Image via tg.blk/Instagram
Harley Geffner wants to know what they even do in the Met Gala.
You can take one of several driving options to get from LA to the Bay. There’s 5 freeway that cuts through industrial cities, farm country, and expansive dried out hills. There’s the 101 that winds around the coast before cutting into the wine country and then the Santa Clara Valley. The final choice is the scenic Pacific Coast Highway that takes at least an extra 3 hours, but it’s colorful, lush, and full of side quests. The Cali rappers on this collab metaphorically took the picturesque route to see each other – as “Hot Boyz” is filled with those vibrant, bright sounds, and off the beaten path odysseys distilled into single bars.
Nef starts off the song with a growl, revealing his new bald head, and comparing himself to Birdman. It already feels like a plotline in and of itself. Then Greedo raps that he stores his choppa in a rock like Camelot. The beat features a smooth west coast lilt and some whistles out of a Wild West duel, and all 4 guys find fun pockets to poke around in. Wallie pulls up to the “shindig,” to let off his “doohickey,” Kony makes bars about putting enemies in a tuxedo sound fun, Greedo flexes the parmesan-colored interior of his car, and Nef does crimes by himself like he’s Zack without Cody. A million side quests, full of colorful imagery over what feels like one of the best West Coast beats of the year.
Whenever there’s a rap flow that feels new to the public or is being talked about as new, it can usually be traced back to either Biggie or someone in Memphis. There are a few exceptions to this rule every year, of course, and those are the flows that tend to latch onto my brain. They just don’t fully compute until I’ve spent enough time with them, and there’s a real itch to keep going back to flesh it out. The only such rapper that has caught my ear in that way this year is Skrilla.
Out of the Kensington neighborhood, Skrilla has taken the dark Philly drill sound and morphed it into something that doesn’t compute. Every single feels more foreign than the last one. He’s not even leveling up with each drop, it’s leveling onto different dimensional planes. On the harrowing “Fallen Angel,” Chuckyy does his best Skrilla impression, and it feels like he can actually do it until Skrilla himself comes in and obliterates not only his collaborator, but the structural integrity of what rap is expected to sound like.
A few lines into his verse, right after he raps that he pops a perc before brushing his “grippers,” he drops into the craziest stutter step hesitation move. He hones in on the words “I might,” as if he’s really contemplating what he might do in real time. It’s completely off-pace, sprung off a single downtrodden key and delivered in a drowsy spin. It feels like SGA’s off-kilter dribble moves were exponentially amplified and thrown through a dryer cycle with a pair of shoes banging against the walls. He settles on what he might do (pull up in a matte black suburban) and then condenses the “might” flow down a notch to explain that he might also swerve in a different lane. Smacking the wood just because it’s how he’s feeling today.
Skrilla’s 2024 run of singles is going to be discussed in the history books alongside rappers that people would get mad at me for putting him next to.
This is one of those songs that could be played on a loop for hours because the beat-voice combo is so intoxicating. It feels like a cool breeze, blowing in off the water on a summer morning. It feels like being surrounded by friends and family. It’s a vibe you just want to live in. No surprise here, but tg.blk is from a coastal area. She hails from Mombosa, Kenya, but as of 2021, was living in Maryland. Her total streaming discography is only 12 minutes long, she only has 3 videos on her YouTube, but you can find more of her on SoundCloud.
The first thing you hear on “can’t stand it,” is a Tommy Wright III sample, dripping into the beat. The first thing you see is tg’s platinum blonde wig once the video frames her up. They draw you into her hypnotic world, where her hook seemingly calms every muscle in the body and every tremor of the mind. It’s almost meditative as she sails through the loopy beat, culminating in a group of kids singing the melody. If TDE ever got their hands on tg, it’d be a wrap.
Pa Salieu’s music feels so fluid. It waves more than it bounces between bars, sounds, and ideas. Back from a 21-month prison stint for using a bottle (“as an offensive weapon”) to chase away someone who murdered his friend, the British Gambian rapper sounds spry as ever. “Belly,” feels like a summer jam, with strokes of inspiration. He goes through all the things the ghetto man can do (have an accountant, go to mayfair, still be humble, etc.) before he launches into a vibey hook about the come up, and having to feed the belly. It’s all delivered in a sort of patois that gives it a real regional and dialectic charm.
Baton Rouge’s Maine Musik first caught my attention for declaring war on Donald Trump for trying to take his mom’s food stamps. A righteous cause if there ever was one. His co-founder of the Spider Gang label, TEC, said that the video spurred a visit from the Secret Service, where they also took him at his word that they were “on the phone with ISIS,” getting ready for war against Trump. After federal attention was placed on the pair of rappers, a serial number on a gun from a music video linked Maine to possession of stolen weapons. Maine spent 6 years behind bars on these charges, and released “I Run Spider Nation 2.0” as his second song as a free man.
The raw hunger from his early videos is still there, the bluesy tone of his voice, and the fun wordplay is strong as ever. He raps with vigor, “The clip curved like the letter C, you gon’ see me unload it,” right at the camera, over the twangy beat. He talks about the people who made excuses for moving on while he was away and levels threats that would scare ISIS were he to actually reach the organization.
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