Alphonse Pierre

Smokingskul: “Opp Click” Yesterday, I was on the internet reading about how damaging years of listening to music at max volume could be for your ears in the long run. For about five minutes I was in panic mode, because I have definitely been doing that all my life, and then I quickly forgot about it and played Smokingskul’s “Opp Click” with the volume maxed the fuck out. Trust me, it’s necessary. The three producers (tdf, perc40, and Jake Hansen) have never met a knob they wouldn’t turn until th…

Baby Osama: “Free Max B” The dirty mack sing-rap anthems that are all over New York right now probably wouldn’t exist without Max B: his crude yet romantic “Porno Musik” is the blueprint. Baby Osama’s “Free Max B” flips that Uptown classic, though I feel that she’s most influenced by him vocally. It’s the ethereal tinge to her melodies, with coos that sound like they’re being transmitted from underwater. She’s got that quality down whether the flow is fast or slow-mo, up in the clouds or tapped…

Laila!: “Soft Serve” On “Soft Serve,” Laila! writes like she’s therapeutically sounding off in the group chat. With airy, speak-sing vocals, the New York vocalist and producer—a couple of Brandy flips brought me to her music—sounds off about a guy who’s getting on her nerves. You can practically visualize the texts: He’s washed. All of his friends suck, too. The most vicious might be, “That’s the problem niggas be trippin’/Fathers talk to your children,” because she sounds so ashamed. “Soft Serv…

Mari Montana: “My Lil Shit (Pt.2)” Suddenly, on Valentine’s Day, rappers who’ve never said a romantic word in their lives are longing like Carl Thomas on the cover of Emotional. They’re taking a day off from hyper-masculine theatrics and dropping R&B-sampling mixtapes full of freaky sex fantasies. Mari Montana got the memo on “My Lil Shit (Pt.2)” (girls just love being called “My Lil Shit”). The lead song off Sincerely, Montana has the West Palm Beach spitter in full lover boy mode. He’s showeri…

Pitchfork writer Alphonse Pierre’s rap column covers songs, mixtapes, albums, Instagram freestyles, memes, weird tweets, fashion trends—and anything else that catches his attention. In the premiere episode of The Vince Staples Show, a satirical Netflix series that stars Vince Staples as a semi-fictionalized version of himself, life as a recognizable but not ultra-famous or filthy rich rapper is nothing but a hassle. A speeding violation spirals into a day tossed in jail, where he has run-ins wi…

The breakout rapper’s dystopian sci-fi concept album is full of glitzy soundscapes, rapidly morphing tempos, and naked cyborgian wails. Don’t mistake interstellar style for substance.

Tonn2Lit: “Trappa of the Year” From the first listen, the digital bounce of D.C. rapper Tonn2Lit’s “Trappa of the Year” had me nostalgic for spacey ATL trap gems like Mike Will’s joints on Future’s Pluto and Hoodrich Pablo Juan and Spiffy Global’s Master Sensei. Trap music has long been a major influence on the street anthems of the DMV, and that feels even more true lately. (Listen to MoneySet’s Free Tall Set Got You or Baby Jamo’s Backdoor Con Artist and tell me otherwise.) As for Tonn2Lit, he…

Cash Cobain & Bay Swag: “Fisherrr” Back in the mid-2010s, there were particular rappers who built their mythos around leaks and low-quality snippets—Young Thug and Playboi Carti, specifically—but now pretty much everyone plays that game. If a rapper has a fanbase, then it’s almost a guarantee that there is also a frenzied black market for unreleased songs and ripped Instagram previews. It’s so overwhelming that these days I rarely consume music this way. Cash Cobain and Bay Swag’s “Fisherrr” has…

The rapper’s new mixtape is a jewel of DC street rap, recounting hood epics and hustler origin stories with a potent sense of realism.

Balenci02: “Trending” Balenci02’s majestic, blown-out beats are what I imagine it’s like to stand in the eye of a hurricane: chaotic and supernatural and strangely alluring all at once. It’s a mystery that anyone can rap over them, but some like Fucksnowrr, Sai, and Balenci02 himself understand how to catch the bumpy grooves. On “Trending,” Balenci’s voice is a cloud of smoke floating through clashing drums and synths like shimmering cartoon crystals. Similar to Massachusetts rapper-producer Dev…

Pitchfork writer Alphonse Pierre’s rap column covers songs, mixtapes, albums, Instagram freestyles, memes, weird tweets, fashion trends—and anything else that catches his attention. On February 29, at the Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan, the marquee for one of Ot7Quanny’s first headline shows read “SOLD OUT,” and the line wrapped around the block. Content creators were out in full force, and, as happens with most hyped-up rap shows these days, it was mostly teenagers in Denim Tears sweatsuits and…

The song went viral on TikTok earlier this year, which of course is the bat signal for an OVO co-sign.

Fueled by off-the-cuff bars, absurdist maximalism, and elastic flows, the artist’s new mixtape is a welcome blast of rowdy Atlanta rap.

The “Get in With Me” rapper’s single-minded focus on getting money and spending it irresponsibly is a perfect distraction from the precarity of real life.

Nay Benz: “Jail Freestyle” “Jail Freestyle” will take you back to simpler times in New York drill: before the club beats, before the Batman voices, before the labels started handing out predatory record deals like Halloween candy, before the tragedies began to pile up. Nay Benz, in her first single since coming home from jail, returns to the basics: A flow that’s an all-out sprint, a relatively unbusy yet knocking beat, and some low-stakes dance moves in the video. Nay’s trademark is that she’s…

Two of rap’s biggest hitmakers team up for a sleek, vengeful project that somewhat successfully tries to recapture the feeling of an event album.

TyBass: “Anguilla” [ft. Lsdvas] The New York summertime anthems are coming. On my early admission list: Cash Cobain and Bay Swag’s “Fisherrr,” Xaviersobased’s “KlkMiHijo,” any Baby Osama song, and whichever 41 leak actually comes out in full. There are more contenders on TyBass’ recent mixtape Gyallery (Side B), a breezy blend of sing-rap melodies and lush, reggae-infused vibes that call for wheeling out the powerful sound systems. Among the highlights are the dreamy “Tantalize” and “Handle Datt…

Sometimes it’s just nice to hear a deranged concoction of expensive nonsense.

Baby Fifty: “Stop Barrin on the Men” The spooky, percussion-heavy beats that dominate DMV street rap are usually so formulaic that any time one is slightly different, it throws me off completely. For example: TrapMoneyBiggie’s instrumental for “Stop Barrin on the Men” (no idea what that title even means), which lays the traditional sputtering drums over a wonky sample that sounds like a DMV crank producer scoring an adaptation of an Agatha Christie murder mystery. (TrapMoneyBiggie is actually fr…

Who the fuck wants to hear an extremely measured and level-headed assessment of Kendrick’s albums in a diss track?