”
These three songs are very different in scope, but they all have this underlying child-like tone to them. Oakland rapper QMC Reese is just singing da da da da over and over his aggressive raps, and the beat sounds like 30 people trying to sing a beat together. Then New Orleans rapper La Reezy taps into this Nappy Roots style to uplift himself and the community of kids throwing footballs or grilling on the streets around him. Lilqua 50, out of Milwaukee, is singing literally about how this girl will come back around during summer vacation from school.
Some people say it’s the voice, some say it’s the beat, and some claim the best rap comes from the bars. I measure it all in fun, and when these rappers tap into their most juvenile, lunchtable banging energy, it dials these songs up to 100, and makes them instant sing-alongs to brighten your day.
Here’s what I wrote about this song for a Rap-Up in February of this year:
Space and place will always be the main animators of the best rap music. It’s why we like to focus this column mainly on regional rap, grounded in lived experience, rather than glossy high-budget board room approved music. But there exists a trap door where a region’s distinct sound, which is what makes it special in the first place, starts to lean into the type-beat and type-raps of the innovators. There are different fonts on it and some breakthroughs, but it can start to feel a little monotonous. This is what happened to the rubbery basslines of NY drill in the post Pop Smoke wave.
Maybe it’s just the home team bias that has always prevented LA rap from feeling like this previously, but over the last 6 months, LA street rap has fallen into the danger zone around post-Drakeo coalescence. Drakeo’s music sounded good, obviously, but the main reason was the character behind the music and his inimitable wit and acerbic charm. The formula wasn’t the sauce, it was Drakeo himself. X4s are a dime a dozen now, and the nervous music snaps still sound good, but they, at times, feel played out in their current iteration.
On “Reincarnated,” Thirstyowe3k and producer Jroszz break through the noise with something that expands upon the sound rather than trying to replicate it. It starts with the beat, which takes the typically dark key and leans into a spacey wobble before the bass drops the bottom out around 20 seconds in. The haziness gives it a different look, which is (probably unintentionally) aided by the low quality upload that makes it look like you’re watching a Snapchat sent from an Android in 2014. Thirsty, hailing from the Westmont area of LA (Rollin 100s Crip), capitalizes on the drop by jumping right into a killer staccato flow, which at first sounds conventionally hard, but swerves off the rails in his rhyme schemes. He’s not the only one breaking through, but the noise is reaching maximum capacity, and it’s refreshing to hear someone trying to do something different with it.
Paxslim, Ffawty (second verse of second song above), and El Snappo win the inaugural Geffner Accent Award for 2025. I will be back next year to name more champions.
I have written extensively about RX Papi this year, including one Rap-Up that was entirely devoted to his new releases. There’s not identifiably much that separates his best work from his regular output, but it’s one of those, you know it when you hear it situations. This year has been filled with some of his absolute best. He’s as introspective as ever, bitter and vengeful, self-aware and dadaist in his perspective. He has been one of the greatest runs of his career, or really any career for that matter, and continues to experiment with different types of beats and styles. He even linked up with Alchemist and Nicolas Craven this year just for the sake of it. His continuation of his series honoring his late friend and confidant, Fay, is some of the best rap music I’ve ever heard. In 2025, he released parts 5 through 8.
Once again, rap is about having fun. Most of the raps in this cypher are very good. Some aren’t, but they’re all fun, regardless. Can I get a “YEERRRRR” please?
It’s hard to stand out in Detroit. So many incredible rappers have spawned from the area in the past half-decade, that you need to be really unique to break through these days. Lelo managed to do exactly that this year, with a really cool style owing as much to pacing and rhythm as to his pen. He has a great ear for the skeletal and militant Detroit beats, and seems to really value space in his raps. His opening verse here is one of the best of the year.
Been humming the hook all year like a Tourette tic.
Greedo is such a complete rapper that all of his fans gravitate towards different subsections of his music. Some love aggressive barred up Greedo, some are into lovey Greedo, and others love his more mournful side. Personally, my favorite Greedo is the improvisational, warbling Greedo. We got quite a few songs tapping into that vibe this year, but “Nonelse to do” took the cake. Just run the last minute of the track, and you can hear his instincts take over.
Shout out to Peep’s mother, Liza, who has done a masterful job in preserving his legacy and managing his estate and vaults of music with care. “GODS” was always such a powerful feeling song. You could be listening to it off your iPhone speaker, held up to your ear on the 6 train, and it will still feel like you’re hearing it in a Dolby IMAX super supertheater on Mars. What a beautiful voice Peep had. “Louboitins on my feet but I ain’t got no job,” indeed.
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