Image via Himra/Instagram

The Rap-Up is the only weekly round-up providing you with the best rap songs you need to hear. Support real, independent music journalism by subscribing to Passion of the Weiss on Patreon.

Harley Geffner has never seen a single clip from the Jennifer Hudson show, but is inundated with those walk in clips everywhere he looks.

Thirstyowe3k – “Reincarnated”

Space and place will always be the main animators of the best rap music. It’s why we like to focus this column mainly on regional rap, grounded in lived experience, rather than glossy high-budget board room approved music. But there exists a trap door where a region’s distinct sound, which is what makes it special in the first place, starts to lean into the type-beat and type-raps of the innovators. There are different fonts on it and some breakthroughs, but it can start to feel a little monotonous. This is what happened to the rubbery basslines of NY drill in the post Pop Smoke wave.

Maybe it’s just the home team bias that has always prevented LA rap from feeling like this previously, but over the last 6 months, LA street rap has fallen into the danger zone around post-Drakeo coalescence. Drakeo’s music sounded good, obviously, but the main reason was the character behind the music and his inimitable wit and acerbic charm. The formula wasn’t the sauce, it was Drakeo himself. X4s are a dime a dozen now, and the nervous music snaps still sound good, but they, at times, feel played out in their current iteration.

On “Reincarnated,” Thirstyowe3k and producer Jroszz break through the noise with something that expands upon the sound rather than trying to replicate it. It starts with the beat, which takes the typically dark key and leans into a spacey wobble before the bass drops the bottom out around 20 seconds in. The haziness gives it a different look, which is (probably unintentionally) aided by the low quality upload that makes it look like you’re watching a Snapchat sent from an Android in 2014. Thirsty, hailing from the Westmont area of LA (Rollin 100s Crip), capitalizes on the drop by jumping right into a killer staccato flow, which at first sounds conventionally hard, but swerves off the rails in his rhyme schemes. He’s not the only one breaking through, but the noise is reaching maximum capacity, and it’s refreshing to hear someone trying to do something different with it.

Peysoh – “it aint yo fault”

Newton’s third law of physics is that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Action-reaction force pairs make it possible for fish to swim, for cars to move along roads, and for basically any physical motion in our world. The same is true on the non-physical plane. Everything has balances, so paradoxically, there’s a certain level of joie de vivre that comes with having experienced the lowest lows of the human experience. The reflection needed to try to understand deep levels of hardship and pain usually creates a level of appreciation for the moments that make life worth living.

Hailing from the Maywood neighborhood of LA, Peysoh lost his father at six-years-old to gun violence, and one of his closest friends, Money$ign Suede was murdered in prison. He also recently survived an overdose of his own – another brush with the other side. This is not written to stack up the tragedies against anyone else’s but it’s to say that when he reflects on his life, it comes with a wisdom and perspective built by some of the most intense emotions anyone could possibly experience.

On ‘it aint yo fault,’ he uses the conceit of a letter to his younger self to talk through the traumas and lessons steeped within. He advises himself to cherish the moments playing soccer with his dad in the park, and ultimately to keep his head up. He explains that the pain doesn’t get any easier, but that living through it brings brighter days.

He tips his cap to all the single mothers, and reflects on some of what he went through with his own mom before deciding to take matters into his own hands. There’s really no writing that can do justice to his own here:

“Mama broke when I told her I want bands with checkers
‘Cause how we had it, all she got me was a pair of Sketchers,
Hey ma that’s cool, now that I’m older, shoes gon’ be shoes
Hey ma that’s cool, now that I’m older, you did what you could
Hey ma that’s cool, the sweater was warm, I could take the jokes
Hey ma that’s cool, take care of Ali, I could deal with bro
I know you thinkin’ you need money, who gon’ hire kids?
You know that school won’t get you nowhere so you rather sin
You know it ain’t gon’ fall from heaven so you took a risk
Now you got everything you need with a mask and stick”

Reese Youngn & Skrilla – “Kamehameha”

When will rappers learn to stop putting Skrilla on their songs? He has collaborated with a Death Row-level list of rappers and he’s dog-walked every single one of them. These songs are totally serviceable without Skrilla and his only purpose is seemingly to embarrass other rappers.

Reese tries his best, but there’s just no competing with the level of ease Skrilla feels in rotating through novel flows. He’s been doing it for almost two years now, and every song still feels completely fresh. Not only are his meandering flows crazy, but his bars are so demented and out of left field, that you’d almost assume he’s operating on a completely different dimensional plane than the rest of us. I mean, most rappers’ talk about their opps, but Skrilla says he doesn’t have any because they’re in the grapevine. He takes Reese’s bar ending in the Dragon Ball Z “kamehameha,” and zips it up, rapping “Kame kame you, I’m thumbin through the sack like Yu-Gi-You, I put a sack right on yo hat and they gon’ black when they see you.” That’s a hell of a way to say he put a hit on someone. We really want to stop putting Skrilla in every rap up just for variety’s sake, but he remains both the best and most innovative thing I hear every week.

Sturdyyoungin, Ohthatsmizz & Zeddy Will – “TRIPPIN”

We here at POW make a point to try not to fall for cheap nostalgia-bait, but this one is too fun to be curmudgeonly about. A NOLA-style bounce edit on Fergie’s “Clumsy,” featuring the actual Fergie in the video, playing the part of a teacher who is about to fail the high school quarterback? It’s super endearing, especially the way Sturdy and his collaborators play into the whimsical high school romantic competition, and how they’re all “trippin’,” over the same girl. It’s very boyish and the rapping is fun and upbeat, with a cutesy through line that leans all the way in, and some great dancing in the party scene and credits.

Himra – “GANJAMAN” (feat. Kwaku DMC, Reggie, O’Kenneth & Beeztrap KOTM)

On “GANJAMAN,” the most popular artist in all of Côte d’Ivoire by the numbers, Himra, teams up with some of the most popular rising acts out of neighboring Ghana for an anthem to smoking weed and drinking champagne. Even without understanding 90% of what they’re saying, the melodies are pure and it’s a bunch of people smiling while singing tenderly about the ganjaman. That’s what good music is all about.

Emptying the Chamber

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