Consistency is in such short stock for new rap superstars ever since Donald J. Trump has been in office — taking a page from the choatic white supremacist himself — that rap fandom has a tendency to be like an acting audition: we’re constantly trying out new rappers who can be stars and remain at stardom, or the edges of it. Soundcloud fanatics will have to see what Veeze and Sexyy Red have to say during their tryout, but if there is anyone — aside from Drake, our Canadian rap monarch — that has captured the minds of fans, it's Atlanta’s Playboi Carti.
It is safe to say that we live in a rap world designated by Carti. Streaming has thinned out some of the quality in rage rap, especially the quality of the once budding Yeat, but Ken Carson wouldn’t have had his surprising and resurgent 2023 without Carti pulling his strings and standing behind him for inspiration. Carti’s performances, like the one at Rolling Loud in 2021, shine above for its riotous charm; his videos and fashion style remain rapturous. The kids all want to make his style of blazing rage hip-hop, especially Christmas 2020’s Whole Lotta Red, the masterpiece and inventive and record marked with sharp cuts of steel, hilarious non-sequitirs and acidic voices that pierce your ear and fracture your skill. Even with his numerous shortcomings in personal behavior (Carti is accused of domestic violence and being an absent father by two separate women), Carti’s general mystique and the new three songs he dropped in December — “H00DBYAIR” has the hunger of a GOOD Friday Kanye West track meets peak Future — are generally carrying his great 2021 into the upcoming year of 2024 like two years didn’t pass.
I was nervous about the state of hip-hop this year. As long as Black people are broke and have dead homies hip-hop will exist regionally, particularly in neighborhoods where those same Black people live. That is a little beyond for people — white people — who complain that rap is dead now. It is not dead; an artform that is birthed in the darkest of injustices will never die. It’s tart and bitterness — the qualities that make great rap happen — are born out of those neighborhoods. Even if hip-hop is sadly niche now, there will be enough quality music out there to satisfy my taste for icy and the hot steel that describes rap beats. Though, in my occupation overseeing the entire rap scene, I also realized that I want great rap music to exist in the mainstream. I want a person who can interpret the hieroglyphic production that we’ve received from Milwaukee into a package that people can relate to. Ice Spice and unheralded producer Riot USA did that with Like…?, by making drill music that women sexually swoon for. Maybe we need more of that; maybe I am asking for too much though. Growing up, in the 2000’s and the 2010’s, hip-hop was mainstream and regional at the same time. You could find a star in all regions and you can find their forebears from a few years prior too. Now, it is like there is increasingly one or the other choice.
One of the many reasons why Carti excites me so much is that he is for everyone without him not actually being for Black people. It is music that is two times better. So much so that people have no choice but to watch it create a tornado in the world; before you know it, everyone will be dressing like him and speaking in demonic code like he does. Fans leak songs before he leaks them because his mystique has them itching for more. He plays with the stereotypes that you expect rappers to be: arrogant, masculine, impulsive, and violent, and while he winks at you, he dips from everyone including his own proteges. That’s what hip-hop is at its best: a Black artform that plays within the stereotypes but also rises above it by sheer audaciousness.
If there’s a kid that I want to see more out of when it comes to rage rap, it is Yhapojj, an Alabama rapper signed to Simple Stupid Records, an imprint under Geffen. Fresh off his new EP Evolution of Xur, which sports the new TikTok anthem “You Lookin Gud”, Yhapojj was set to do a free performance at Mercury Lounge, a small live venue on the Lower East Side. It’s one of those venues that isn’t exactly built for big shows (more on that later) and in order to find Yhapojj, I must go to the right, through the ticket girl, and down a flight of stars that was made to be in Zodiac. Finally, after finishing those steps, which are frail, I get down to see Yhapojj with his entourage, some of which are supposed to perform before him. (the compelling xaviersobased, who I see in the corner not speaking, is going on at 10:15 according to the itinerary). Whatever legitimate and illegitimate internet lists you see on any service, have these kids on them. Seeing them in person is funny; these kids look like they could be the kid that shovels your snow.
When Yhapojj was a kid in Huntsville, Alabama, after the time that he was a right fielder in his youth Baseball and shortly after he first started going to the studio to rap, he was locked up in a juvenile detention center. Huntsville police caught him with a gun (and “other things' ', explained Yhapojj), and because he was 17, he was sentenced to a month. “It was sweet there. It was boring. You got time with yourself”, Yhapojj tells me. “People can’t deal with time to themselves.” While inside, arguments would be habitual; fights were almost mandatory. Take those facts and double the fact that he was juvenile during the beginning of the COVID-19 breakout, and Yhapojj was restless. “I couldn’t come out of my cell”, Yhapojj explains. “They locked me in there for three days bro.”
By the time that Yhapojj got out, he was learning what his taste was. From Kirk Franklin to Queen to Tracy Chapman to Young Thug — Thug is courtesy from his mother — he would gladly listen to, becoming more versed in the structure of song and the ability to stand out stylistically while expanding your persona. “One time I heard this nigga name Tracey (who used to go by Young Breh), and that was the first time Soundcloud rap spoke to me”, Yhapojj said, eager to give out flowers.
Yhapojj, whose music I like four out of the seven days of the week, has huge song making potential; the fact that the upstart has this much fanfare in such an early point of his career is a testament to his raw talent. The song “You Lookin Gud” plays with the Twlight aesthetic (“Y’all got to watch Underworld though”, Yhapojj is quick to tell me) that has dutifully applied in his music and visuals. Some of the Milwaukee’s Certified Trapper successive clapping — although it is unclear whether that is to pay homage or just a coincidence is in that song — but it is the minimal and guitar strings in the production that make that song go. It’s a small town jam session at a bar but in Soundcloud rap form, a genre that can sound quite large in the right hands. The rest of the Evolution of Xur has a more eclectic side. “1o”, my second favorite song on the album, shows Teezo Touchdown that you can take from rock music without being so blatant and mawkish about that influence. (Yhapojj has infinite rap instincts, something that Teezo doesn’t yet have). There’s a lot to work with here — especially his eccentric fashion (Yhapojj is wearing lanvin sneakers with shoelaces the size of snakes) — even if the rapping isn’t yet mature, the hooks are not nearly anthemtic enough, and the words not yet loquacious. But, Yhapojj doesn’t have much bravado; instead, the lyrics are reflective. “Making Evolution was amazing”, Yhapojj smiles and tells me. “All I hear is it on TikTok.” Despite that, he thinks TikTok gives him too much notification; it doesn’t matter to him whether the music goes hard on that app. He doesn’t maker music for that.
As for the performance, it ended up not happening. Whoever chose to make Mercury Lounge the location was wrong. Or, were they? Plenty of fans caused a disturbance outside by climbing on fire escapes and throwing metal detectors. Seeing them plastered outside the glass started to feel like a movie. Either this was a grave mistake — having the venue be something this small and lowkey on a night where fans were anything but —- or someone was keen to have Yhapojj go viral? Judging by the fanfare that night caused, you could argue both; Yhapojj was the star of the night, and he didn’t even have to ruin his mystique.