The 50 Best Rap Albums: 2023 Pt. 3

  

Written By: The Linx Staff + Contributors

        The final level. The S Tier. The best of the best. These 15 albums aren't just some rappers career best work, but the records you can turn on at any point in the year, look around, and wonder what the fuck everyone else was doing beneath them. From the intro to the last moments of a closing track there are bodies of work listed here that can go toe-to-toe with albums from any era. Production that adds textures to the musical lexicon as a whole. Rapping that resets the fabric of what being a great writer looks like. What rap as a whole can look like. Skimming through this list you'll see first timers, all-timers, old timers, and guys redefining time itself.

AWAL

15. Danny Brown & JPEGMAFIA - Scaring The Hoes

Collaborative albums are algorithmic cheat codes. They combine fanbases, interlock artists who already have enough respect for each other to make a full record, and when done right will force all parties involved into a new terrace of creativity. For years the two iconoclastic rappers have sung praises of the other, Danny being an inspiration to JPEG to get into music, and JPEG creating one of Danny’s favorite albums the last decade in All My My Heros Are Cornballs. With such high adoration of the other the two felt comfortable pushing the other to new heights. As a producer JPEG has never been more scatterbrained, turning anything he can find into percussion instruments while tactically sampling the peak moments of global pop tunes, gospel choirs and live street performers to build a soundscape Danny has never worked within. Hardcore EDM and psychedelic sample based beats have guided Danny to stardom, but never mashed together into a hearty digital gumbo quite like this. Even the vocal acrobatics they do with thier own flows add a new rhythmic element that instruments just can't seem to hit. Their vocals are buried into the mix and distorted to a hiss, which does their high pitched registers any favor in cutting through. Together the two unleash all of their frustrations at every rapper they’ve ever seen on their Youtube Recommended page; they’re all none writing, bad performing, wannabe fashionistas who couldn’t take either of the two in a street fight despite their shit talking ways (and the fact “yall let Jack Harlow sell yall chicken”). For two artists who exist in their own bubbles where nothing matters except the art, they together purge their hatred at everything that exists in the most enjoyable way possible. Being a hater never sounded so fun. - Anthony Seaman
Best Song: Lean Beef Patty
Best Beat: Kingdom Hearts Key

For Fans Of: Denzel Curry, Injury Reserve, BROCKHAMPTON
One Line: If r/hiphopheads was synthesized into an album (non-derogatory, for once).

Def Jam

14. Maxo - Even God Has A Sense Of Humor

Accordion runs, organs, windchimes, live drum breaks, every instrument that can tickle deep in your ear and sound good from 10,000 feet is used to build Maxo’s dreamlike kaleidoscope world. It’s one birthed from that raw soulfulness melding into the robotics of a modern studio; the kind where the line between home and recording booth could just be a single wire. The fingers of man pressing the triggers of the machine, forming a symbiotic universe where a heartbeat means as much as a WiFi connection. Bleeding out from his strained speaking voice or raspy whispers is the divinity of Georgia Anne Muldrow and the questioning of a long past philosopher from the mouth of LA’s newest soul seeker. In his own rap style, the traditional “bars” that rap heads value are erased and replaced with anecdotes and affirmations of a man who has felt too much, crying to the sky for peace instead of hollow calls for hands in the air. The LA Beat Scene was in many ways galactic jazz, smoked out hip-hop, and pioneering electronica mashing together into a collage of humanistic beauty, and Maxo is the chosen child carrying that torch on. Despite what the underground ancestors represented, his focus on relatability and baring one's soul overdies the unobtainable idea of technical perfection. The bars still weigh with you from listen to listen, but the release from near-gospel background vocals and instrumental breaks ease you back to a warmer zone. - Anthony Seaman

Read more about Maxo in our November edition of Another Link To The Chain here.
Best Song: Free!
Best Beat: Nuri
For Fans Of: Blu, Flying Lotus, Pink Siifu
One Line: Some Rap Songs with a bigger budget launched through a spiritual wormhole.

Young Stoner Life / 300

13. Gunna - A Gift & A Curse

A Gift & A Curse is a prime example of how good music can overcome adversity. On this project, Gunna used the creative spark again and harnessed it to address the trials and tribulations in his personal life along with his relationship with Young Thug and Lil Baby, all while being a household name involved in a highly publicized RICO case. Before an album was even announced to the public, he returned after ____ months locked up with the video for “Bread And Butter”, where he swiftly opened up about his relationships to industry associates and his part in the case as a whole. Wether they are targeted barbs or just him speaking the truth of the matter, lines like “We are not the same, they ain't in my lane, I got my own column, yeah / Peepin' shit, I'm seein' niggas fall back / You bitch-ass niggas got me as the topic of the chat” show a shocking disconnect from an Atlanta scene that gained power thanks to such a tight familial bond. This 15-song body of work hardly has any skips, and is a vibe all the way through. The superstar moments are at their most undeniable on “Back At It”, “Turned Your Back”, “I Was Just Thinking”, and song of the year contender, “Fukumean”. A Gift & a Curse is quite versatile, checking all the boxes any great album needs (personality, layered production, for the first time emotional transparency, all while tying it together with melodic choruses that have a life of their own). He managed to accomplish this without compromising what he’s known for; his patented “Wunna flow”, rapid slick verse delivery, and luxury trap beats.  - Tristen Swanson

Read more about Gunna and "Fukumean" in our Songs Of The Summer article here.

Best Song: Fukumean

Best Beat: Rodeo Dr

For Fans Of: Lil Keed, Hoodrich Pablo Juan, SahBabii
One Line: Mainstream Album Of The Year in the sense every one of these could find their way into drive-time radio rotation, a RapCaviar playlist, while sounding like the best version of everything pop rap stands for.

Fat Possum

12. Armand Hammer - We Buy Diabetic Test Strips

Got to the busiest section of your local downtown area and find a bench. Sit there on any weekday morning, keep a few snacks on deck. Don’t just watch, but observe the world as it passes along. Absorb the how every boring piece of minutia that fills our space works in concert with each other. Your phone will vibrate and try to deceive you away from your task as it was meticulously designed to do, but stay true to the mission. You’ll notice the stress painted on your fellow man's face as they bustle between office buildings with a Christmas wish list for their kids on their mind as they FaceTime their mistress. The thousand yard stare that bellows out from the sunken eyes of the woman balancing a cardboard sign on the feet of her wheelchair, hoping for enough dollars to buy a bagel and an oxy. The plumes of diesel fuel from beer trucks cloud the windshields of a new fleet of eco-friendly buses with law office phone numbers plastered on the side looking to fund their founders next vacation to Turks. The sun will reflect off the metal street signs, the birds will shit on your shoulder, and the billboard above you promoting the newest $100,000,000 blockbuster will soon be swapped out for another while the wheelchair woman nods off in its shadow. We Buy Diabetic Test Strips is an album of these realizations stacked on top of each other like a Twitter feed of dystopian proportions (which may be a tautology but who’s to say). ELUCID and billy woods have captured the starkness of everyday living like documentarians on site to the fall of Rome. Any gravity the statements they make about fame, global warming or blackness is simply outweighed by whatever the following bar is. They take turns seething about the desolate nature of what our world has become. It’s an unforgiving basket of doom, orchestrated with more moving parts than the Super Bowl. Also like the advertisers biggest night of the year, it's two of the best at what they do at war with one another, while the diligent glitz and glamor surrounding it takes away from the raw human brutality that it all is built upon. - Anthony Seaman

Best Song: The Gods Might Be Crazy

Best Beat: Woke Up And Asked Siri How I’m Gonna Die

For Fans Of: Canibal Ox, Aquemini, Aesop Rock

One Line: Buhloone Mindstate for people on mood stabilizers.

Freedom Sounds / Def Jam

11. Navy Blue - Ways Of Knowing

After years of depression, anxiety, heartbreak and loss a crossroads will arise; to keep going or to end the story. To end the story is to be free of hurt, but instead forever hurting those left around you. To keep going is a chance at joys you’ve never felt possible. Though the fantastic 2020 album Navy’s Reprise was a loose sunny Saturday playlist that tapped into that purity, it was one that had made the choice to keep going and was living just to keep the good vibes up. Along 13 songs there’s a focused brightness in the eyes for the first time in the model-skateboarder turned generational producer with a growing skillset as a songwriter writer. Ways Of Knowing isn’t only coming from a space of newfound bliss, but awareness of it all. There’s affirmations and reminders across the record of that dark place being just a few slip ups away, but also a reassurance that there’s a system of love (whether it be familial, from self, or from God) in place to keep the ship steady. LA beat-scene veteran Budgie tugs Navy out of his own lo-fi universe into one of gospel harmonies and tear jerking piano flips that brings a clarity never before heard in his music. Full fleshed out SONGS with hooks, sonic progressions, an incorporation of background singers (and his own budding songbird vocals) bring a fulfillment one searches the corners of Spotify’s digital record collections to discover.  - Anthony Seaman

Best Song: Life's Terms

Best Beat: Chosen

For Fans Of: Medhane, MIKE, Mavi

One Line: What Ye thought he was doing with all those Sunday Service performances.

New Breed Trapper

10. RXKNephew - 'Til I'm Dead

It’s disingenuous to boil down the year RXKNephew had to a lone album. The Rochester rapper has been on a grind the last few years putting out hundreds of songs between his dozens of tapes and loosies on Youtube, and the closest one can find to a cushy entry point is 'Til I’m Dead. Sliding down his Apple Music page you’ll see the electro soaked 'Til I’m Dead came out at the top of the year capturing the most carefree and upbeat attributes he holds focused into making some of the most popular songs in his catalog (“Critical”, “1000MPH”). To be a fan of RXKNephew is to be a fan of the battle rap mentality; find a target, embarrass the target, move to the next one. Supervillain, sniper, crack dealer, the man who taught Bobby Brown how to dance, alcoholic; he’s going to tell you he’s everything and sell it like it’s the truth so well you question if everything you've ever heard before was a lie. Trying to contain such a chaotic force of nature like Neph is not for the weak hearted, but trust Rx crew producer Rx Brainstorm knows exactly what he needs: simple hi speed drums and shifting chords that drop in melodies to counter Neph’s charging voice. It’s a hyper detailed affair where you can hear vocal pads whisper deep in the mix like a ghost choir singing along with their Hell raising leader. Flashes of jungle and drum-n-bass breaks make their way into the fold pushing Neph out of his usual diet of sample loops and more bleak versions of mainstream trap beats. If he isn’t attacking the character of unnamed opps or attempting to keep his alter ego Slitherman at bay he can be found bouncing off the walls changing his voice into a barrage of other side identities. After so many hours alone (whether it be in studio, jail, or on street corners) it’s clear Neph has lost his mind, channeling it into an even more deranged Gucci Mane-esk run. - Anthony Seaman
Best Song: Critical
Best Beat: On My Mind / Pork N Beans
For Fans Of: Kool Kieth, Gucci Mane, mixtape Lil Wayne
One Line: If RXKNephew is Charmander, Gucci Mane is Charmeleon, Lil Wayne is cast as Charizard and Lil B is Shiny Charizard.

Ice Cold Entertainment / Epic

9. ICECOLDBISHOP - Generational Curse

Chaos is an unquestioned piece of the best West Coast releases ever made. The overlapping storylines within a house party, escaping or causing drive by’s, rule breaking feats of the human language, or 24-hour documentaries through the lives of those seen as America’s most dangerous never are consistent. The consistency is the inconsistency. There’s always time to party, to laugh, cry, scream to the heavens. Bass lines pulse, samples screech, drums go a mile a millisecond or a mile an hour. ICECOLDBISHOP may be the best at harnessing this chaos compared to any rapper the West Coast has ever produced. He gives classic tales of hard drug use and gun violence, but reframes it not as stories of pure violence, but before and after tales. A point is made to show that everything in his neighborhood is a time bomb that began ticking before he was even born, and how new ones are carelessly made and forgotten. Vocally he’s a virtuoso, shifting between registers while moving sideways through beats on some 4D chess shit. Mixing together a skillset that few in rap today can harness along with a more detailed perspective on a world that feels familiar, ICECOLDBISHOP creates a full fledged IMAX movie on wax like only a handful before him ever have. - Anthony Seaman

Read more about Generational Curse from our Modern Review here.
Best Song: Focused
Best Beat: Out The Window
For Fans Of: Westside Boogie, Mick Jenkins, Blank Face LP era ScHoolboy Q
One Line: Kendrick Lamar has sons out here and they’re all so damn good.

Generation Now / Atlantic

8. Jack Harlow - Jackman.

The trope of “getting to the top and feeling empty” is a tale as old as the quest for stardom itself, one not even Jack Harlow (checking off the boxes of international ladies man, actor, chart topping rapper, brand ambassador from near obscurity in under 3 years time) can escape. After a muddled reception to Come Home The Kids Miss You, he opted to slow down his traveling and move back home to Louisville. This lifestyle shift brought depth back into his writing that had only been saved for his Drake-esk vignettes into being a sex symbol to everyone with a finsta. The slower life where he spends weekends playing in local soccer leagues and kicking it with high school friends proved to be the injection into his already solid hit making that his career was begging for. It's been a steroid injection to his maturation from boy to man as you see his content base expand from the rigamarole of teen toils (girls, money, and partying) to observations of white privilege (“Common Ground”) coming to grips with complicated family dynamics (“Blame On Me”) and to what extent do friendships go when heinous acts are done by childhood pals (“Gang Gang Gang”). It’s a 24-minute headrush indebted to emotional early 10’s mixtapes (cc: Friday Night Lights and the S.O.U.L. Tape series). Whether this is a one off gift from a rap nerd with illusions of grandeur before returning to the pop-rap consortium or a promise to keep the newfound spirit alive, it adds new depth to someone vying to be the great that no one in his class has truly made an effort to do. - Anthony Seaman

Best Song: Blame On Me

Best Beat: Is That Ight?

For Fans Of: J. Cole, Little Brother, early Kanye West

One Line: The classic “Back to my hip-hop roots” / “Trust me guys I can really rap” project done right.

10k

7. MIKE - Burning Desire

Explaining the kind of rap music MIKE makes is always going to be reductive compared to just playing the albums top down on a day when sitting on the porch with headphones is top of the to-do list. Shining a light on MIKE isn’t telling everyone how great he is, because no words can ever capture the overwhelming humanity that explodes from every syllable in his rhyme book. With every MIDI trigger sound is cut up, blown out, and recontextualized into an evocative galaxy that just makes you feel something new for the first time. Every album since 2019’s Tears Of Joy feels accomplished in one main idea. Tears is a concentrated perfection of the boundless fuzz that his earlier catalog of beta tests was building towards. Weight Of The World saw his vocals become the star of the show. Disco! saw song structure enter his process, creating his catchiest records to date. Beware Of The Monkey was the sun finally breaking through into a universe built upon self-medication and the parsings of pain. Faith Is A Rock holds the best bar for bar rapping of his life. Now Burning Desire exists in the form of a contemporary rap opus, but with disjointed experience as the crux. In real life you're dashing from store to work to home, skimming through apps and text threads by the minute. There's a melding of life through his lyrics and scrambled digital realms through production. Right as you’re lulled into smooth seas, a crack of lightning reignites your mind and forces a shift in direction. From the high seas to the faithful shores the calmness of a man prepared for everything always permeates out of our trusted captain. These invigorating turns from blown out electro jams (“African Sex Freak Fantasy”) to ethereal orchestral soul interludes (“should be!”) back to his established style (“Dambe”) bring an element of surprise that makes every run through a rollercoaster into the mind of the best MC/producer hybrid working today.  - Anthony Seaman

Best Song: Set The Mood
Best Beat: U Think Maybe?

For Fans Of: AKAI SOLO, Quelle Chris, Cities Aviv
One Line: Floating in and out of sleep on your grandma's couch while cartoons and old movies play on the TV.

Backwoodz Studioz

6. Billy Woods & Kenny Segal - Maps

Woods has the superpower of being able to take any situation win, loss, draw or otherwise and point out the worst within it. A perennial nihilist coming to career highs during a global pandemic is just too perfect a coincidence, and since the world has reopened not much has changed in his lyrics. The world is still burning, you’re still under surveillance, and there’s just something a little off with the water, but everyone just got too busy again stare at the truth all day. His own return to the life of a touring musician has brought unbridled awkward encounters and unfortunate circumstances into the hardened veterans daily life. Sketchy bus patrons, the struggles of soundcheck, and expensive Uber rides are the reality of someone without a major label checkbook to grease the wheels of lifes travels. Like most tours a barrage of guests and old pals cross paths from City A to City Z, this time with underground stars Quelle Chris, ShrapKnel, ELUCID and Danny Brown joining the pity party. The ringleader to the entire circus is Kenny Segal, who provided the soundscapes for billy’s sludge ridden affair Hiding Places back in 2020. Where the beats on Hiding Places were lumbering ghouls peeking from the forest at night, Maps takes on a less overcast scenery. “Year Zero” still sounds like the peak of destruction in a Godzilla movie, but “Babylon By Bus” and “Facetime” hold the innocent spark of a more freeing, jazz sprinkled world. With a deeper bag of references than any rapper alive (this album shows him shouting out Playboi Carti concert goers, Jamaican oranges, LL's Walking With A Panther, flying carpets and Rubik’s cubes) every bar is a mystery on how it’ll end. The unpredictable writing paired with Kennys incalculable instrumental flairs converge in a similar no man's land that only they can properly conquer. - Anthony Seaman
Best Song: Soundcheck
Best Beat: NYC Tapwater
For Fans Of: MF DOOM, R.A.P. Ferreira, Open Mike Eagle
One Line: Nightmare version of Call Me If You Get Lost.

ALC Records / Freeminded Records / EMPIRE

5. Larry June & The Alchemist - The Great Escape

Being a rapper isn’t good enough for Larry June, but not in the dismissive way that artists looking to springboard into acting or cheap clout fame go about it, but rather you can hear he’s made for doing something bigger. Even within his monotone drone there’s more real personality to him than in many rappers working today; guys like Larry have floated around you your whole life. Always the calmest in the room, reserved to the point of near mystery, but never intimidated past having a fulfilling conversation. In the same breath he’ll give you a heads up on where to find the best green juices in the city, he’ll flex about his real estate meetings with a small town guy named LeBron James. It’s never to demean or stunt on you, but rather build this never ending lore about him. The Marathon that Nipsey Hussle preached is the path June is striding down, setting himself up for true American living rather than survival, sprinkling tips to anyone along the way keen enough to listen. Cardo, Harry Fraud, and Sean House have been the interior designers to the musical mansions he’s roamed and described in Rick Ross-esk detail, but for what is arguably the apex of his catalog he taps into The Alchemist and his never ending hard drive of beats (and marking the return of Alchemist the MC for the first time since 2019's "Arnold & Danny"). As an admitted Alc super fan there’s been 3 loose phases of his career. Stage 1 ranges from his Cypress Hill days up until around 2010-2011, Stage 2 is birthed from Covert Coup flowing through the mixtape run up until around 2016, while Stage 3 eases in around 2017 with the Fantasy Island EP and Good Book Vol. 2 and exist up until today characterized by more loop based, lighter drums, very subtle live instrument flourishes, closer to creating West Coast jazz compositions. That Stage 3 misty jazz sound works wonders for Larry, allowing the power of his motivational speaker tone to fill out a theater with an exquisite ensemble of sounds framing him. - Anthony Seaman
Best Song: 60 Days
Best Beat: Palisades, CA
For Fans Of: LNDN DRGS, Dom Kennedy, 8Ball & MJG
One Line: The physical version should probably come in a salt water and lemon grass scratch and sniff case or an Italian leather CD booklet.

OVO Sound / Republic

4. Drake - For All The Dogs: Scary Hours Edition

Drake is who he is at this point in life. The biggest rapper in the world, one of the most popular artists of all time, and someone who despite it all is just as frustrated with dating as everyone else is. A core aspect of being a rapper is having someone to rally against and pick apart piece by piece. Some take to political structures, some other rappers, and for Drake it’s the women in his life first and foremost; and that’s when he’s at his absolute best. “Bahamas Promises”, “Slime You Out”, and “Tried Our Best” are scorned R&B tracks that top his discography. “Drew A Picasso” and “Polar Opposites” are rehashings of where things went wrong and how it could just never be his fault. Even playing upon the more bouncy trap sound from Her Loss with "What Would Pluto Do" and "Another Late Night" he's taken the flows and tones that previously fit like oversized hand me downs and tapered them into form. As per every album from someone with market share monopolizing on his mind there are failed attempts to take on new sounds (there is no universe where singing in Spanish or rapping next to Yeat make sense and now we have proof of concept) which garnered enough critique for a deluxe edition of the most aggravated rapping in nearly a decade to spill out and be tacked on to an already great project. Ovrkst., Alchemist, and Boi-1da are highlights in the production credits of the Scary Hours bonus pack, bringing an aged soulfulness to an already spiteful tear. “Evil Ways” is a clash of titans over a decade in waiting and “The Shoe Fits” is a 6 minute exposé into the unspoken aspects of being a woman hopping from one famous lover to another. To say Drake improved as a writer is dismissive to the highlights that existed all along, but for the first time making every playlist seemed to take a backseat to dumping out the best overall songs he has in his stash. - Anthony Seaman

Read more about Drake and For All The Dogs from our October edition of Rapper Of The Month here.

Best Song: Drew A Picasso

Best Beat: The Shoe Fits

For Fans Of: Joe Budden, PARTYNEXTDOOR, Freddie Gibbs

One Line: The angriest and most focused rap album from Drake since IYRTITL.

NONAME Inc. / AWAL

3. Noname - Sundial

Bar for bar there is no better rapper at any given moment than Noname. Standing toe to toe with Common, Billy Woods and Jay Electronica she’s finally found her tribe, but is never washed away by them in the style she has done to so many others the last 10 years. At any moment you can be buried under metaphors, eye popping meter breaks and the unbearable truth of the turmoil needed to create the world we reside in. On her 3rd album, long rumored to be named Factory Baby now known as Sundial, there’s an angst to her usual hushed slam poetry style delivery that adds an acidic sting to every jab at capitalist entities and failing social constructs. At large the album aims to call out hypocrisies in American values as well as her own failures to practice what she preaches. Knowing the weaknesses in your own armor and making it known before anyone else can say it is a unique turn in a genre that is built upon blind bravado even in moments of emotional vulnerability. Does it make her untouchable? No, but the 8 Mile technique of weaponizing her own perceived image allows her points to breath longer uninterrupted, and lets the points she's making become the focal point rather than any attacking of the messenger. There’s always been a battle of pretension that exists in the aesthetic and Twitter feeds of Noname, but never the music itself. The arrogance of a liberal arts student exists in her public presentation, but on record she’s as charismatic and thoughtful as anyone holding her type of talent. The way she critiques Rihanna, white rap fans and lovers expectations is the same way she looks at herself; an idol that should never have been held as such, but rather a person who can be very right in one field while slipping in another. Her rhapsodic verses are soundtracked by a darker free jazz sound that pairs closer to a paranoid Low End Theory than her previous pastel tinted catalog. After every album it’s clear her time away has been spent adding to her already abundant toolbelt, which when paired with a deep understanding of the history and theory that her morality is built upon creates a force of nature in the rap world comparable only to comets in the sky. - Anthony Seaman
Best Song: Beauty Supply
Best Beat: Black Mirror

For Fans Of: Bahamadia, Common, Kendrick Lamar
One Line: The Lauryn Hill rap album y’all always wanted.

Tan Cressida / ALC Records / Warner / Gala Music

2. Earl Sweatshirt & The Alchemist - VOIR DIRE (Full Version)

Hearing Earl rap consistently was a dream that seemed unfathomable 5 years ago. To make a full traditional verse-hook-verse-hook rap song seemed to be a chore. In 2023 it still is for him and most of the general music making universe, but what has come from it is a more pure presentation of ideas that pop music form really was never meant to do. The underground spans from the Griselda-verse, into whatever you call xaviersobased, and somewhere in between lies Certified Trapper doing something no one outside of his area code can do just right (sorry Babytron). Earl played around with every exciting sub-scene that the underbelly of hip-hop music holds, absorbing cadences like Kirby, writing his poetic revelations right to papyrus. Alchemist and Earl have toyed with fans for years about a full project existing. After Youtube witch hunts came up fruitless and low-res festival performances of unreleased collab cuts circled the internet, a botched NFT style release was the "groundbreaking" structure they saw fit. Now to the chagrin of the general population (who has no concept of a .zip file), two different tracklistings exist and require an at home fix. It's an old school scavenger hunt with riddles and big X marking the spot that produces one of the best bodies of work either have ever laid their fingers on. The half mumbled but always clear delivery of a man smoked out of his mind mixed with production so airy it gives you the feeling of floating within a deprivation tank makes the journey to completion make more sense. This is the sacred room of an oracle and a wizard joining forces to bring calm during an avalanche. A focus on brevity makes every line hit like a cold brick to the head, where even simple lines can be carried as affirmations through the waves of life. All together the 14 songs synthesize that rush of water hitting your back in the shower after a joint and a full meal; rethinking the world, the sadness of losing friends, and appreciating a mothers love, all the while knowing things will be OK. - Anthony Seaman

Read more about Earl Sweatshirt and VOIR DIRE from our September edition of Rapper Of The Month here.
Best Song: 27 Braids
Best Beat: My Brother, The Wind

For Fans Of: Madlib, Denmark Vessey, Roc Marciano
One Line: An abbreviated version of Mos Def’s The Ecstatic.

Navy Wavy / Warner

1. Veeze - Ganger (Deluxe)

From the second the distorted drums and digital horns flopped through my headphones, chills ran from my calves to my ears. Veeze’s name popped up on my timeline sparingly by the best tastemakers in rap today, his praises sung in shushes like he was the boogieman. Yet so glowing you’d think he was God himself. His unholy adoration of pills, beautiful women who can't be trusted, and limited edition clothing make him seem as trivial as the next guy with access to a studio and a batch of “Surf Gang type beats”, but he’s anything but that. Rapping in run on sentences with nuanced slurs and a lower energy bar than Tyrese Halliburton on defense, Veeze patches together verses as a collage artist first and foremost. Punch ins and punchlines are his core values as a rapper, each essential textures within the Detroit scene that birthed him, just never at this high a level for a full LP. The oddball humor of Cam’ron, the Zack Lowe level NBA nerdom, the Young Dro-esk descriptions of his lean, the high level shit talking of a durag dawning Jay-Z, the masterful pocket punching of Lil Uzi Vert. It's a seismic shift in style from the top stars that have ran hip-hop for 10 years. There's almost no purposeful hooks. The only real concept to be found in 80% the songs is either how cool he is today or how cool he's always been. It's less an album and more a data dump from a deranged mans hard drive. As a listener we always hear about the good ole days from our favorite artists 10-20 years after the fact on a stiff podcast when they finally have the ability to look back and process the insanity of their run. Veeze is documenting that rise in real time. There’s nothing he can’t do, and he’s doing it on lush twitchy beats that sound like the sound Helluva and Payroll Giovanni built was reimagined with plugg producers. It was album of the year before the deluxe version even dropped, but once songs like “Luv The Tour” and “Get Lucki” were added doubling down on the best parts of the original album, it was a lock for the #1 spot. - Anthony Seaman

Best Song: Not A Drill
Best Beat: Get Lucki

For Fans Of: Babyface Ray, Lil Baby, Luh Tyler
One Line: Detroit’s Supreme Clientele.

Check out our all encompassing, probably way too long, Best Of 2023 Playlist on Spotify.