That Mexican OT (Outta Texas) was mumbling raps before he could write them. When he failed grade school classes, he remembers his mother saying, “Fuck that school — my son is going to be a rapper.” In middle school, his father regularly woke him late at night to battle (and embarrass) his inebriated homies. OT’s decision to pursue a rap career might seem inevitable in this light, but he needed one final push, a moment of clarity so profound he couldn’t deny fate. That life-altering realization, as it does for so many, arrived when he was running from the law. He was also soaked in urine, his toes caked with fresh cow shit.

“I pissed on myself like 12 times that night to stay warm. It was cold as fuck. I was stepping in cow shit to keep my toes warm,” OT explains over the phone, understandably mum about the incident preceding the police chase. “I’m running from Brazoria [County, Texas] all the way to Lake Jackson. And while I’m running, guess what I’m doing? I’m rapping. That’s when I realized there’s no running from this rap shit. I have no choice but to do it.”

Today, things are much improved from that ripe and shivery night in the Texas backwoods. The 24-year-old born Virgil Gazcon lives in Brazoria (about an hour south of Houston) with his girlfriend and his dog, Bushwick Bill. (OT says his dad partied with the famous Geto Boy.) Quietly signed to Good Talk/Manifest/Good Money Global last year, he spends most days playing video games, relaxing with family, and recording. Of late, he’s added performing to the regular agenda. When we speak in mid-June, OT is back home from a string of sold-out Texas shows in cities like Corpus Christi and Austin.

“I’ve been performing my whole life,” he says when asked how he prepared for his first concerts. “I was sitting on the bed rapping to music videos while my mom ironed money on the floor. My dad would wake me up in seventh grade — house full of women and dudes — and he’d want me to eat these dudes up in rap battles. I’ve been performing. Now, I’m just getting paid for it.”

In recent months, OT’s taken the first step toward building a national profile. His late May single “Johnny Dang,” a titular ode to rap’s preeminent Texas jeweler featuring Paul Wall, continues to rack up millions of plays across streaming platforms and recently landed on several Billboard charts. The single’s sparse, ominous, and almost ethereal trap beat bumps as OT flexes the iced-grill spoils of moving weight and eliminates rivals with extreme, Tony-Montana-like prejudice. It’s not a thematic marvel but a display of singular technique and rhythmic excellence. OT rolls dizzying strings of constants like it’s an autonomic function, fires rounds of syllables that would tongue-tie many peers, and deftly shifts in and out of double-time cadences. And though “Johnny Dang” distills some of OT’s greatest strengths, it only reveals one shade of a much broader musical palette.

OT’s forthcoming album, Lonestar Luchador (GoodTalk/Manifest/Good Money Global), is a seamless fusion of contemporary trap, Texas blues, and country with nods to ‘90s New York boom bap, narco rap, screw music, mariachi, and more. (Big L, 50 Cent, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Santana, and George Strait are on the short list of OT’s favorite artists.) It’s the sound of a Texas-raised music-obsessive with eclectic tastes, over a decade of rap experience, and a harrowing past finding his voice and the confidence therein. In the estimation of this writer, it’s one of the best rap albums of 2023.

“I’m excited to fuck ‘em up,” OT says. “I put a lot of thought and a lot of work into it. I’m just overall proud of it.”

On the surface, Lonestar Luchador is a modern street rap album you could recommend to fans of fellow Texans like Maxo Kream and BigXthaPlug. Closer listening reveals OT’s reverence for classicist NY rap and Midwest chopping. He doesn’t reach deep into the Jansport for his metaphors and similes, but their rapid succession makes them a collective knockout. In addition to rapping some bars in Spanish, he employs growling, half-sung lines he says are indebted to blues legend Howlin’ Wolf. OT is equally comfortable rapping over skittering hi-hats and bluesy, psychedelic guitar riffs, so the album rarely feels disjointed. And he adds more structure through skits with Texas comedian Ralph Barbosa, the pair co-announcing lucha libre matches featuring such characters as The Invisible Masturbator and Los Federales. Topically, Lonestar Luchador doesn’t move far beyond firing on opps, fucking, and gleeful substance abuse. But there’s a ballad of heartache on par with any contemporary country song, and beneath all the partying, swaggering, and chest-beating on the album, you can hear OT’s musical passion and desperation.

“I can’t cook. I suck at following rules. I can’t pay attention for shit. The real world wasn’t for me, so I had to make this music happen.”

OT often calls his hometown of Bay City, Texas by a different name: “Be Careful.” The imperative is fitting for a small, rural town nearly 100 miles from Houston, where one either worked for local plants or jumped into gangbanging and its concomitant hustles. OT’s parents passed on their broad musical tastes, playing everything from Juvenile to Muddy Waters and jazz, but they weren’t punching in at the plant. OT’s father was incarcerated for much of his childhood, and his mother made most of her income selling crack. She was killed by a drunk driver when was 26, leaving an 8-year-old OT and his younger half-brother in the care of family members.

Losing his mother and being separated from his brother drove OT deeper into writing raps. A therapeutic outlet on the one hand, rap was also the link to older cousins who recorded as Kick Doe Click. But no amount of writing could erase the grief OT grappled with while living with his grandmother. When OT’s father was released from prison a few years later, OT moved with him to Austin. His father put a roof over his head, but there was little emotional support or supervision.

“I was alone, and I was always in trouble. I was mad at the fucking world,” OT says of his time in Austin. By the end of middle school, he was doing bumps in the bathroom stall, fighting with classmates regularly, and trying to sell drugs. “My dad had some drugs in his truck, so here I am thinking I’m grown trying to sell drugs and shit. I was just getting in trouble with dumb shit.”

Outside of school, OT found solace and distraction from his solitude in the arts. He devoured the urban young adult novels of Walter Dean Myers, wrote and recorded raps, and began drawing. The routine remained the same at Stony Point High School in Austin. OT managed to graduate, but he had no career plans. It wasn’t long before he was engaging in the street activities he chronicles in his raps.

“You can’t rap shit like that without it being real. They’ll pull your card,” OT says. “I’m really in the hood with these motherfuckers every day. Somebody going to pull your card. You got to be about it.”

After that fateful night of piss, cow shit, and being about it, OT started recording earnestly. He rapped over YouTube beats until producers began reaching out. Between 2020 and 2022, OT released four projects: South Texas Project (2020), Southside Steppin (2021), 1 Double 0 (2021), and Nonsense and Mexican Shit (2022). Each record improved upon its predecessor, OT’s delivery becoming sharper and more distinctive as the production grew more polished. Listen to them in succession and you can hear his musical vision building to Lonestar Luchador.

Since OT signed with Good Talk/Manifest/Good Money Global in 2022, his life has been a blur of recording sessions, album strategy meetings, music video shoots, and interviews. While the Paul Wall-assisted “Johnny Dang” climbs the charts, OT’s recording with more Texas rap icons. Though he can’t reveal any forthcoming collaborations on the record, he’s quick to mention that he’d like to work with Devin the Dude, going so far as to sing the hook for “Doobie Ashtray.” With OT’s talent, taste, and reverence for his predecessors, he may continue to bridge generational divides. And while Texas rap had a short-lived moment of national resonance in the early aughts (see Mike Jones, Paul Wall, Slim Thug, etc.), OT has the potential to put the state on the proverbial map once again.

“I’m working with all the legends,” OT says, his voice brimming with pride, “and they love me.”

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Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that highlights exceptional rising rappers. To read previous columns, click here.

Name five Boston rappers. Take a second. Stop reading and think about it.

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Kudos if you got as far as Guru, Mr. Lif, and Cousin Stizz. (Great shame on your house if you went with Benzino or one of the Wahlbergs.) But unless you’re from Boston or a regional rap obsessive, you probably didn’t hit the magic (or Ron Mercer) number. While New York, L.A., the Bay, Houston, Atlanta, and other regions have national stars and years of acclaim, most Boston rappers struggle to bubble in their city, let alone beyond it. There are several reasons for this perennial reality, but talent isn’t one of them.

“Is [recognition for Boston rap] going to change at the speed we want it? No,” says Kadeem. A proud native of Boston’s Mattapan neighborhood — an enclave of Jewish, Haitian, African, and Caribbean communities — he’s also one of the city’s most talented rappers. “That’s because we don’t have the same infrastructure as New York or L.A. Also, it’s a very white city. Hip-hop gets pushed to the edges here because of the population. It’s a lot of things in one, but I feel positive. It’s just a matter of being unapologetic about hip-hop and what it means to us.”

Kadeem’s music makes no apologies, offering an unsparing look at Black life in Boston as he chronicles his career and the many forces behind Mattapan homicides in alternately coded and direct verses. Imagine a cross between Ka and Prodigy — the subtle literary precision and concision of the former with the rock-you-in-your-face clarity and pathos of the latter — and you’re close to the sound and feel of his catalog.

On April’s Who Cyan Hear Must Feel, the 30-year-old sharpens his layered wordplay and vivid imagery to their finest point. Over slow, soulful loops and sparse drums, Kadeem deftly draws parallels between slavery and incarceration on “Resolute” (“Lo said he wanted revenge for our forefathers / When the gavel bang, equivalent to more slaughter”) and renders the consequences of hustling with poignant humanity and specificity on “Broken Sticks” (“Free all my blood who got concrete as they living quarters / Palms reach on scarred plexi for estranged sons and dismissive daughters”). Every song, some of which are self-produced, has room for his voice to breathe and his words to sink in.

“Performing is cool, but what really brings me passion is the creation of the work. I get so excited about being clever,” Kadeem explains over the phone. Though grateful to hit the road for his recent tour with Boston producers Lightfoot and Loman, he prefers audiences to sit with and analyze his music. “Sometimes when I’m rapping on stage, I’m looking at people like, ‘They’re not getting the nuance of that.’ That’s fine, but there are people who have really intimate relationships with my music who will text me [about my lyrics]. I get a lot of satisfaction from that.”

Between his 2018 debut project, The Game is the Game, and Who Cyan Hear Must Feel, Kadeem’s released his 2019 debut album World Sport and a few short EPs. He approaches each project and verse with the same gravity. There is no wasted motion, nary a song that wasn’t labored over until it seemed effortless. In many songs, either subtly or explicitly, he reps Mattapan.

“[Boston rappers] know people know what Boston is, but we want them to know that Boston has hoods. That’s why you might hear people say [hoods like] Dorchester, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, Hyde Park, or South End. We want to make sure we don’t feel disconnected from our hoods and that the world knows they exist.”

Kadeem was born and raised in Mattapan, the neighborhood’s heavy Caribbean population making the area a home away from home for his Jamaican parents. Reggae blared from the sound system at Kadeem’s house during backyard barbecues, the sizzling scent of jerk chicken wafting through the summer air. The parties continued at the Caribbean Cultural Center, a local hub for everything from birthday parties and dance competitions to repasses. Dancing on stage and in the crowd, Kadeem looked up to the family and friends selecting records and toasting on the mic, all but ensuring that he’d one day perform.

The functions were necessary reprieves from the family’s daily reality. During his grade school years, Kadeem’s parents split, his family faced regular harassment from the Boston Police Department (i.e., several violent and unwarranted raids), and the older brother who introduced him to 2Pac and Mobb Deep went to prison. Before and after his brother’s incarceration, Kadeem occasionally hustled to supplement his mother’s minimum-wage income.

“There’s a saying: ‘Are you hustling to be seen, or are you hustling to disappear?’ I treated it like checking in at McDonald’s or any 9 to 5,” Kadeem says. “Everything went towards rent, food, and helping my mom out with her crib. The glamor for this shit never really clicked with me. I was doing this shit to get by.”

Sports seemed like they might help Kadeem do more than get by during his years at Brockton High School. He played cornerback and ran track, spending the time in between freestyling with his friends. When a lingering hamstring injury ended his track career at UMass Boston, however, he shifted his focus to music. However, finding his sound took years.

In the early aughts, Kadeem recorded over early instrumentals from Los Angeles beat scene luminaries like FlyLo, Samiyam, and Dibiase. He slowly honed his craft while working various day jobs, sometimes hustling to supplement their meager pay. His sound began to coalesce on 2018’s The Game Is the Game, around the time he became the resident MC for Nightworks.

A bi-monthly beat night run by Rah Zen, Nightworks became a hub for the city’s beat scene and a vital extension of its rap community. When Kadeem released his 2019 debut World Sport, the energy in his section of the Boston music community was electric. Artists collaborated and threw events together while getting recognition and grants from the city. Sadly, the lights went out figuratively and literally during the pandemic. Nightworks shuttered, and Kadeem couldn’t push World Sport as far as he’d planned. Fortunately, Kadeem has found stable work as a school administrator of late, affording him the stability to record with more regularity as Boston’s rap community regroups once more.

“There was so much momentum in the city [before COVID], from artist projects to scenes to innovations to grants the city developed. 2019 was a big year for that. Everyone’s energy was like, “2020 is going to be fire.” That definitely came to an abrupt halt. It’s slowly coming back. We’re trying to get the energy back.”

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Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that highlights exceptional rising rappers. To read previous columns, click here.

Rap rewards groups, crews, and cliques. Semi-free Substacks, the back pages of semi-functioning blogs, and the few music publications still on life support are full of articles championing conglomerates of loosely affiliated artists. Aligning yourself with a crew can also translate to valuable networking — fellow members can link you with booking agents, managers, etc. — and visibility. For better or worse, Gabe ‘Nandez has spent much of his career moving solo.

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“I’m not really cliqued up. I never have been,” ‘Nandez says over the phone from his apartment in Manhattan’s Lower East Side neighborhood. The Malian and Argentinian son of UN diplomats, he spent his childhood globetrotting and changing schools, which might explain his preference for solitude. “This rap shit is similar to the politics of a school environment. It’s very tribal and cliquey.… I’m really focused on music.”

‘Nandez is several years sober, but he’s wired and coming down from a sleepless night of writing when he answers the phone early on a weekday morning. He writes lyrics every evening after work, collapsing at sunrise or channeling his creative high into early morning Muay Thai training. The 29-year-old’s regimented and almost monastic devotion to his craft is evident in the polish of his music, from the harrowing and autobiographical Bildungsroman of Diplomacy (2019) to his feature verse on billy woods’ Aethiopes (2022) and this April’s Pangea.

While ‘Nandez’s music has been featured in outlets like Pitchfork, Bandcamp, and Stereogum, the rapturous praise heaped on New York drill stars and the city’s recurring crop of uninspired ‘90s fetishists has eluded him. It could be his lack of clique affiliation, his slight social media presence, or the unpredictability of his projects. In our era of passive listening and mood-driven playlists, rappers are rewarded for familiar rehashings of previous work instead of artistic risk and, perhaps, growth.

“I switch sonically a lot from project to project. I don’t want to make the same thing twice, at least not back-to-back,” ‘Nandez explains. “That just sounds so boring to me, and I don’t want to get bored when I’m creating.”

Whether he’s rapping over icy and modern boom-bap (“Ox”) or guitar-accented trap (“Up Top”), ‘Nandez sounds like he’s digested and reconceived decades of New York rap. Imagine a cross between Guru and KA with Rawkus-era Mos Def’s energy and hints of DMX-level aggression, and you’re close to his sound but not quite on the mark. Far from music nostalgia-driven pastiche, ‘Nandez’s music is the next evolution of regional tradition. His smoke-coated baritone imbues brass-knuckle threats and braggadocio with menace and the more philosophical and literary lines with gravity. Raised in a multilingual household, he sometimes effortlessly slides in and out of English, dropping Spanish phrases and entire sixteens in French.

April’s Pangea is ‘Nandez’s most formally accomplished project and the first to feature so many collaborators. Recorded in the summer of 2020 and produced by Tony Seltzer (Wiki, MIKE, Princess Nokia), it’s a knocking and propulsive time capsule, the features from rising NY city rappers like YL and Radamiz a testament to ‘Nandez’s continued efforts to build his artistic circle. Pointed darts (“Context”) bump next to bouncing flexes that should be rattling Jeeps and club speakers in every borough (“Risk”). ‘Nandez also delivers a drug-addled memoir that feels like watching someone Harlem shake to Requiem for a Dream (“Transactions”). While he raps with the precision, fluidity, and destruction of a martial artist, you can feel the mania bubbling underneath every bar.

“Pangea is just very high energy and manic, very explosive. I was in a crazed state. I’m always in a trance when I’m making music, but it was a different trance. We all know how crazy it got,” he explains. “[I felt like that guy in Crank]. I was like a ticking time bomb. Everything was so unpredictable.”

If there’s one word that encapsulates ‘Nandez’s childhood, it’s unpredictable. Born in White Plains, NY, he accrued more passport stamps before high school than most will in a lifetime. Jerusalem, Haiti, New York, Tanzania, New York — the family moved wherever his father’s work at the UN took them and traveled often. ‘Nandez attended French-speaking schools wherever they landed, learning English from watching TV and listening to rock legends like Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana. While he learned guitar in his early teens, he regularly confronted his Western privilege.

“From the balcony of the crib [in Haiti], I could see the slums… There was a garden and a pool and everything, but you look down and there’s just tin roofs all over the place. It’s stark,” he explains. “As a teenager, I had a lot of guilt. I’d see kids that looked just like me, but they didn’t have kicks and their clothes were fucked up. They had to work. Our realities were so different.”

The youngest of three children, ‘Nandez’s reality changed drastically when his older brother died after being hit by a train. The combination of grief, the constant dislocation, and the influence of his rock idols led a 13-year-old ‘Nandez to experiment with drugs and alcohol. By the time he was in high school in New York, he was a full-blown druggie. Music afforded him a similar escape. Discovering Lil Wayne and DOOM led to a newfound appreciation for rap and his earliest at-home recordings. Though ‘Nandez ran afoul of authorities and caused his parents much consternation, he was admitted to Concordia University in Montreal.

‘Nandez divided his time at Concordia between journalism courses, recording, and seeking the next numbing or mind-expanding high. Following feverish summer recording sessions in his parents’ basement in New Rochelle, he released his first album, 2014’s H.T. The project gained traction from blogs like NahRight, but ‘Nandez wanted to get his college degree before focusing on his rap career. After graduation, though, he realized his problems with drugs and alcohol had spiraled beyond his control. He devoted himself to getting sober, revamped his sound, and recorded the largely self-produced Diplomacy, which remains his most personal album.

“It was so hard to make it. It was more than making a record. There was such intense self-reflection,” ‘Nandez explains. “It was a coming-of-age thing. I’m really proud of that record. It’s much more personal than Pangea.”

Pangea arrives just as ‘Nandez’s profile reaches new highs. His 2021 single “Ox” has nearly a million streams on Spotify, and appearing on woods’ Aethiopes alongside Boldy James is perhaps the biggest indie rap signal boost anyone could imagine.

“Woods is one of the best writers in rap ever. Period,” he says. “It’s the most validating thing to have someone like billy woods be like, ‘Gabe belongs here.’”

More eyes are on ‘Nandez than ever before. He hints at more high-profile collaborations that could provide even more visibility in the near future. For now, however, he’s only concerned with writing every night and creating more music.

“I’m not where I want to be, but I’m so happy. I love my life,” he says. “I have great friends. If I croaked in 20 minutes, I’d be like, ‘I did my thing.’ From a soulful perspective, I’m in bliss. As far as the path, I got a lot more to give.”

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Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that highlights exceptional rising rappers. To read previous columns, click here.

There’s a universe where Payroll Giovanni, YG, and Jeezy release a group album scored by the Grammy-winning Cardo (Drake, Kendrick, Curren$y) and a dream team of legendary West Coast producers (i.e., DJ Quik, Daz Dillinger, and Warren G). Unfortunately, we don’t live there. Instead, in this perennially cursed timeline, the songs have remained dormant on a hard drive since the mid-2010s. Payroll Giovanni thinks Jeezy has the hard drive, but he’s never been dismayed that the album hasn’t materialized.

“It just never came out. We were supposed to mix it in Malibu, but that never happened,” Giovanni says nonchalantly on a recent March evening, speaking over the phone while parked in the driveway of his suburban Michigan home. “I don’t be tripping. Everything happens for a reason.”

Platitudes can mask deep wounds, but the 35-year-old Detroit native never seems hurt or embittered. Instead, he’s never let a perceived setback stall his career. In the decade since breaking out as the star of Detroit street rap group Doughboyz Cashout, Giovanni’s become one of the most consistent and respected independent rappers in Detroit. Each project, like late February’s Ghost Mode, racks up millions of streams. He’s also released four of the best West Coast-flavored rap albums in recent memory with Cardo, albums like the Def Jam-backed Big Bossin’, Vol. 2 that work within an aesthetic while re-defining its boundaries. Those Cardo-assisted records pair Giovani’s tales of felonious hustles and high-end purchases with Cardo’s contemporary and more serene take on Bay Area Mobb music, beats made for yachts gliding past white-sand coastlines and backlit by pastel sunsets.

Though seldom mentioned alongside recently ascendant Michigan rappers like Babyface Ray, Babytron, and Kash Doll, Giovanni deserves acclaim for paving the way for that generation while bridging a generational divide. Few regional compatriots would sound as natural as Giovanni does rapping next to early aughts Detroit rap legend Blade Icewood (“Too Late”) and Kash Doll (“Huddle Wit Bosses”).

“I don’t feel defeated and uninspired when I don’t get [recognition],” Giovanni says. “I just focus on what I’m doing and building my lane. ‘What can I do to make my situation bigger?’ If I get acknowledged, cool. If I don’t, oh well.”

Today, the father of two lives by the simple yet arguably enlightened “everything happens for a reason” philosophy. He spends his days hitting the gym, recording, plotting his next business venture, and relaxing with his fiancé. He also helps his 12-year-old son, Juju Da Boss, pursue his rap dreams.

“I’m his CEO/manager/assistant/everything,” Giovanni explains as he chuckles. “He’s been around it since he was born, so it’s just second nature to him.”

The same can be said of Giovanni, who raps with a conversational ease that’s either confident and casual or forceful and motivational, whichever the beat demands. He’s equally at home rapping over smooth, synth-bass slaps (usually provided by Cardo) or uptempo, maximalist Detroit beats. The production usually dictates whether Giovanni poses as the mob boss reclining in a silk robe or offers inspiration as an exacting life coach for aspiring hustlers.

Giovanni splits the difference between those two inextricable halves of his on-record persona on Ghost Mode. Vivid dope boy memoirs come with catalogs of the Don-like luxuries you can buy with a safe full of illicit funds. But Giovanni counterbalances the weight and six-figure watches by counseling against spending beyond your means and advocating for long-term investments. Whether you’re a hustler or a budding entrepreneur, many songs serve as a guidebook for achievement.

“Ghost mode means disappearing off the scene,” Giovanni explains, “cutting off distractions and whatever’s not growing you and locking in on your goals.”

Money has been Giovanni’s main goal since childhood in the Fenkell section of Detroit. No one under capitalism is immune, but he found additional inspiration to earn at home. Descended from two generations of Detroit hustlers, Giovanni likens his family to the Barksdales on The Wire, the founders/owners of a profitable hand-to-hand pharmaceutical company. Dad bumped Bay Area rappers like B-Legit, E-40, and Spice 1 while the flame on the stove burned and Scarface screened on a loop. Giovanni saw and received all the material privileges his father’s work afforded. He also watched everything — stereo, stove, and TV — cut off when the cops kicked in the door.

“I knew more of the ugly side than the pretty side [of hustling],” says Giovanni, who soundtracked his childhood with everything from Cash Money Records to Detroit groups like Street Lordz. “I’ve been in raids when our doors got kicked in out of the blue, our shit getting taken. I knew it wasn’t a game. I grew up wanting to do something different, but I just had to be real with myself. I was already positioned for a certain lifestyle.”

Giovanni rapped in high school with friends who would later form Doughboyz Cashout, but he spent most of his years as an upperclassman graduating from small-time hustles to major weight. He didn’t have to look far for a business partner, linking up with his late grandfather. Though he came from a Barksdale family, Giovanni always had Stringer Bell’s goal of owning real estate.

“Maybe it’s because my dad watched Scarface so much, but the ultimate success in my mind is attached to owning some big-ass buildings in Miami,” Giovanni says.

In the early aughts, Giovanni and Doughboyz Cashout became staples at Detroit parties with local street hits like “Good Ass Day” and “Mob Life.” Giovanni says the group was like “the local Beatles” at the time. By 2013, Jeezy caught wind of Doughboyz Cashout mania and signed the group to his Atlantic-backed label CTE World. Doughboyz Cashout received their signing bonus and dropped a mixtape, but an album never came together. Payroll took the loss in stride.

“Was it a letdown? Not for me,” he says. “I was like, ‘Now we met bigger people and got relationships with people in the industry. Now we can take this shit even bigger.’”

The bump in Giovanni’s stature prevented him from returning to hustling, so he continued to rap about his former occupation on his debut Get Money Stay Humble and 2015’s Stack Season. The content remained the same when he linked with Cardo for Big Bossin, Vol. 1, but the West Coast-leaning sound brought Payroll an audience outside of Detroit.

Giovanni’s continued cultivating that audience with more Cardo records like 2021’s Another Day Another Dollar. But he still satisfies his Midwest fans with solo albums like Ghost Mode. While the subject matter hasn’t changed throughout his career, Giovanni attributes his sustained success to the hard-earned wisdom he imparts on every project.

“My fanbase gravitates to my music because I give them game, something learn and walk away with and apply to their life no matter what they’re into,” he says, shortly before mentioning the prospect of another album with Cardo. “You’re going to listen to that type of shit forever.”

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Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that highlights exceptional rising rappers. To read previous columns, click here.

BigXthaPlug speaks as he raps. On the phone and on record, the Dallas, TX native sounds like a chopped and screwed Mike Jones (e.g., the hook on “Back Then”). His deep, booming voice is relaxed and unhurried, every dragging syllable weighted with heavy breaths and slick with saliva. It’s a voice that adds gravity to the mundane, solemnity to the grim, and sauce to every flex. Perfect for cutting through the quaking bass and narrating evocative vignettes, it also makes BigX sound much older than 24. He needs every ounce of youthful energy to keep pace with his rapid ascent in rap.

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“Since I’ve been doing music, [everything’s] been a blur,” BigX explains, speaking from a Dallas studio on a recent weekday afternoon. In just three years, he’s gone from releasing music in obscurity to hitting over 100 million global streams, his weekends now packed with headlining shows at Texas venues and opening spots for rappers like Maxo Kream and Key Glock. “I’m constantly moving. I’m never just sitting still. I don’t know what time it be or what day it is.”

The constant motion as a rapper is new, but BigX spent years moving quickly and dangerously to survive. After his future as a football star deflated, BigX robbed felons to provide for his infant son. Though penitent, he sometimes worries the inherent visibility of his rap career could mean retribution.

“Right now, I’m taking a big risk doing what I’m doing. I’ve done a lot of stuff to people in my past — I pray that God forgives me now — but I did what I had to do to survive. I’ll look [the people I wronged] in the face and apologize, but I can’t control how they’ll react,” he says. “Everybody knows who and where I am…. At any moment, anybody can pull up and do whatever. I just pray to God everybody sees I’m on a better path and stay where they at.”

BigX’s debut album AMAR — named after his now four-year-old son and released in partnership with United Masters — details his former life and his new path. The tropes are familiar, but they feel fresh with his voice, his thoughtful yet conversational writing, and his ear for production. With his commanding and twang-accented bass, he details the double-crossing inherent in crime, moving weight and waiting out prison time, and squeezing triggers while push-starting luxury cars. It’s the soundtrack from trap to the penthouse, the darkness of matte black Glocks contrasted with the glint of sun-dappled infinity pools and diamond-encrusted smiles.

AMAR realizes the promise BigX displayed in the three years of singles that preceded it, including album singles “Safehouse” and “Texas.” The latter has over 7.3 million streams on Spotify and is probably blaring from car stereos at Whataburger drive-thrus as you read this. Backed by a potent mix of gospel, trap, country, and blues, BigX displays some of his best writing on “Texas,” casually condensing decades of Texas music and cultural history into forceful couplets. He hopes his music and presence can unify a Dallas rap scene that’s been rife with infighting for years.

“I’m really the first artist in a minute in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that isn’t beefing. That’s what made me stick out as well,” X explains. “I don’t even want to engage in what other people got going on as far as this side versus that side… I’m trying to change all of that right now.”

The desire for peace comes after decades of turmoil. BigX spent his first nine years in Pleasant Grove, a southeast Dallas neighborhood still plagued by crime and institutional neglect. His mother was “in the streets” to provide while his father was in and out of prison. If BigX wasn’t committing petty theft, he was warring with his teachers. Years of this behavior drove his mother to the brink, at which point she drove him to live with his father in Commerce.

“I’m glad I got out of [that hood] when I did,” he says of moving to a city he describes as “country.” “If I would’ve waited until I was a teenager, I would’ve been too far gone.”

With fewer opportunities for mischief, BigX channeled his anger into football. He grew to a hulking 6’2” in high school and became a sought-after offensive and defensive lineman. Though recruited by the University of Minnesota, BigX didn’t have the grades to qualify academically. Instead, he enrolled at Minnesota’s Crown College to play for a season while raising his GPA just enough to transfer to the U of M. Homesick and feeling alienated as one of the few Black people on campus, BigX self-medicated with marijuana. The private Christian college, modeling the mercy of their lord and savior, showed him the door as soon as they smelled the smoke.

Aimless and jobless, BigX settled with his girlfriend and eventual baby mama in Austin. He briefly worked in a pawn shop, but taking orders and earning minimum wage was far from the future he’d envisioned on the football field. After purchasing a gun from the pawn shop, BigX began robbing anyone who wouldn’t file a police report for losing illicit money or drugs. Eventually incarcerated for burglary and aggravated robbery, he spent his son’s first birthday in prison. BigX was consumed with rage that day, he wound up in solitary confinement. With no one to talk to, he started writing.

“If I wouldn’t have missed my son’s first birthday, if I never would’ve gone to jail, I wouldn’t have been on this path,” X says. “I didn’t think [about a rap career] until I was sitting in that brick room.”

Post incarceration, BigX released early songs like 2019’s “Taliban Freestyle” on YouTube and SoundCloud. Streaming money was non-existent, so he hustled to provide for his son. With visibility and directorial help from Dallas music video director HalfPintFilmz, BigX songs like “Big Stepper” caught the attention of record labels. Rather than signing with a major, BigX partnered with distributor United Masters in September 2021. For him, the partnership was a chance to learn the finer points of the music industry and avoid being swallowed by labels intent on keeping him in the dark and lining their pockets.

BigX’s discernment has paid dividends, from his advance to the millions of streams United Masters has helped him achieve. AMAR debuted at No. 4 on Billboard’s Heatseekers album chart and sits in the top 30 albums on Apple Music, while album tracks feature on several primetime Spotify playlists. Though he didn’t envision a rap career on the football field, BigX is approaching his new career with the same drive, devotion, and constant motion.

“Whatever I do, I want to be the best at it… Now that I’m doing this shit, I have no choice,” BigX says. “I’m investing my time and my money in it. Why wouldn’t I want to be the best?”

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that highlights exceptional rising rappers. To read previous columns, click here.

Artistic excellence isn’t quantifiable like rushing yards or three-point shooting percentages. Taste is subjective and variable. But for better or Logic, through some combination of record label-backing, commercial performance, virality, and critical consensus, every generation gets the rap stars it deserves. MARCO PLUS believes he’s next in line.

“I don’t feel like anyone has stepped up to the plate yet as far as being the next [star]. Maybe everybody came out too close to Kendrick, Drake, and Cole,” the 25-year-old Atlanta native says over the phone from his home in the city’s Oakland City neighborhood. He lives there with several members of BACKSEAT!, the rap group he records with when he isn’t working on his solo material. “But I feel like it’s the right time for me to [reach that level].”

MARCO’s self-belief may or may not bear out. For now, his confidence is warranted. He’s one of Atlanta’s most promising rappers and recently signed to Cinematic Music Group (CMG), the label responsible for early releases from Joey Bada$$, Mick Jenkins, and Big K.R.I.T. MARCO’s wouldn’t be out of place on playlists with his CMG forbears or fellow Atlantans like Earthgang and JID. It’s bar-minded, Outkast-apostle rap laced with introspection and social commentary. MARCO spits with intensity and affability, delivering punchlines in alternately spastic and relaxed cadences. At times, it’s as if his blunts came with shots of adrenaline. He bookends the intricate wordplay with well-crafted hooks, his adherence to traditional song structure as refreshing as it is calculated.

“I’m cracking the code, and I’m making it digestible for everybody, not just people who love rap. Without sacrificing my lyricism or dumbing myself down,” MARCO says. “You just have to make it good.”

Late October’s Tha Soufside Villain LP was MARCO’s first CMG project, an excellent postscript to his 2021 breakout, That Souf Got Sum 2 Say. A literate rap scholar, MARCO bridges generational and geographical divides on Tha Soufside Villain, his references landing both with blunt force and assured subtlety. He’ll nod to B-Legit, Killa Cam, Chief Keef, and Kodak Black with equal élan over soulful, jazzy boom-bap and more modern, trap-leaning production. His decade-spanning appeal extends to his sports and pop culture allusions. Older listeners can appreciate the Manute Bol and Dragonball Z lines, while younger ones can identify with those riffing on Skylar Diggins and One Punch Man. He’s also tapping in with Atlanta’s rising guard, rapping alongside fellow rising artists like Kenny Mason, Deanté Hitchcock, and GRIP. Though each of MARCO’s verses brims with braggadocio, the lines addressing his depression and past addiction make each chest-beating punchline more resonant.

“I like to give people bits and pieces [of my life] at a time because, at a certain point, I’m going to need all of it,” he says

MARCO was born in Pensacola, Fla. but raised in Atlanta’s southside. Rap was his plan since he was in Pampers. Reciting Hot Boys verses as a toddler led to rapping lyrics he wrote with his family’s help. By grade school, MARCO was glued to BET, the Youngbloodz videos on 106th and Park trumping any cartoon. He was an avid reader and book fair attendee, but Goosebumps and Harry Potter couldn’t compete with T.I.’s trap anthems or Lil Wayne’s syrup-addled wizardry.

“I spent my whole school career writing music. By the time I was in the 7th grade, I didn’t give a fuck about [school],” MARCO explains. “I didn’t want to be anything else. I never planned on being a teacher, a doctor, or a lawyer. I wanted to be a musician.”

Writing raps in class and occasionally recording in the band room felt like half-measures, so MARCO dropped out his junior year of high school. He released his first project, My Friends Understand, at 18. The title was intended to be ironic, an acknowledgment that he felt grossly misunderstood throughout his teens. Depressed, increasingly dependent on pills, and eventually kicked out of his grandparents’ home, MARCO moved back to Pensacola in 2016.

The following two years in the Sunshine State did little to slow his spiral. MARCO jumped between jobs and family homes while recording sporadically, pills rarely out of reach. When a friend died by suicide behind the shed turned studio where they’d recorded, MARCO knew it was time to return to Atlanta. Unlike planes he saw working at the airport, his rap career didn’t take off. Then his brief relationship with his then-girlfriend imploded, and he believed he might never see his newborn daughter again. At 22, MARCO was suicidal.

“[The way that relationship ended] tore me to pieces. I really had to rebuild myself back up. No matter how much money I made or anything, nothing could heal that pain,” MARCO says. “I didn’t feel loved. It made me feel like I wasn’t nothing.”

While the dissolution of that relationship nearly wrecked MARCO, the prospect of parenting pulled him out of his depression. He began recording in earnest, releasing three increasingly auspicious projects in 2021: Plus 2, Sparco, and Tha Souf Got Sum 2 Say. Early managers helped him land on small blogs, but artists and labels flooded his DMs after his songs won Genius’s voter-driven new music contest The Cosign Live three consecutive times. Shortly after MARCO toured with Atlanta’s GRIP in the spring of 2022, he signed with Cinematic Music Group.

“[MARCO] is a perfect example of what Cinematic is meant to embody. He raps visuals on tracks. If you close your eyes, you feel like you’re on the southside of Atlanta with him,” says CMG founder and CEO Jonny Shipes. Impressed with “Lately” from Tha South Got Sun 2 Say, Shipes was soon a fan of all the material in MARCO’s catalog. “I think what sets him apart is his lyrics and the beats he picks. It’s southern hip-hop but with his own vibe to it.”

MARCO will bring that vibe to thousands in the months ahead, supporting Youtube rapper Token on over a dozen dates of his Never Too Different tour. He’s as delighted to tour but equally cognizant of where he’s been and what’s next.

“Two years ago, I started my musical journey for real. I’m about to go on a nationwide tour,” MARCO says. “We started with nothing, and now we’re at this point. I feel like the trajectory is only upward.”

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that highlights exceptional rising rappers. To read previous columns, click here.

To be a rap fan in 2022 is to experience cyclical and compounding grief, to have most excitement checked by the fear of another untimely eulogy. This is another way of saying that rappers are dying from gun violence at an alarming rate. The recent killings of Takeoff and PnB Rock follow a harrowing trend: any degree of fame and perceived wealth appears increasingly fatal. One can only imagine the psychic toll each death has on rappers, those carrying the pain of watching another peer mowed down along with the dread that they might be next.

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Mac J knows this distressing combination of sorrow and fear too well. The 30-year-old Sacramento, Calif. rapper lost two of his closest friends, Bris and Young Slo-Be, to gun violence in the last two years. Stylistic innovators half-whispering vivid and figuratively rich street narratives, Bris and Slo-Be were the biggest rappers in Sacramento (Bris) and Stockton (Slo-Be). Bris was also more than a friend and collaborator — he was family.

“I went from seeing [Bris] every day to no days at all,” Mac says of his relationship with his second cousin while speaking via phone from Sacramento. “That shit fucked a nigga up.”

Wracked with grief since Bris’s death, Mac has had to process it with daily reminders. He runs Bris’s YouTube, Spotify, and Instagram accounts, ensuring Bris’s family receives royalties as he’s inundated with “RIP Bris” messages on Instagram.

While managing his cousin’s legacy, Mac has quietly become one of Sacramento’s most formidable rappers. He packs verses with clever wordplay and wry humor that belie the violence in his city and the continual danger for a rapper of his stature. Bris and Slo-Be rapped in numbed half-whispers, but Mac opts for more emotion, inflection, and playfulness. There are flattering hints of Mac Dre in his delivery, but Mac J’s music is sonically aligned with contemporary Bay and Central Valley street rap, the alternately squelchy rubbery bass undergirding spare yet crashing percussion. The music videos for his steady stream of singles, which he releases on Bris’s channel, rack up hundreds of thousands of views, and each of the four projects available on streaming services improves on its predecessor.

“If I had something else going on, I would’ve been gave rap up,” he explains, revealing that he never invites people to his home and rarely goes out in public. “But I feel like [Bris] would want me to keep going. It’s getting easier now. I’m trying to keep my head clear. But then the Slo-be shit happened, and it was like a relapse.”

The cover art for Mac J’s latest project, True Story, visually renders the bleakness of his world. In an otherwise all-black image, Mac J stands bisecting a heart made of pictures of Bris and Slo-Be. It’s not subtle, but neither is bereavement. True Story finds Mac grieving, hustling, and eulogizing his friends without sacrificing his predilection for metaphors, similes, and puns (on “Kona” he raps, “This shit hella tragic / I watched friends disappear, and it was never magic”). Emotionally raw yet formally composed, True Story is Mac’s best project and most personal, a diary interrupted by notes to the departed.

“I feel like I should talk about my life more,” Mac says. “I really got a whole story, and it’s hella deep. There’s so much I haven’t talked about. That’s just how I was raised. Now, this music is therapy. I need to get certain shit off.”

Born James Brown — yes, he’s heard all the jokes — Mac was raised in several North Sacramento neighborhoods with his four siblings. They shared a bedroom and one bed, taking turns sleeping on the floor. Their parents juggled minimum wage jobs and independent grinds, Mac’s father often fixing and flipping rundown cars. As is the case in too many disenfranchised neighborhoods, violence waited just beyond the front door. In Mac’s case, he vividly recalls his father’s friend bleeding out on their front step from a gunshot wound.

Basketball and music afforded Mac an escape, but his hoop dreams faded after his AAU team disbanded. Years of listening to the Jacka, Messy Marv, and Lil Wayne eventually led Mac to record his first rap songs in a family member’s garage during high school. When he dropped out, however, hustling alongside Bris and other friends took precedence.

Mac and Bris spent years ducking cases and going to jail, but they always returned to rap. Bris initially required Mac’s encouragement, but soon the two were pushing one another. Sacramento never had a defined sonic or formal aesthetic, but the pair began to hone in on their punchline-driven sound around 2017’s “Mack Rounds.” By then, they’d become fixtures on YouTube channel Rap Shack.

“I feel like we brought [wordplay] back or kicked it off. I can’t remember nobody that was coming like that. Everybody doing ABC raps and shit like that,” Mac explains while discussing their sound. “We really brought the metaphors, shit that’s going over nigga’s heads.”

By 2019, Bris’s momentum was undeniable. According to Mac, singles like “Panhandling” and “Need Hammy” attracted attention from record labels like Alamo Records and 300 Entertainment. But that all ended when Bris was killed in June 2020. Mac paused his career and compiled Bris’s excellent posthumous album Tricky Dance Moves (2021). Sadly, several people tried to register Bris songs with ASCAP under the assumption that no one would notice.

“Immediately after Bris died and I was trying to put our album up, hella people was trying to claim shit. It seems like there’s a whole world of people waiting on up-and-coming rappers that aren’t signed to die so [they can profit off unclaimed royalties].”

Those incidences opened Mac’s eyes to the value of publishing your own music instead of relying on middleman services. Since then, he’s slowly made sure to register both Bris’s songs and his own with ASCAP. As he considers compiling a Bris documentary, Mac is recording a follow up to True Story. He’s also getting out of Sacramento as fast as he can.

“Hell yeah [I’m going to leave Sacramento]. I got to. I ain’t got no choice. I’m seeing how this shit go. Everybody dying in they city,” Mac says. “I can’t go nowhere. I can’t go out to eat out here. I ain’t trying to be on SayCheese laid out.”

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that highlights exceptional rising rappers. To read previous columns, click here.

When Archibald Slim gets drunk, he buys books. His latest inebriated online purchases include David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster and Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Currently, though, he’s reading Julia Beverly’s biographical tome, Sweet Jones: Pimp C’s Trill Life Story. Like many avid readers, Slim faces an everlasting predicament: the unread pile doubles with every book he finishes.

“I don’t want to have a bookshelf full of books I ain’t read, but I keep ordering them,” the 32-year-old rapper says over the phone from his Northwest Atlanta home. Locals call the area “the Bluff.”

The Bluff has been a veritable drug haven for decades. According to Slim, addicts squat in abandoned houses while their suppliers bag work in homes on the same block. (See also: the docu-drama Snow on Tha Bluff.) But gentrification looms as newer homes pop up across from bandos. The dichotomy could inspire a heavily footnoted essay (Foster Wallace) or a magical realist fictionalization (Murakami). Slim, though, is weathering the socioeconomic shifts while chronicling his life on albums like October’s Worldly Ways.

Worldly Ways is Slim’s most accomplished album in a catalog of over 15 projects, many of which he released in a two-year burst during the mid-2010’s peak of Awful Records, the now-defunct collective of Atlanta rappers, producers, and creatives that included Slim, Father, Makonnnen, Zack Fox, Playboi Carti (briefly), and many more. Early Slim records (e.g., 2014’s He’s Drunk!) displayed a formalism and thematic depth lacking in the exuberant albeit low-stakes offerings from Awful compatriots (e.g., Father’s undeniably catchy and silly “Look at Wrist”). His soulful, markedly Southern songs could’ve fit on a playlist between Isaiah Rashad and early Big K.R.I.T., full of the same potent mix of pathos, skepticism, substance-fueled self-destruction, and endearing introspection descended from the Dungeon Family. Worldly Ways is a refinement of those attributes that offers a slight shift in perspective.

Where Slim once sounded like he was searching for his place in the world, on Worldly Ways he voices the struggles of the place he’s found himself. A self-aware and weary hustler, he prays for more money as he acknowledges the sins necessary to make the rent. He puts weight on the scale while weighing the psychic strain of felonious deeds against romantic strife, every passionate yet laidback verse revealing more gun-tucked wisdom. Somber and honest, refreshingly devoid of embellishment, Worldly Ways is one of the best Southern rap albums of the year. While projects like 2014’s Better Off Dead sometimes bordered on bleak nihilism, he’s now turned brutal truths into catharsis.

“Does this one sound sad, too?” Slim asks. When I assure him the album’s definitely less melancholic than Better Off Dead, he seems satisfied. “Okay, I’m glad this one is brighter.”

Born in North Carolina, the second child in a military family, Slim moved to Germany and then Maryland before completing middle school and high school in Hinesville, a small city in Southeast Georgia near his father’s military base. His father was a diehard 2Pac fan, but Slim gravitated toward Atlanta rappers like Ludacris and Pastor Troy. Despite his affinity for rap, he didn’t begin recording until his first years at Georgia State University.

Slim was a bright student but struggled to choose a major and gradually grew disenchanted with college. Classes faded into the background as he spent most of his time listening to rap, making beats on an MPC purchased with his financial aid reimbursement, and partying with fellow GSU student Father, the eventual founder/figurehead of Awful Records. Bonding over liquor, weed, and rap, the pair briefly ran a blog covering rising Atlanta artists.

In the early 2010s, shortly after Slim and Father dropped out of college, the sprawling Awful Records crew coalesced in Atlanta. Slim, Father, and their network friends, musicians, and creatives bounced between one another’s low-rent residences, partying and recording between hangovers and fights. The chaos seemed to fuel Slim’s music, and the music kept him grounded.

“I was just in the house making music. I would make up and make three beats a day,” he says of the nascent Awful days. Soon, though, he began rapping in earnest and at a prolific clip, releasing 14 projects between 2014 and 2016. “I was giving people beats and didn’t like what they were doing on them, so I decided to rap over them.”

For a time, critics posited Awful Records as Atlanta’s answer to Odd Future, a group of irreverent rap-loving artists with distinctive voices. Their individual and collective songs blew up on SoundCloud, and Slim’s He’s Drunk! garnered critical attention. Unfortunately, the adoration didn’t come with a check.

“When we was using SoundCloud, niggas was not getting paid for that shit at first,” Slim explains. “We were putting music out and getting hundreds of thousands of plays and not getting any money.”

Like many rap crews before and after, Awful Records disbanded as quickly as they’d formed. The following years of Slim’s life mirrored his itinerant childhood. He spent a few months in New York, returned to Atlanta, juggled various hustles in L.A. for a few pre-pandemic years, and then followed Father, who’d also been living in L.A., back to Atlanta.

“I really ain’t work like that,” Slim says when asked about his source of income from 2016 to now. The answer is in his music and his wry delivery. “I haven’t had a 9-5 in a long time.”

Slim says his L.A. sojourn was, in a word, “strange.” But it proved fortuitous. He met A&R Archibald “Archie” Bonkers, who then introduced him to journalist, SPIN contributor, and POW Recordings founder Jeff Weiss. POW Recordings released 2021’s Fell Asleep Praying, Slim’s first record after what was essentially a five-year hiatus.

Fell Asleep Praying served as the foundation for Slim’s second act, giving him the motivation to begin his rap career in earnest once again. Last fall, he holed up in Father’s Atlanta home and recorded Worldly Ways in veritable isolation. While his music is better than ever, Slim is still figuring out how to promote his music in the algorithmic dystopia. Somewhere between drunken book purchases and recording sessions, he’ll figure it out.

“I’m not done,” he says. “[With Worldly Ways], I just wanted to start what I’m about to do.”

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that highlights exceptional rising rappers. To read previous columns, click here.

Releasing music in relative obscurity can engender insecurity, the self-doubt mounting with every year critical acclaim and peer recognition doesn’t arrive. Brian Ennals was intimately familiar with that disheartening reality for a decade. Throughout the 2010s, the Baltimore rapper’s sporadic solo projects gained little traction, and songs with short-lived groups either languished on hard drives or were quietly buried on the back pages of small blogs. Following the release of King Cobra (Phantom Limb), his second album of brilliant tragicomic nihilism produced by fellow Baltimorean Infinity Knives, Ennals’ career narrative is slowly changing.

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“It was always weird to tell people that I was an amateur rapper, even when I was younger,” the 39-year-old says over the phone, fresh from a weekend at the beach with his two-year-old son. “I always wanted to be able to say, ‘Not only am I a rapper, not only am I a good rapper, but I’m also a successful one.’ That’s just happening now.”

Ennals and Infinity Knives briefly toured Europe this past spring, received an “Album of the Day” nod from Bandcamp in June, and both appeared on ascendant rap podcast Dad Bod Rap Pod and graced the cover of Baltimore alt-weekly Baltimore Beat in August. None of it happens without King Cobra, which expands on the sound and subject matter of 2020’s Rhino XXL.

Produced, mixed, and mastered by Infinity Knives, the songs fuse organic and electronic sounds while contorting ’80s and contemporary hip-hop. They are unique departures from the dystopian, Vangelis-meets-Bomb Squad instrumentals of early El-P with occasional nods to ’80s boogie and R&B. Ever adaptable, Ennals offers pistol-grip insurrection, self-aware gallows humor, and vivid song-length narratives written in white lines. He affirms killing landlords, ending homelessness, and eating pussy with the same fervor, raging against the ills of late-stage capitalism while fuming over the Baltimore Orioles’ dismal playoff prospects. No politician is safe, no institution is sacred, and repentance may or may not begin after the next eight ball.

“The album is very nihilistic,” Ennals explains. “Me and Tariq [Infinity Knives] are very cynical guys. If Rhino XXL was Star Wars, [King Cobra] is Empire Strikes Back. We’re trying to go for a little more hopefulness on the next record. Like Return of the Jedi, but no Ewoks and shit.”

King Cobra warrants far wider acclaim before the next sequel. Together, Ennals and Infinity Knives sit somewhere between Dead Prez and Danny Brown. You could also make the case that they’re a hybrid of The Coup and Too $hort for fans of Cannibal Ox. If you’re after contemporary analog, think of them as the more approachable and intentionally puerile Armand Hammer, the pointed sociopolitical commentary competing with Ennals’ unchecked horniness.

“Every time I write something kind of profound, my goal is to write something disgusting right after,” Ennals says.

Born in Annapolis, Ennals and his older brother were raised in Severn, a census-designated place (CDP) roughly 16 miles south of Baltimore. Now a burgeoning suburb, Severn was once a rural, no-sidewalk town with a mix of trailer parks, Section 8 housing, and single-family homes. The Ennals family fell into the latter camp. His dad worked as a public school principal in Baltimore, and the boys’ mother oversaw equipment training at various phone companies. While his parents worked, Ennals unconsciously fell in love with performing, obsessively watching Motown concerts on VHS at home and singing in the grade school choir.

Though his older brother played radio-ripped tapes of Baltimore club tracks, Ennals eventually discovered rap, reading The Source and buying albums from the Fugees and Crucial Conflict. High school lunchroom ciphers led the formation of his first group, Special Ops. With no industry connections and music journalism’s blog era in its infancy, Special Ops fizzled out after Ennals graduated from Howard University and navigated the grim job market in the wake of the 2008 recession.

The next decade was a blur of empty liquor bottles, blunt smoke, and powder-filled plastic bags. Ennals dropped two solo records — 2010’s Untitled and 2013’s Candy Cigarettes — that drew local acclaim from the Baltimore Sun but little beyond that. Between his day job and the odd recording session, he spent much time battling substance abuse issues.

“I’m pretty sober now,” Ennals says, “but for a large part of my adult life I was a hedonist but very depressed in a lot of ways and wanted something to numb that.”

Infinity Knives initially contacted Ennals after reading about him in the Baltimore Sun, but the two didn’t begin recording until Knives solicited Ennals for his 2020 album Dear, Sudan. In the six-year interim, Ennals briefly bounced to New Jersey while Knives became a fixture in the Baltimore indie rap scene that sprang up around Baltimore’s Bell Foundry and spawned JPEGMAFIA. After working on Knives’ Dear, Sudan, Ennals knew they needed to record their eventual debut, Rhino XXL.

“[Working with Infinity Knives] is the first time that I feel I’ve been produced. It’s not just a guy sending me a beat and asking me to record over it. It’s him saying, like, ‘Hey, maybe you should take this approach or this flow. Maybe take this line out or switch it around.’ He’s a big boxing fan, so he likes to describe as Cus D’Amato and [Mike] Tyson. It’s very much him coaching me and making me a better fighter.”

Like the best coaches, Infinity Knives knows his fighter’s strengths.

“[One] reason I’m so drawn to [Brian] is because of how malleable his style is. He definitely has his comfort zone, but the more he goes, the more I can tell him to do weird shit,” Infinity Knives says. “I’ve just seen him get better and better. He can rap with a triplet flow or rap on a beat in 10/4. And he’s a scholar of the arts.”

They carried the momentum of Rhino XXL into King Cobra, spending the next year and a half of the pandemic politely butting heads and pushing one another past their creative comfort zones. King Cobra received some promotion from Phantom Limb, but the publicist they hired bailed. Fortunately, thanks to a network of supportive peers and growing journalistic support, word of the duo’s collective brilliance continues to spread.

“The whole thing has been word of mouth. We knew a lot of people who knew a lot of people. It’s a real grassroots type of thing. I’m glad it’s not hitting everybody at once,” Ennals says. “The way everybody’s attention spans are set up, if everybody heard it the first weekend it dropped, we wouldn’t be talking about it three months later.”

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that highlights exceptional rising rappers. To read previous columns, click here.

By most metrics, Jay Worthy is refreshingly accessible, communicative, and punctual for a rapper of his stature. He has hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners on Spotify and millions of streams to his name. Still, with no manager, regular publicist, or team of record execs behind him, he fields interview requests personally. He’s applied this hands-on approach his entire career, quietly rising through the ranks of West Coast rap.

“If I was in the hood, I would’ve had you pull up to [Gonzales or Enterprise Park]. If I was at my house, I would’ve got you to meet me at the Bel-Air Hotel,” Worthy says over the phone. He’s lived in Los Angeles since the early 2000s, but scheduling precludes an in-person meet. The Compton parks were practically second homes during the decade-plus he lived in the city, though the hotels are more recent haunts. “I love the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Bel-Air Hotel. Anywhere that Sammy Davis Jr. or Frank Sinatra would go is a place I like to go.”

Worthy speaks with the same unflappable calm and sedate cadence he brings to his generally relaxed and conversational verses, his composure likely acquired during the years of high-intensity hustles and potentially fatal affiliations he reflectively recounts on albums like August’s You Take the Credit, We’ll Take the Check. Over the last decade, he’s curated a unique strain of West Coast street rap on EPs and LPs produced by an enviable list of elite producers, including Alchemist, Cardo, Budgie, Harry Fraud, D.J. Fresh, and Sean House, the producer half of the Worthy-fronted duo LND DRGS. Most offer their interpretation of the LND DRGS template: subdued, downtempo, and sparsely knocking beats of deep groove that sample ’80s R&B and R&B-leaning funk from the same era (aka “boogie”). Each instrumental is ideal driving music, beats that lend themselves to Worthy’s casual rapping and cruising through L.A.’s endless sprawl and eternal summer. Whether rapping alone or alongside project-length collaborators like Larry June, Curren$y, or G Perico, his songs are the soundtracks to posh dinners at his preferred L.A. hotels and post-dinner drives to house parties in the hood, the Mercedes convertible backlit by rainbow sherbet sunsets of deep orange and purple.

“I never bought a feature in my life. That came off of the respect from the streets. I never bought a beat in my life,” Worthy says when asked about the collaborations on his CV. He’d spent the morning before our interview in the studio with DJ Muggs, the sonic wizard behind Cypress Hill’s smoke-choked psychedelic funk. “All of my relationships in this industry have been organic. Either they want to fuck with me because they like the sound and style of the music, or they fuck with me as a human being… Maybe one of my gifts is being good with people.”

You Take the Credit, We’ll Take the Check is Worthy’s latest refinement of his player memoirs, another project that confirms his curatorial expertise. Backed by beats from venerated New York producer Harry Fraud, Worthy offers more direct and detailed lifestyle raps documenting the week-long stays at luxury hotels, trips in expensive cars, and his sartorial preferences. He occasionally departs to deliver clipped eulogies for friends lost to gang warfare and string together vignettes of former hustles, but Fraud’s slowed cinematic suites generally sound like they’re scoring lounge scenes in Blaxploitation flicks or footage of private yachts drifting toward neon skies. In other words, even Worthy’s darkest lines have a sonic laxity. While the tone and themes remain largely the same, Worthy says he’s changed.

“Now you’re getting a more mature perspective. I’m living a different life. Am I hanging out at the park every day? Naw. Do I go there still? Yeah. Am I doing the same shit I used to do? No,” he explains. “So you’re going to hear different things and different albums are going to have different feels and different themes.”

Worthy readily answers music-related questions, but he’s grown weary of explaining his Canadian youth. He’s also increasingly frustrated by prying journalists who can’t reconcile Worthy’s lyrics with his famous step-sister.

“I don’t do a lot of interviews and tell my whole life story like that because I don’t have to. I can go pull up wherever the fuck I want out here and get love where most could never,” Worthy says. “I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain myself to anybody that don’t come from this lifestyle… When I was coming up, if you didn’t bang, you wouldn’t get talked to. You’re a pedestrian, so you don’t matter to us. My mentality is still a little bit like that.”

That mentality began in Vancouver, where the 36-year-old rapper grew up playing basketball with his younger brother and listening to MC Eiht and Ice Cube. By middle school, he and his brother were smoking blunts and “doing whatever the fuck we wanted.” According to Worthy, his predominately Indian section of Vancouver was rife with gangs, drive-by shootings a regular occurrence. After several friends died, Worthy left Canada at 17 as a matter of self-preservation.

He briefly landed in San Diego before bouncing to Compton, the city he reps in his music and often refers to as “Bompton” for reasons obvious to anyone with a tenuous grasp of L.A. culture.

“Even if I don’t got family in the set, I’m loved like I have family in the set. I’ve been over there for 20 years. Real history. Stayed at people’s granny’s houses. I’ve been around too long and been too solid and I never came on no weird shit,” Worthy explains. “The internet will love to tear you down or try to make you seem one way or the other. Don’t believe everything you read. You have to tap in with the soil and come to some of these places. Come to some of these corner stores. Come to some of these parks. Come ask about some of these names that rang bells before Instagram. We wasn’t on no motherfucking social media.”

While Worthy engaged in stripe-worthy activities and various hustles in Compton, he fell in love with the ’80s boogie and R&B his music samples, hearing songs at block parties and via Art Laboe’s renowned oldies radio shows. During sporadic trips back to Canada, Worthy met with fellow Vancouverite Sean House, gradually finishing the songs that would wind up on their debut as LND DRGS.

“I didn’t even really care to jump into the rap genre. I was always like, ‘I make funk.’ I want to make this shit, but every producer I went to didn’t understand it. I was just looking for an engineer more or less to help with these records and loop them up,” Worthy says. “[Sean] understood exactly what I wanted to do and brought it to life. It was a blessing.”

The first LND DRGS songs appeared on SoundCloud in 2013. They also popped up on the Tumblr of the late A$AP Yams, who Worthy befriended at SXSW the year before. Yams’ endorsement likely put them on the radar of A-Trak, who released the duo’s 2015 debut, Aktive, on Fool’s Gold Records. Worthy welcomed the jump from taking penitentiary chances to making legitimate from music. As he strung together one improved and independent project (through his GDF Records) with more revered producers and rappers, leaving behind his Compton life became his sole pursuit.

Today, Worthy is elated that music is his full-time job. Songs from his early 2022 album with Larry June and Sean House, 2 P’z in a Pod, have millions of streams, numbers for his new album with Fraud continue to rise, and tickets for his September tour of Texas are moving. He’s also completed projects with Dam-Funk and Roc Marciano, as well as one with Jake One and Kokane. Worthy’s ultimate goal is to record a proper solo album, working with musicians and producers to craft original instrumentals that reverently expand on the rap and boogie music that has soundtracked his life. Radio hits and ubiquitous critical acclaim have eluded him, but he’s not chasing either. He’s comfortable with himself and his catalog.

“I’m still just trying to make it, but I’m comfortable with where I’m at. And I like to celebrate my victories, even if they’re small victories.”

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