Pitchfork writer Alphonse Pierre’s rap column covers songs, mixtapes, albums, Instagram freestyles, memes, weird tweets, fashion trends—and anything else that catches his attention.
I’ve been writing this column for the past three years, but in 2023 more people than ever asked me that eternal question: Has rap fallen off? It was incredibly annoying. The short answer: no. The long answer: Well…
The genre is as complicated as ever. Especially since it’s clear that: The mainstream is generally a soulless rat race. The festivities surrounding this year’s 50th anniversary of hip-hop were mostly corporatized failures. The legal war against the genre continues with the ongoing RICO case against Young Thug, which will once again put rap lyrics on trial. And as for some of the mega-powerful and allegedly abusive men who have profited most from rap’s rise over the decades, a reckoning is long overdue.
As a rap critic, I think about these things every day, even as I search for the cool shit underneath the genre’s Drake-dominated surface. My favorite albums and mixtapes and EPs of the year mostly came from regional artists who are reshaping the past into exciting and fresh sounds. Sometimes that musical time traveling was achieved through skillful sampling that aims to repurpose with purpose rather than just regurgitate not-so-distant nostalgia. Other times it was through the gradual evolution of a homegrown style: In Milwaukee, my favorite scene of the year, numerous sounds had a moment, including the hand-clap-driven style dubbed lowend, which was adapted from the late-2000s local subgenre jack rap.
Even with all of the demoralizing and unsettling shit, I had a good-ass time listening this year. As a writer and fan, what I look for in rap albums is constantly changing. Obviously it’s nice if a full project is a knockout from front to back, but it doesn’t have to be for me to consider it good, or even great. It just has to make me strongly feel something. No matter if they’re fun or sad—or for dancing like it’s 2007 in Atlanta or sitting in your bedroom with your headphones on—all of the releases on this list reminded me that there’s nothing quite like the high you get when you become obsessed with a new rap record.
25. YT: #STILLSWAGGIN
What’s more 2023 than a rapper in London reimagining ringtone-ready California jerk music from 15 years ago? YT’s #STILLSWAGGIN updates the nostalgic sound but keeps its lighthearted spirit with a dead-set focus on girls (from Oxford), house parties, and loud fashion trends. (Honestly, the funniest part is that he uses the word “trousers.”) It’s time to dig your Prada sneakers and shutter shades out of the closet and swag out like you’re about to go post up in front of a Zumiez.
24. L5: Blood on Switch St
L5 sounds like he’s getting twisted joy out of making you squirm on Blood on Switch St. His sicko anthems are peppered with ominous door knocks, drums that pump like a shivering heartbeat, and his signature shrieking flow, which makes him sound like his body has been inhabited by Pazuzu. But what makes this horror-inflected mixtape—and other jump-scare-worthy releases like 2Sdxrt3all’s Fuck School and LilBirdie’s Da Biggest Bird—more than a hollering gimmick is how it pulls in strains of Keef, YoungBoy, and ATL rap history while sounding like nothing you’ve ever heard before. These drill nightmares are so identifiable that Druski even made a parody skit about them.
23. Sparkheem: Survivor’s Guilt
My perfect morning goes something like this: Wake up, hit the gym, eat a well-balanced breakfast, and then log onto YouTube and immerse myself in the doomsday percussion and tumbling flows of DMV crank. The scene thrived this year, as a new generation of regional heroes put both harder and softer bents on the sound. For a quick snapshot, look no further than Maryland producer Sparkheem’s Survivor’s Guilt, which features an all-star team of rising DMV stars (KP Skywalka, CruddyMurda) and homegrown staples (Q Da Fool, Lil Dude) riding over his go-go-inspired bounce.
22. Osyris Israel: #FreeScott
Helmed by Maryland producer Osyris Israel, #FreeScott is a compilation tape with memorable contributions courtesy of rappers and producers from all over the map: Minnesota’s Lerado sounds like he’s beaming in from an underground lair, South Carolina’s Fucksnowrr is off to the races, and Baltimore’s FastMoneyFendi might get the belt for best faux-Neptunes song of the year. On top of all that are truly wild remixes of Drake’s “Jungle” and Thug’s “Constantly Hating,” along with beats that range from plugg to drum’n’bass to pits of darkness.
21. Myaap: Worth the Wait
Milwaukee lowend was my sustenance this year. Seriously: I’ll forget to eat for an entire day, but won’t forget to fire up the new TaeRackz party-drill deep cut or AyooLii’s latest creative brainstorm. Myaap’s dance anthems on Worth the Wait are especially essential, throwing off New Orleans-bounce levels of mayhem—nothing but familiar samples, breakneck drum patterns, and a wicked combo of shit talk and dancefloor commands.
20. BabyK Turnt: $tack or Starve
Keeping the lowend wave going, Babyk Turnt’s $tack or Starve exemplifies what makes this style so fun. It’s twerk music. It’s loverboy music. It’s getting-money-with-the-bros music. You want to sample Nas? Fuck it, speed that shit up and throw some claps on it (see: “Like Woahhh Pt. 2”). You want to get in your feels? Sure, as long as it’s loaded up with battering 808s and sounds like it was recorded in a janitor’s closet. Anything goes.
19. Babyface Ray: Summer’s Mine
The last three Babyface Ray albums—Unfuckwitable, Face, and Mob—had their moments, but they ultimately let me down like that barber who isn’t bad enough to abandon but not good enough to ever blow you away. Then came Summer’s Mine, a low-stakes heater where he sheds the burden of having to be the nationwide flagbearer for Detroit by just doing what he does best: rap and chill (not necessarily in that order). Everything that makes him great is here: vivid fit checks. Sentimental memories. Wavy beats. A real return to form.
18. Doris: Side Nigga (Full Movie HD) Part 1-5
The best rom-com of the year isn’t in theaters. It’s on SoundCloud, where New Jersey’s Doris has been pouring his lovelorn heart out on his Side Nigga series (which was then compiled into this collection, like a DVD box set). In less than 10 minutes, you get all of the ups and downs of crushing hard, rapped and sung through warped vocals and mostly self-made beats that are just as likely to loop a soul sample as they are to blend garage drums and Three 6 Mafia. It’s funny, sweet, and a little sad.
17. Mitchell: Antii
Mitchell has enough stories to fill an entire night around the campfire, especially when bouncing off his Oakland-bred partner in crime, 1100 Himself. They each laid down crystal clear scenes on solo albums this year. While 1100’s tales on Leven Durant feel like constant montages of double crosses and shootouts, Mitchell’s Antii is filled with breezier coming of age stories. It almost feels like you’re in the backseat of his car while he cruises around the city, giving you the lowdown on the girl he used to fantasize about back in high school, the dude around the way that he feels like robbing out of spite, and the college party that sounds straight out of Higher Learning. You’ll want to cough up some gas money so he can keep on rambling.
16. H31r: HeadSpace
The off-balance raps of Brooklyn’s maassai and the bugged-out club creations of Jersey producer JWords make HeadSpace, their collaborative album as H31r, one of the most original hip-hop albums of the year. It’s a perfect combination: maassai’s esoteric rhyme schemes and point-blank introspection are elevated by JWords’ head-cracking drums and oblong bloops, which sound straight out of a Twilight Zone episode.
15. Mari Montana: Outstanding Member
On Outstanding Member, Mari Montana is fighting to keep his soul out of the hands of the devil, questioning his life’s purpose, and dissing Joe Biden—and that’s all just on the very first track. The burly voiced West Palm Beach, Florida native sounds like he’s been deadbolted into a confessional booth. He’s constantly got his heart and his hurt on his sleeve, a little like YoungBoy if YoungBoy’s favorite No Limit rapper was Fiend instead of Soulja Slim.
14. Legend Yae: The Industry Made Me Hate Music
As you can probably tell by its moody, Tumblr-ass title, The Industry Made Me Hate Music isn’t the brightest affair. But unlike a lot of other Southern pain rap, listening to it doesn’t feel like watching the Studio Ghibli tearjerker Grave of the Fireflies on loop. The flickers of optimism come from Legend Yae’s voice: He always sounds like he’s daydreaming about better times. So even when the South Carolina crooner is numbing the pain with drugs or engulfed by paranoia, there’s always a little hope peeking through.
13. MIKE: Burning Desire
You can pretty much count on a really good MIKE album every year at this point—he’s as reliable as throwing on an episode of Seinfeld before bed. That consistency is never boring, though, because each album is centered around a different emotion or element of his artistry. This time his production moves to the fore; he’s bloomed into one of the best beatmakers on the East Coast. It’s so explorative and curious—flamboyant on “Zap!” or cathartic on “should be!” or blissful on “Set the Mood.” Pair that with rapping that removes the bumpers, and you’ve got another firecracker.
12. jaydes: ghetto cupid
The only guarantee on a jaydes song is that he will absolutely be going through it. On ghetto cupid, Broward County’s perpetually brokenhearted experimentalist delivers sullen brooding and gloomy memories that pull as much from My Bloody Valentine as they do Lucki. That hodgepodge should be corny but it’s not, because he’s just so earnest about it all.
11. billy woods and Kenny Segal: Maps
The rapper lifestyle has rarely sounded so unglamorous. On the brilliantly bleak travelogue Maps, New York indie-rap maverick billy woods floats around like a ghost—from the Netherlands to a Costco in the Midwest, from the backseat of a $300 Uber ride to outside Kennedy Fried Chicken—blowing dope and waiting until it’s time for his next gig. As ever, woods’ raps are stuffed with an overwhelmingly colorful blur of wordplay: “From up here the lakes is puddles,” he observes at cruising altitude, “the land unfold brown and green, it’s a quiet puzzle.”
His words on NYC are so alive that you can practically smell the conch fritters frying up in the pan, taste the tang of city tap water, and see him breathlessly chasing down a Brooklyn bus. Sometimes the fortysomething father of two just bars out, like when he seamlessly weaves the titles of Cam’ron classics into a nostalgic verse about the days when he had nothing to lose. Kenny Segal’s varied beats are the backbone—switching between gentle and hard, kooky and sublime—and give woods the space to lay out life lessons, sly jokes, and observations that make the mundane parts of life sound so profound.
10. Noname: Sundial
Some of the best rappers in the world pop in like sitcom guest stars on Sundial—billy woods, Jay Electronica, $ilkMoney—and yet Noname is never overshadowed. It’s a tangled and lionhearted manifesto, where anyone and anything can get this work on the mic, from Jay and Bey to the thought processes that gives corporations the freedom to commodify Black art. The fact that she says it in a cadence fit for the library makes it that much harder.
9. Lunchbox: New Jazz
New Jazz is all overheating-robot beats and nonstop freefall. Harlem’s Lunchbox, who you might know as the producer behind much of Sheck Wes’ Mudboy, reinvented himself as a human sound-effect machine and is now taking Yeat’s rage to a darker, more phantasmic, and more internal place. You could mosh to this music, but it could just as easily make you want to go way off the grid.
8. Vayda: breeze
I might have played Vayda’s breeze more than anything else all year. It’s full of short, sunkissed tracks that are bouncy, psychedelic, and as weightless as jumping into a pile of leaves. Stylistically the Atlanta rapper and producer jumps all over the place, going from Jersey club to soul to kaleidoscopic shit that could be on an old Ruben Slikk mixtape. I saw her perform songs from the tape twice this year, and each outing felt charmingly magnetic.
7. Sme Taxfree: My Whole Life a Mob Movie
As far as I know, there’s no mafia-obsessed film, show, book, or album as concerned with BBLs as SME Taxfree’s My Whole Life a Mob Movie. Taxfree is 2023’s Milwaukee heavyweight champ. He’s a prolific juggernaut teeming with hilarious punchlines who excels at depicting a lifestyle you usually only see in Tubi cinema set in Detroit. (Seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this tape is more inspired by the acting of Jamal “Gravy” Woodard than Al Pacino.) Over a consistently hard-hitting roundup of beats that puts a sentimental spin on Milwaukee slap, it brings a new sauce to mafioso rap.
6. Ken Carson: A Great Chaos
The thesis of my dismissive review of Ken Carson’s 2022 album X (which is still bad) boiled down to: He is like Playboi Carti if Carti had no believable emotions or interests outside of becoming an empty, heavily sponsored voice of a generation. And now all of a sudden I’m yapping away to my friends that Carson’s 2023 follow-up, A Great Chaos, is like the Future album that Future can’t make anymore. Hear me out. Zoom right by all of the nonsense about emo girls and boob jobs and you’ll find real, actual love and pain and rage. You’ll find a rapper that has clearly been digging through the weeds of Gucci, Keef, and Uzi (and, uh, Green Day). You’ll find this drugged-out, blown-out, off-the-wall blur of reality and fantasy. He realized that trying to remake Whole Lotta Red was a dead end and did Opium Future instead. Give him the damn Most Improved trophy.
5. Lostrushi: Sisterhood
The glitchy Sisterhood is nostalgia done right. It sounds like the past and present all at once, as Lostrushi blends references to anime soundtracks and video games from the 2000s with sped-up melodies and digitized synths that sound like transmissions from another dimension. No matter if the songs are grand and sweeping like “INFINITUDE//UROBOROS” or sweet and low-key like “SORORITY,” there’s a bored longing to his music that reminds me of revisiting a melancholic manga that changed my life in high school.
4. Starker: Spiridon
If you have been brainwashed into believing that fast rapping is uncool, listen to born-and-raised Williamsburg, Brooklyn MC Starker and you’ll instantly be convinced that nothing else is as fly. With his sandpaper voice, Starker crams enough bars and jokes to fill one of those brick-sized fantasy novels you can’t believe people actually finish into a near-30-minute mad dash over a whirlwind of woozy and tough THERAVADA beats. His one-liners and couplets are so specific and ingrained in New York-centric hip-hop, fashion, and basketball culture that they’re liable to go over heads outside of the city. Sometimes a bar will stick out through the trail of smoke, maybe because it reignites a memory or just feels so fucking random: “I pull up in the Beamer and lose my keys like Beenie Man,” or, “Worse than the guest in yo apartment who keep steppin’ on the carpet that you just purchased.” Put some respect on fast rapping.
3. Sexyy Red: Hood Hottest Princess
Bigtime commercial hip-hop had a dreadful year—but thankfully there was at least the galactic takeover of Sexxy Red’s Hood Hottest Princess. The St. Louis firebreather channeled the uncompromising recklessness of Gucci Mane into a wall-to-wall thriller of hard-nosed, raunchy raps, getting all the softies to clutch their pearls along the way. It’s provocative without that being the point. It’s catchy even when it doesn’t try to be. And it birthed a few phrases that very well may find their way into the next edition of Webster’s dictionary. (They should be adding “skeeyee” as I write this.)
2. Mari Boy Mula Mar: Bitty Breaker
We don’t get a lot of swooning, happily-in-love rap albums. It’s a genre where—with the dudes especially—you’re more likely to get broken hearts and tantrums rather than heart eyes and words of affirmation. But Milwaukee rapper Mari Boy Mula Mar’s Valentine’s Day project Bitty Breaker is a full-on love fantasia, where his deep feelings are communicated via pure horniness. A buzzkill might say it’s a mixtape of lust, not love. But listen to him gently declare, “Baby you so bad I might just pay yo car note” on “Personal Trick,” or how he sounds like he’s about to get down on one knee after peeping her French tip toenails on “Compliments,” and tell me that this is not complete infatuation. A very freaky infatuation, but infatuation nonetheless.
1. Veeze: Ganger
I would like to say something neat and tidy like: The last five years of Detroit rap has all been leading to Ganger. But that wouldn’t feel exactly right, especially considering how Veeze stitched together so many other regional flourishes to make this disorienting maze of pontificating and punchlines such a milestone. He’s got the mad-scientist flair of Wayne and the slurred magnetism of Kodak and Keef, packaged with the foot-on-the-gas sense of humor and urgency that has made Detroit a burgeoning epicenter of hip-hop culture this decade. So yeah, Veeze is rapping his ass off. Even after countless listens, I’m still catching new bars, new jokes, new wordplay. In a year where so many lamented the creative downfall of rap, Ganger came along to prove all of them wrong.
