Art via Evan Solano
Harley Geffner still wants to know if Project T-Pain is 03 Greedo’s best album?
LaRussell has always felt more like a neighbor with a microphone than anything else. His raps are stubbornly community-first, grounded in Bay Area pride and an almost radical commitment to optimism. The so-called “promotional stunts” he’s become known for don’t really register as stunts at all. They’re closer to civic exercises. Pop-up gatherings where he’ll stop mid-performance, let a soft keyboard loop breathe, and take questions from the crowd about grief, doubt, or simply how to keep going. He often brings kids from the crowd on-stage to perform songs with him, and he rarely, if ever, curses in his music.
His latest run continues that ethos in the most joyful way possible. LaRussell has been pulling up to high schools, first while on tour and now more intentionally across the Bay, turning pep rallies into music videos. Football teams crash the frame. Dance crews, color guard, and whoever else wants to fill the screen. Each clip feels like a sugar rush, the kind of unfiltered joy adults spend years trying to remember how to access. And the song itself plays like a love letter to home, packed with gigging and other Bay-specific dances.
What makes it work is how little of it feels forced. LaRussell’s music is genuinely uplifting, and rarely feels corny, which is hard to accomplish given his style and persona. It’s hard not to read it as a rebuke to hollow rollouts and branded moments. LaRussel is basically saying that community is the whole point, and it’s not just a backdrop or marketing angle.
We here at POW are absolute suckers for a good crew cut, and this one checks every box. Staying in the Bay, anchored by a Keak Da Sneak sample, the record assembles six rappers with shared geography but wildly different approaches, all tearing through a beat built on creeping bells and forward motion. The energy feels jet-fueled, verses piling up with barely a pause to breathe.
What keeps it from blurring together is the variety. Each rapper attacks the beat from a different angle, shifting flows and cadences just enough that the song never settles into autopilot. You’re locked in for the full three and a half minutes, alert, waiting to see who’s about to switch the rhythm or sneak in a new pocket.
As hard as the rapping goes, the video’s quiet comedy is just as compelling. There’s an almost endearing level of excitement about being inside the Empire offices. Empire merch everywhere. Logos in every direction. At one point, someone literally holds up an Empire throw pillow behind ALLBLACK while he’s rapping, just in case you missed the point.
Rio rapping over a F1LTHY beat? Count me in. On “CANT GO UNDER,” F1LTHY cooks up a beat that hums with a rubbery low end and off-kilter momentum, like the floor itself is trying to throw you off balance. Rio, Mike, and DC2Trill don’t fight it. They lean into the wobble, sliding across the beat as it tilts beneath them, flows counterweighting the chaos just enough to keep everything upright.
Rio is, as always, an S-tier rapper. Lines like “the drank man just pulled up with some green? damn near got shot for that” land with that effortless Rio casualness, the kind of bar that only sounds obvious after the fact. Still, this might be one of those rare records where the features steal the spotlight. Mike comes through in a full-on flow state, talking his sixth-man role with pride, smoking black and milds as a telltale sign he’s locked in, and shooting hopeful DMs at Sexyy Red. DC2Trill doesn’t overwhelm you with punchlines, but plays with pockets and rhyme patterns, rapping with a loose, unquantifiable one-take swagger.
One of the hardest songs of the year, point blank. Memphis rappers DeeMula and YTB Fatt take a left-turn approach, rapping completely out of their minds with flows that feel unfamiliar even by Memphis standards. The beat is bludgeoning, and these guys match the energy.
DeeMula sounds borderline unhinged in the best way, his voice slurring and swaying, leaning into repetition and screaming adlibs, but tweaking it just enough each time that the cadence becomes its own hook. This is feel over form, forgoing any traditional structure and just revving itself into a frenzy as hammers smack you from every direction, possessed by the rhythmic lilts in his own voice.
YTB Fatt slides in with that unmistakable Memphis drawl, where “music” turns into “myurzik” and every vowel stretches just a little longer than expected. His delivery is deceptively smooth against the violence of the beat, grounding the song without sanding off its edges. Together, they turn something raw and abrasive into something that feels chaotic but clearly isn’t accidental. It’s the kind of song that sounds reckless at first listen but reveals a strange, intentional precision the longer it sits with you.
Brooklyn by way of Florida rapper Niontay’s thesis statement arrives right before a warbling, Drakeo-esque shit-talking session at the end of the song: “I’m a G, a galactic G, a galactic general, you is an earthling bitch.” It neatly sums up his entire presence here. Niontay raps like laser beams are shooting out of his eyes, scattering in every direction at once. His flow isn’t linear so much as molecular, bars breaking apart and snapping back together into something just shy of coherence.
He’s slippery, evasive, lurking in the margins of the beat. In the bushes, like top of the morning. Nothing lands exactly where you expect it to.
The greyscale video deepens the effect, stripping the visuals down to pure mood and motion. It’s surveillance footage from another dimension, Niontay drifting through the frame as if gravity doesn’t fully apply to him. By the time the song ends, you’re not entirely sure what just happened, only that you watched someone operate on a different plane and make it look easy.
In the mood for another cypher? You’re in luck.
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