The Heat Check playlist is your source for new music from around the worlds of hip-hop and R&B with an emphasis on bubbling, undiscovered, and under-the-radar acts. Who's got the hot hand? Who's on a run? It's a menagerie of notable songs curated by enthusiasts from around NPR Music.

This week's Heat Check selects come largely from iconoclasts who have already zeroed in on their individual aesthetics: a singsong rap soulman, an alté sensation, a noise-rap radical, a Memphis outlier, and a bidirectional pop-rap multi-hyphenate. Elsewhere we get songs with signature sounds: drill merengue, rap regalia, synth-R&B as dance music, Auto-Tuned cyber-vibrato  and more. Check in.

We're on the eve of cuffing season and yet Smino's "90 Proof" with J. Cole tries squeezing in a f**kboy fall before it's too late. The chorus is a tipsy plea to his lover performed in a half rap, half croon imbued with a vulnerability one can only express after a strong drink: "Not too great at relationships, at least I try / Patient, baby, gotta make a couple rounds / 'Fore I make it back to you to settle down." With production from Monte Booker and Groove — the latter having crafted a similar vibe on Isaiah Rashad's "Claymore," another cut in which Smi thinks he might have found the one — the beat has that playful soft knock he gravitates toward, one that's quite the temptation for a fall drive. J. Cole is a welcome mentor, playing the friend who's down to go out with you but constantly mentioning their partner at home the entire night. 

 for Smi to lock down his album the same way his interest on "90 Proof" wants him to define the relationship, and here he makes his intention very clear: he's gonna come through. — Gabby Bulgarelli

Once you've enjoyed a breakout moment in music, there's really only one thing that can move you from "one-hit wonder" to confidently being co-signed as "next up": consistency. Nigeria's Ayra Starr is very much at the tipping point. Compared to her award-winning 2021 single, "Bloody Samaritan," which builds off the hunger of haunting strings and affirmations, Starr's latest, "Rush," rides a wave of mid-tempo triumph with a message of maintaining your blessings once you've received them. — Sidney Madden

The Philly rapper Ghais Guevara's appeal is summed up in the caption on his Bandcamp page: "im the reason your 14 year old won't shut up about Malcolm X." He's a militant progressive as likely to reference scholar bell hooks as the Terminator rebel Sarah Connor. "#FREEMIR," the opener from his latest project, 

, channels noise rap in pursuit of a sound that can't be ignored. With your attention, he makes his messages plain: "You might've rallied to tell us to vote / But you never would throw you a stone / Talkin' bout peace when police got the dogs and the guns and the shields and the hose," he raps, before accepting the limits of his position, "Tongue of a poet but when has the words of a man ever threaten the throne?" — Sheldon Pearce

Here's how I imagine the making of "Poland" went:

LIL YACHTY: "I TOOK THE WOOOOOOOOCK TO POLAND!"

LIL YACHTY: "Nah trust me ... OK, now make me sound like I'm a robot singing into a fan."

RANDOM GUY IN STUDIO: "I'm leaking this."

Whether it's Michigan rap or sample drill, Yachty is constantly looking for new sounds to fold into his world. But the cyber-vibrato on "Poland" reminds me of the goofier Sailing Team days when he was emerging in the wake of Makonnen, KEY and other Atlanta rap mavericks — a singer that couldn't really sing but had enough charisma and Auto-Tune to pull it off. The song hinges on its insane hook. The verse is kind of forgettable. But that's all it has taken for fans to eat this thing up. Yachty is probably channeling Duwap Kaine, too, a 20-year-old from Savannah, GA who's quietly influenced a generation of internet rap crooners by 

Connie Diiamond, "Toot That (Nene Bomba)" [Remix] (ft. MorenoITF) 

If Ice Spice raised the flag for the Bronx with "Munch," fellow BX native Connie Diiamond is running with the torch on her latest, a remix to "Toot That." A wonderful fusion of drill and merengue, Connie slides over the beat, gassing herself and leaving men in the dust: "I'm vibey, none of you n****s excite me / I gave him the pum / Now I gotta zoom." The track samples Vitico's infectious 1999 merengue jam "Pum, Pum, Pum El Nene Bomba," an homage to Connie's heritage and upbringing. She reps her set throughout the song and video, with the help of fellow AfroLatino rapper MorenoITF. — Jerusalem Truth

Not to be confused with Megan Thee Stallion's Grammy-winning track, Gia Mayham's version of "Savage" is delivered with more of a snarl than a wink. Gia (a.k.a. Rollie Pollie Snack Mealz) puts her foot on the gas with a sped-up sample of Webbie's "Give Me That" and fires off a barrage of warning shots at the "salt and pepper hoes" that aren't even worthy of her legacy. — Sidney Madden

Memphis is a beloved (and underrated) rap city, and while Lukah may feel like an outlier to its regional sound, he has quietly been adding to its rich legacy. After giving crunk music a try, the rapper was drawn to a more matter-of-fact, bars-first approach. "Presence of Color," from his most recent album, 

, is evidence of his evolution into an observer rapper and a philosophical thinker: on its first verse, which strings together various subjects of study (criminology, physiology, cosmology), he keeps expanding the scope through which he considers his surroundings. — Sheldon Pearce

As New York-based duo ATELLER & Tan Brown work through one of their latest collabs, changing the rules of engagement rarely goes smoothly. Enveloped by synth claps and bass, Brown tries to decide if she should weather the storm of missed calls and mind games or just abandon ship: "I have a million reasons why I'd like to see what's left to find / Am I waiting for a recall 'cause I let you come back every time." Brown's ambivalence lingers with each note, and soon all reason fades away into the rhythm. — Sidney Madden

His viral song "556 (Green Tip)" might bounce around like an elvish jig, but iayze is really in his bag when he's rapping over these dense layers of strings and synths, arranged throughout his latest EP, 

, by Massachusetts artist Devstacks. Full of enchanted rapping, complex buildups and jittery arpeggios, the music, dubbed "regalia," is like a classically trained musician's take on Chief Keef — or a Glo Gang disciple's attempt at writing a concerto. The closing track "Barbados" makes the simplest desires sound magnificent. — Mano Sundaresan

It's easy to hear the influence of one Nicki Minaj running through the music of TiaCorine, a Winston-Salem rapper balancing both punchy and graceful tendencies. She is seeking a similar duality to the Barb Queen, but her rapping is more dispassionate, with flows that seem to drag along beats, and in her gestures toward pop, her Auto-Tuned singing verges on ethereal. She is most captivating when forcing her way through noisy production, as she does on the ballistic cut "Rocket," from her new project, 

. After a dazed hook, the song unloads into a barrage of rapid-fire bars. "Yeah, I got a glock but you know that I'm boxing," she raps. There's something almost lackadaisical about her delivery, even at her most aggressive, which makes it feel like she's making these songs casually for her own amusement. — Sheldon Pearce   

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Sidney Madden

Sheldon Pearce

Gabby Bulgarelli

Mano Sundaresan

Jerusalem Truth

This week's Heat Check selects come largely from iconoclasts who have already zeroed in on their individual aesthetics: a singsong rap soulman, an alté sensation, a noise-rap radical and more


Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Interscope

Smino - 90 Proof ft. J Cole (Official Visualizer)

Ayra Starr - Rush (Official Music Video)

#FREEMIR

Connie Diiamond - Toot That (Nene Bomba) [Remix] Feat. MorenoITF

Savage

Good for Me

TiaCorine - Rocket (Official Audio)

Heat Check Roundup: Smino, Ayra Starr, Ghais Guevara and more

Jacob Aloi

The McKnight Foundation honored Ewart’s years of community engagement and artistry with this year’s Distinguished Artist Award, which carries with it a $100,000 prize. He’s known for his support of young artists in Minneapolis.


Innovative Minnesota musician Douglas Ewart wins recognition for transforming work

Kerem Yücel | MPR News

Open Mike Eagle has always been attuned to underground hip-hop's bigger picture, in ways that show how often he's had to keep on his toes. It's not just borne out in his off-the-cuff facility with language, though his sharp-thinking, moving-target adaptability means he's every bit as perceptive a dot-connector in his side gigs as a podcast host and interviewer — check for the hip-hop history Q&A sessions on 

— as he is drawing off impulse-driven battle-rap improvisation. His creative spark, largely inspired by the lyrically minded, community-building approach of Los Angeles collective Project Blowed, shone so bright he even found himself 

 to attempt to find out just how the brain actually works during freestyle rap sessions. And even if calling his 2010 breakthrough album 

left him open to outside confusion about what that genre signifier actually meant, it also made that descriptor feel open-ended, accommodating Eagle's boundless perspective — which, while heavy on a referential depth that would rival the '90s 

writers room, also snuck through more than a trace of confessional directness. For much of his 2010s output, he'd get personal in a way that didn't overshare, but still felt pulled from a place where 

was a good way to establish a horizon-scanning point of view.

, the L.A.-via-Chicago rapper's more direct turn towards frank and upfront discussions of his own personal struggles and stresses felt like a cathartic culmination. Eagle is always working out the internal contradictions and external impositions that come with being an independent hip-hop artist, benefiting from a perceptively sardonic touch that can hide both barbed social commentary and worried self-reckonings inside an affable if often skeptical sense of humor. That's been increasingly reinforced in his best work, especially 2016's social anxiety-steeped 

and the project-housing community hauntology of 2017's Robert Taylor Homes-raised 

. Both displayed Eagle's finely attuned sense of how he saw himself, the community that raised him and the creative fields he became a part of — and, more often than not, attempted to confront the flaws and struggles in those experiences with the clarity of someone who needs to feel less alone in having them.

laid that all out on the line. The end of his marriage and a series of creative setbacks — particularly the dissolution of his Hellfyre Club group and the cancellation of his scalpel-sharp comedy series with Baron Vaughn, 

 — left him feeling adrift in an existential crisis, and reaching for 

-style power fantasies just to get his bearings back. And then the album had to go and hit right as an even bigger, more communal crisis was reaching a peak during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eagle recorded "Everything Ends Last Year" and its 

-wrackedrefrain "It's October and I'm tired" in 2019, and when the album dropped, one October later, so was everyone else. In "Peak Lockdown Raps," a deep cut near the end of his new album, 

, he admits with a claustrophobic, crummy-fidelity immediacy that he's "talkin' like the year didn't happen / I feel like I should hear it in the rappin' / Since we all had unkempt beards and weird interactions."

Now, in another October, Eagle's efforts to collect himself after enduring (likely) the strangest album-release cycle of his career has given us an album that's just as personal, but reflectively so. 

is an outward feint towards homesick '90s introspection that a shallower effort would have made seem like a retreat towards those mythical More Innocent Times people tend to turn to in times of crisis. Sometimes it seems like there's an entire nostalgia-industrial complex dedicated to making the '90s feel like a lost idyll, the last truly enjoyable time before everything went to hell, but 

 is a record that makes a case for the past as a continuously changing and evolving presence, not a trapped-in-amber escape route.

Sure, you get multiple nods to the Jordan era (Chicago Bulls centers Bill Cartwright and Luc Longley both get namedrops) and classic video games ("Multi-Game Arcade Cabinet" flips through its myriad yet cohesive guest verses like games in a Neo Geo) and defunct stereo-emporium dreamspaces (both the title of "Circuit City" and the gear-hawking intro to the misleadingly titled "CD Only Bonus Track"). And several beats provided by Diamond D, a producer-rapper and fixture of NYC's Diggin' in the Crates crew, who's the kind of high-tier 

name that certain old heads will find as amazing a get as psych-prog architect Madlib, who produced "Circuit City." Yet none of this communing with the past feels like anything less than a reevaluation.

"With the tapes that I cut up to put samples on the album, a lot of those tapes, there's one of the DJs at WHPK, and he's going on and on about Diamond D," Eagle told me from his LA home during our conversation, with all the amazement of someone who'd been dreaming of such a collaboration for decades. "His music has been a part of my life that long. It was crazy to be able to reach out and access him and him being down to work." But Diamond's beats on 

 treat the boom-bap tropes of '90s hip-hop more as a pivotal early step to future inspiration than a well to run dry. And that's in keeping with the rest of Eagle's favored beatmakers here — Detroit mutant-rap auteur Quelle Chris, indie pop/beathead crossovers Child Actor, and longtime joined-at-the-hip collaborators Kuest 1 and Illingsworth — who've assembled a slate of tracks that sound not just era-agnostic but genre-averse. 

Eagle literally wears one of those titular stereo systems as a sort of headgear on the cover of 

. As the kind of audio equipment prized a generation ago for making recording and dubbing personal mixtapes easily, it can represent both his headspace and a protective armor, rooted in a renewed and continued engagement with the old homemade cassettes of hip-hop programs he recorded off Chicago radio. But the album's less a disillusioned wallowing in a glorious sepia-toned past than a sometimes difficult conversation with the past's actual deterioration, with the more allusive and free-associative sides of Eagle's lyricism puzzling out where all these reminiscent pieces really fit. As he puts it on "79th and Stony Island": "I still got the same worldview / A brain full of old-school rules / And memories like flesh wounds." 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

 really kind of broke through your more allusive tendencies and got right up front about some of the most stressful recent developments in your personal life. This one seems a little more tied into a reminiscent mode, but in ways that sort of feel like you're kind of figuring out 

 your formative influences getting entangled with your current perspective.

Not exactly that, but that's an interesting way to put it. I have definitely been leaning into formative experiences musically, but I'm more looking to it ... almost like a comfort. And that comfort informs my creativity now. It's leaning back for a specific kind of resource that informs what I'm doing now in a way.

So if your previous album was catharsis, this is more a regrouping?

It's certainly an expression of something different, and definitely engaging with the underlying emotions of things in a different way. This way that I'm doing it, on this project, to me, feels more protected. Even while I'm expressing feelings, I've been trying to have the feeling challenge my delivery and the areas I'm writing from, but not necessarily addressing all the underlying feelings overtly. There's a vulnerability that comes to that, [and] for me, it was hard with the last record to deal with the exhaustion of that.

One bit that stood out was in "TDK Scribbled Intro" where you say "yesterday is safer, because you already know what happens. And every album is a little collection of pieces of yesterdays." And that's actually a pretty funny juxtaposition to me, because that's how a lot of sample-based production works — kind of reaching towards an almost nostalgic sense of things you might have heard earlier in your life, but then retrofitting and rebuilding them into something that speaks more contemporaneously.

Yeah, absolutely. The spirit of that is kind of the spirit of hip-hop — repurposing existing material. That's a hip hop idea. And I think in a lot of ways, that's what we all seek to do. But I'm currently repurposing actual tape audio on this album from these cassettes that I still have, and that's part of the spirit of it. 

There's kind of an interesting cross-pollination of contributions on this record. You have Diamond D from DITC doing a few beats, and you have Madlib on "Circuit City." On "Burner Account" with Armand Hammer, Quelle Chris' production almost sounds like he's channeling circa '97 Company Flow. Then there's "For DOOM," which is your tribute to one of the all-time greats of that milieu, and in hip-hop in general. It's kind of a reckoning with a time in hip-hop that seems to be deeply beloved by a big core of people, but also taken for granted in some ways.

Yeah. I think that's very true. I mean, the "golden era" — which is a shifting range of years, depending on who you're asking — there's this constantly evolving discourse around the cultural importance of any of that. But I know, for me, I think about what was important to me, and often check back to see if things are still important to me, and not everything is. But the things that are — a lot of that music, a lot of those times in my life, a lot of my values then — they still mean a lot to me. Those years, that era, in some ways, even that way of thinking. Sometimes that was limited, because we could have used a lot more critical thinking. We thought we were doing that, but [we] were being very binary, very reactive. But that time meant a lot to me, and I'm celebrating that it means a lot to me, I'm not celebrating that it means or should mean a lot to the world. Things from then are literally powering me to deal with right now. That's where the energy is for me.

You turned 40 during late 2020, right in a deeply exhausting phase of the pandemic. Is there a moment where you internalized that you're hitting this particular milestone at one of the weirdest times possible? Where you start considering, or at least continue considering, what it's like to age in a youth-driven culture? And not just speaking of hip-hop, but in social media, pop culture, even a lot of political activism. Do you ever feel that anxiety of keeping up and, invoking 

, being "relatable?" Or did the "old enough to stop caring what the young folks think" switch get flipped for you?

I've been not caring about large swaths of things for a very long time, so I can always aim that ray where I need to aim it at. But in some ways, I think I do feel a lot of anxiety around chronological age, especially in hip-hop. I mean, social media is one thing, but literally, everybody's doing it. So everybody's dealing with that at every age. Hip-hop is new on the earth, but it's been present so long that now we have generations of MCs growing older, and by each individual person doing it, they have to define what that looks like for them, because it is primarily youth driven. That's part of the vitality of it, that the youth are always coming along and changing it. So I fought with that, but also for what I like. And I have the creative independence to really just do what I want to do, and I celebrate that freedom. It took a lot of work at this craft for me to be heard by people. And the ability to do that still means a lot to me. I have to continue with that true feeling — and also the true number of my age in this field. All of those forces are in conversation all the time. Not to mention the fact that, you know, the economy of being an independent musician is not like getting a whole lot better.

You've said elsewhere, and I feel it too, that it feels like there is no more "middle class" in music.

No, there's not. That middle class, I think, was largely created by people being able to sell CDs. I really think that's what it was, that was an affordable way to have enough units to sell to live on. [With] streaming, the revenue will never be like that, unless you generate enough streams, which, you know, you may need streaming promotion or something along those lines to make that even viable.

But you're doing what you can, and I do like that you have this sort of core of people all around you that you work with regularly. Guys like Serengeti, and Video Dave, and also Still Rift, who I'm less familiar with. 

Still Rift, he's a mystery wrapped in an enigma, that guy 

. But legit, me and him started rapping together, literally started when we were both in high school. He's done things with [Chicago indie hip-hop label] Galapagos4. He's been around; we're all making a bunch of stuff together.

The new album doesn't feel quite as direct in its emotion as 

, but it still feels like there's this weight to it. You go into a few different directions. It's like a "what next" kind of record, where things sound almost up in the air and unknown — a very pandemic-era sort of experience, where people are just unsure of how things are even going to go on a broader scale. Did you experience a perspective shift where the situation expanded from "I'm in a bad phase" to "everyone's in a bad phase?"

That sounds more cynical than I actually am. I feel like the weight in this record doesn't feel like it's about me having decided that things are bad, but just me as an individual having a lot to figure out and trying to do that during the pandemic. I'm making music now that's not quite as heavy. But that could change. You never know. I guess it's just the weight of the world that I was living in. I was specifically living in an apartment right off of Crenshaw, fresh as a divorcé living by myself on this crazy corner. I have moved away from this since, but I spent about a year and a half there. There's a song on the album called "Crenshaw and Homeland." That's the corner that I lived near, where I wrote a lot of the album. And it was just a crazy corner. There's a 7-Eleven across the street that's just lawless, [I] lived next to a mechanic, there was always car accidents on that intersection. There was just noise and chaos all the time. So that place kind of had me in a state too. And I think a lot of what I hear in the music is like, yeah, I was on high alert. I was not in a relaxed place.

But there's also this feeling that it's a conversation with yourself across a few tracks, like you're reconciling your Chicago self with your Los Angeles self.

Yep, 100%. That's the center of my identity storm, geographically, anyway. Because I don't feel fully like I'm from Chicago when I go back there. It's completely different every time. And I've lived in LA a long time, but I don't feel about the place like somebody who's from here feels about it. But places are definitely part of my identity and my experience. And, you know, that is a conversation that happens a lot.

Does that have any particular effect on how your style's evolved over the course of your career, where you have some connections to the L.A. beat scene and Low End Theory, but you'll also have the formative influences that you're still carrying. Is there a pull between those two that's given your work different stylistic touches and effects?


Absolutely, yeah. The Chicago rap scene is very different than the LA rap scene. Both of those things, technique-wise, are always in conversation, because I enjoy all of it. And I try to be good at all of it. And the beat scene is a whole nother conversation because it ends up being about how the production sounds and not necessarily how I'm writing verses. Project Blowed is my home crew here in LA. And their emphasis — the way they rap and their values — are different than the part of Chicago where I come from. But like I said, I've learned to really appreciate both of those approaches, and am trying to be a master practitioner of both.


Nate Patrin

The referential artist discusses hip-hop's repurposing spirit, reconciling zonal versions of himself, making sense of rap's "golden era" and his new album, Component System with the Auto Reverse.


R. Gardner

Kim Newmoney

for DOOM

open mike eagle - circuit city prod. by Madlib f/ Video Dave and still rift

Open Mike Eagle makes himself a mixtape

Cynthia Maya

Sudan crowns her own prom queen, fiddles, and wows the crowd while on her Homecoming Tour.


Zoe Challenger

Sudan Archives brings prom night to the Fine Line

Each week, we add new music, older tracks, which are known as “Gold adds”, and tracks that might not fit our general format, but still deserve a place in rotation because they serve our mission of showing the depth, breadth, and influence of Black musical expression - These are known as “Variety adds.”

We’re sharing this to get you excited to listen and to open up the floor for feedback and suggestions. If you want to request a song, 

. If you make music and want it considered for rotation, 

 If you want to give feedback directly, reach out to me at jgreen@mpr.org.

I think we might be the only stream in the world that will add 

"Never Would Have Made It" by Marvin Sapp

 in the same week. Yin and Yang, or something like that. We've also got some great suggestions for new music by host Sanni B. added this week. Tune in to hear her talk about artists that are underrated/on the come up this week on The Message from 10 AM to 1 PM Monday through Thursday!

 Spotify playlist. This will be updated weekly with all the new adds and will be a central hub for listeners like you to dip your toe in the pool before diving in.

 “Journey in Satchidananda” feat. Pharoah Sanders

Julian Green built and manages the music library for Carbon Sound and oversees content creation.  


Julian Green

All of the tracks added to rotation on Carbon Sound the week of October 3, 2022.


Natalia Toledo

New on Carbon Sound

New Music on Carbon Sound - Week of October 3, 2022

Check out Awa Mally’s photos of KayCyy and Bktherula performing on the University of Minnesota campus


Awa Mally

KayCyy and Bktherula at the University of Minnesota Homecoming Concert

, arrives with the prestige and buzz of an artist's Big Moment. Only Gibbs has cycled through a handful of these moments already — and delivered with aplomb. Now 40, he's dispatched an emotionally nuanced record, one that's neither a self-indulgent victory lap, a re-telling of the origin story for newcomers or a bespoke project laced with beats from a hypebeast icon. Titled after a snatch of a line from "Education," a key track from 2019's 

 ("Drugs for free / Soul sold separately"), Gibbs is an amalgamation of every facet of his artistry on this record: the hustler, the dealer, the street veteran, the effortlessly gifted MC, the audio tour guide through a beatmaker's fanciful compositions. It's a rewarding listen from an artist still in his prime that leaves questions about what might come next.

Forget what F. Scott Fitzgerald said about American lives and second acts, Gibbs is on his third or fourth by any account. What to make of the pride of Gary, Indiana, signed to Interscope in 2006 then unceremoniously dropped without releasing an album, who latched onto Young Jeezy's CTE World label a few years later before acrimoniously departing to start his own imprint in 2013. Along the way he tore through a hot streak of undeniable street-rap mixtapes from 2009's 

. But with 2014's collaborative album with Oxnard producer Madlib, 

, listeners heard Gibbs reborn: a real-deal gangster rapper who could sail on top of a beloved sampler's frayed analog beats to universal acclaim.

Gibbs now seems to be opening yet another act. After managing to reinvent himself for a few key quadrants — from the kind of guy who treats r/hiphopheads as gospel, to a sophisticated listener lured by the magnetism of tightly looped beats from revered indie beatmakers, to the longtime devotee who fell in love with the verisimilitude of his older material but finds this sustained career arc nice — his portfolio is the stuff of indie-rap fantasy. 

 signaled a shift in focus on the trajectory of Gibbs' career: in 2018, he released 

, a collaborative EP with New Orleans rapper Curren$y helmed entirely by blunted bicoastal producer The Alchemist, before a reunion with Madlib on 

, an equally celebrated full-length of impeccable rapping amid perfectly complementary and just-outre-enough production. 2020 saw 

, a full-length solo project entirely produced by The Alchemist that nabbed him a Grammy nomination, cap Gibbs' six-year run as a one-man auteur who could rap over anything and whose new releases were immersions into lush hip-hop panoramas. In this stretch of his career, Gibbs has clearly found a few muses without sacrificing an ounce of credibility. These singular albums are all profoundly satisfying and not the one-dimensional output of a dilettante.

 lacks the lyrical and thematic cohesion to truly be a statement or legacy-defining masterwork above the rest of his distinguished catalog, and it sometimes labors under the weight of a forced progression. The album's loose conceptual framework — Gibbs is staying at a luxury Las Vegas hotel, ignoring famous friends to hole up and finish the record — hints at a level of paranoia and trauma that is not examined as thoroughly as possible. (Refer back to moments like, "The revolution is the genocide / My execution might be televised," from 

 for more pathos.) After the sole Alchemist collab on the album, the ferocious "Blackest in the Room," where Gibbs depicts a barrage of vivid scenes that set the table for an album of fiery reflection ("My cousin live in Flint, she been sick since they fucked the water up"), the album sputters a bit in trying to find a balance between a blockbuster record and Gibbs' natural tendency toward dense and unyielding raps. Lead single "Too Much" is a fine crossover attempt but Moneybagg Yo steals the show with his nonchalant bluster and charismatic flexes; there's an anonymous Offset verse on the bland "Pain and Strife" on the way there. Gibbs acquits himself nicely on "Lobster Omelette," but Rick Ross shows up, uncharacteristically languid, failing to live up to the delirious luxury-rap promise of the title or capture the magic of previous collabs like 

's "Scottie Beam" or loosie "Ice Cream" from earlier in the year.

But even at his most compliant, Gibbs can never stray too far from the craftsman-like approach he brings to his music. "Space Rabbit'' boasts an opulent Boi-1da beat and Gibbs is locked in, offering surgical bars that find him navigating between the rapid-fire realities of dealing and soul-searching: "Sunday night through Thursday, you hit me, I'll get you situated / Wonder if I'm going to Hell or my soul obliterated / Neighbor kids just hit me, they mama just sold the 'fridgerator." On "Rabbit Vision," he soberly addresses his past beef with former mentor Jeezy. Both of these songs center his Rabbit persona, evoking his Vice Lord gang affiliation. It's these meticulous details and personal flourishes that separate Gibbs' deft pen from the movie-villain flows of peer Pusha T. Gibbs is never sentimental, his verses point toward a moral reckoning but don't make obvious the inward conflict — he's so skilled in the booth you have to meet him halfway to extract the penitence and sorrow in the marrow of some of these songs. 

His willingness to bend at all accounts for the minute shifts in tone and perspective on the album. "Grandma's Stove" finds Gibbs contemplating the fallout of a flourishing rap career. A diaristic journey into his come-up, growing celebrity stature and deep-seated fears, he raps, "I bought a house in Cali, I made it out for real / Pop Smoke killed in the hills, that shit gave me the chills," accounting for his "lane out of Gary" to the growing existential danger of being a rapper anywhere. The comedown is the only track sporting a Madlib beat, the penultimate "CIA," which finds the man affectionately nicknamed "Gangsta Gibbs" showing his cards ("I did this album off pages ripped out my diary"), peering beneath the perception of pivotal scenes in his story. He's often made thoughts like this sound exuberant and blistering, but here he seems resigned and wistful. Sometimes you wish for the levity, or at least the bounce, of non-album singles like "Gang Signs" with Schoolboy Q or "Black Illuminati" with Jadakiss, but the sincerity can be bracing, sidestepping Real Hip-Hop fetishism and instead conceding that the long road to success is littered with familiar potholes that make the tenure of an esteemed rapper tenuous.

Gibbs retreated to the murky, features-addled waters of 

 in 2015, the type of album he abandoned until this one. But even the deviations in his discography are never all that experimental. At their most probative, his records find new ways to measure features of his personality. Here, Gibbs delivers a great album that excels when he brings the listener into his headspace, even if it doesn't uncover memoir-tier revelations. There's a through-line of old-head references — memorable appearances by Kelly Price and Musiq Soulchild, interpolations of Maxwell and Bone Thugs hooks, a prominent sample of "Sippin' on Some Syrup," solid features from Raekwon and Scarface — that seem to long for an era where a journeyman rapper could become a star almost by accident. But that feels a bit like wish-fulfillment for a rapper who has spent his career ignoring the zeitgeist.

The well-worn mythology of the reformed gangster is not new, but Gibbs has become the most notable artist embodying a more refined, less late-capitalist mogul vision of growing older in hip-hop, one he will likely never fully abandon. If 

 wants for anything, it's the cold-blooded precision of Roc Marciano and Alchemist's collaborative album 

, both from earlier this year. Gibbs continues to clear his own trail and now he's simply allowed to be himself, armed with the confidence of an artist that's lived a hundred lives toward self-actualization. 

 may not be a slam-dunk thesis statement, the unassailable capper on a storied arc, but it does fit with Gibbs' other stabs at rap immortality; he knows that after you've put in the work, legends never die, and Gibbs, the eternal technician, never stops working.  

Matthew Ramirez

Forget what F. Scott Fitzgerald said about American lives and second acts, Gibbs is on his third or fourth. $$$ is a rewarding listen that sometimes labors under the weight of a forced progression.


A man sitting at a piano takes a sip from a glass

Nick Walker

Freddie Gibbs - Grandma's Stove (ft. Musiq Soulchild) [Official Visualizer]

With '$oul $old $eparately,' Freddie Gibbs cashes in on his cachet

Fatima Rahman

In celebration of Black Fashion Week in Minnesota, five well-dressed creatives share their tips and tricks for getting fly with Carbon Sound.


Courtesy of subject

Celebrating Black Fashion Week MN, Minneapolis Creatives share what fashion means to them

The Heat Check playlist returns in a new form. In the two years since 

 a lot has changed, and Heat Check has changed, too, but the steady stream of fresh songs never stops, and we still long to meet the demand. The section was originally created to emphasize bubbling and undiscovered acts, and while the rebooted playlist aims to stay true to that mission, it also embraces new music more broadly. In its new form, Heat Check is more of a menagerie — a roundup of notable songs curated by hip-hop and R&B enthusiasts from around NPR Music.

Whether it's throwbacks from Baby Tate and FLO or loosies from OT7Quanny and jaydes, this week's Heat Check playlist gathers songs from across the spectrum: a grime king retaking his throne, Cardi B signal boosting one of the summer's most exciting newcomers, and cuts from other risers, stalwarts and covert stars. 

Since 2017, the London rapper Stormzy has emerged from the U.K. grime scene to become a formidable international player, from headlining Glastonbury to making the 

. He returns, after a two-year layoff, with the seven-minute polemic "Mel Made Me Do It," reasserting his position as a rap titan. This feels like the big throat-clearing before a statement album, but the song is also a capsule exhibition of what makes Stormzy so special — his casual flexes, his seemingly effortless rhyming and his thunderous voice. He maneuvers so painlessly through the Knox Brown-produced synth patterns that it's hard not to believe he's everything he says he is: young, Black Biden with a trim; a genius that could've clocked Harvard; the GOAT. — Sheldon Pearce

The rising Memphis rapper GloRilla already took the summer with her breakthrough hit "F.N.F. (Let's Go)," but with Cardi B by her side, on the remix "Tomorrow 2," she's making a strong play for the fall, too. The song's raw, optimistic message is offset by a hardcore delivery befitting the sparse beat. And while GloRilla's bars are just as piercing and catchy as ever — "Ain't f**ked up 'bout no credit score / I might be rich as f**k tomorrow (Duh) / Every day the sun won't shine / but that's why I love tomorrows" — Cardi's verse and voice are welcome refreshments, especially when she inserts an Ice Spice taunt into her showboating with a smirk: "That n***a a munch and he gon' eat me like a mango." — Gabby Bulgarelli

Almost every line in C-Murder's 1999 song "Like A Jungle" is cold, bleak and haunted, a picture of death lurking around the corner. In 2009, the New Orleans rapper was sentenced to life in prison after he was found guilty for the murder of Steve Thomas. The verdict remains controversial; in the last few years, multiple witnesses have recanted their statements that he shot the gun. 

YoungBoy, who's himself spent close to a year on house arrest in Utah, converses directly with C-Murder in his thrilling interpolation of "Jungle": "Just know I'm with you, you in a compound, I'm in a mansion feelin' chained right now," he raps. An adaptive, fluid stylist who drops music relentlessly, YoungBoy is in many ways the blueprint for a streaming-era rap star. But "Jungle" feels like a gem you'd unearth on a Wayne tape in the mid-aughts, a product of reverence and spontaneity. — Mano Sundaresan

On "Nothing Even Matters," the latest single from his upcoming album 

, SiR unabashedly confesses the love he has for his melanin queen and embraces her impact on his life: "Can't even picture my life without my girl / Diamond in the rough / Shine any brighter and you might save the world / Baby, when we touch / Nothin' even matters, no one loves me better / I want this forever, ever," he sings. The track, which is crafted around a chopped sample of D'Angelo's 2000 neo-soul classic "Send It On,"  melds turn-of-the-millennium nostalgia together with elements of contemporary R&B, adding another feel-good, timeless hit to the SiR catalog. — Ashley Pointer 

The new single from the singer-songwriter Kiana Ledé is a masterclass in bringing new perspective to a familiar theme. Blues music was built on songs of infidelity, but here Ledé plays a different angle: It isn't the act of cheating itself that warrants the response, it's the fact that he chose her specifically, and that his thoughtlessness could feel so personal. "Could've played someone else, you chose me / Of course I feel some way," she sings. "And if you weren't ready, maybe / You should've at least stayed your a** out in them streets." She has a honeyed, soft-spoken voice that really sells the song's sense of betrayal, and how a universal experience can seem so singular. — Sheldon Pearce

I've been listening to a lot of jaydes as the seasons change. The Broward County teenager's dreamy EP 

, from August, is warm enough for the last days of summer, but blued by his raincloud voice and the pangs of transition. This loosie "south" could've slotted right into that tape. As he shrugs off romantic interests left and right, he seems a little sad, even if his writing is resolute. His music is a refreshing counterpoint to the style-over-substance of a lot of trending internet rap. — Mano Sundaresan

The Compton rapper Day Sulan, signed to YG's 4HUNNID imprint, shares many similarities with her label boss: she's brusque, brash and assertive in her verses. On "Teach You How to Play," she adds an entry into scamming-men-as-self-care canon, presenting her findings as a how-to manual; she rattles off pointers with the clarity of a bulleted list. She doesn't just take his cash and go on shopping sprees with his credit, she takes his crypto, too. Over a punchy bass line, Sulan seems to push right up to you, sneering all the while. — Sheldon Pearce

Over an interpolation of Ciara's '04 bop with Ludacris, "Oh," Baby Tate reimagines Usher's "Love in This Club" for the modern independent baddie. Resurrecting the trance-like hip-pop sounds of that era, she smoothly shifts between rapping and singing in this final tease to her upcoming double-sided mixtape, 

, an exploration of both modes. With 2Chainz as a laidback foil for Luda, the track is definitely as sauced as his syrup-drenched pancakes in the late-night-diner-turned-club-set music video. — Gabby Bulgarelli

The first thing you notice listening to the Philly rapper OT7Quanny is he loves to periodically slap a low-pass filter on his songs. The gimmick will probably run out of steam at some point, but right now, I can't get enough of it. With its cooing sample, icy brags and Quanny's trademark effect, "Dame Lillard" feels like a gritty fever dream. — Mano Sundaresan

The British girl-group FLO spawned fully formed this year, and soon garnered support from Missy Elliott and SZA for retro-leaning music powered by the pop craftsman MNEK. In July, the trio made good on the buzz surrounding their composed debut single, "Cardboard Box," with an EP called 

, which pulled liberally from Y2K R&B. The group's new single, "Not My Job," relies even more on throwback appeal, channeling groups like Blaque and 3LW. But the song, like the group itself, is elevated beyond functional pastiche by some truly lush harmonies. FLO was manufactured through a label audition process, but a chemistry seems to have naturally developed between the members, displayed in their shared understanding of nostalgia. — Sheldon Pearce  

Ashley Pointer

This week's Heat Check playlist gathers artists from across the spectrum: a grime king retaking his throne, Cardi B signal boosting the summer's most exciting newcomer, risers and covert stars.


Leon Neal

STORMZY - MEL MADE ME DO IT

GloRilla, Cardi B - Tomorrow 2 (Official Music Video)

NBA Youngboy - Like A Jungle (Out Numbered)

SiR - Nothing Even Matters (Official Video)

Kiana Ledé - Irresponsible (Official Music Video)

Day Sulan – Teach U How To Play (Official Music Video)

Baby Tate - Ain't No Love (feat. 2 Chainz)  [Official Music Video]

Ot7QUANNY - "Dame Lillard" (Official Music Video)

Not My Job

Heat Check Roundup: Stormzy, GloRilla and Cardi B, SiR and more

While Gili Yalo sat on his father’s shoulders traveling to safety with a group of Ethiopian-Jewish peers, he did what many kids might do to pass the time — he sang. While the group fearfully traversed the desert between Ethiopia and Sudan by foot in the dark, Yalo found solace by singing a song his mother taught him as a child.

The lyrics from the song served as an inspiration for the group to keep moving forward. Yalo says the words describe “how a person and his heart can be strong [while] facing the world, and how a brave heart can change the world.”

Now based in Tel Aviv, the 42-year-old singer-songwriter will headline a show at the Cedar Cultural Center on Saturday, October 1, as part of his current U.S. and Canadian tour. For Yalo, these poignant life moments kept him singing and eventually helped encourage him to perform as a solo artist.

His music, sung in Amharic, English, and Hebrew, is a conglomerate of stories based upon his journey as an Ethiopian-Jewish immigrant, and it depicts experiences in Yalo’s life that both challenged and inspired him. The music interweaves jazz, reggae, R&B, and Afrobeat, while exuding a psychedelic and funky ambiance through a variety of instrumentation — all of this wrapped around an Ethiopian-themed base. 

“The most important thing for me is to be curious and look for different sounds or different approaches to music,” says Yalo. 

Yalo was born in the northern-Ethiopian region of Gondar, where much of the Ethiopian-Jewish population lived at the time. In the mid-’80s, famine, political unrest, and civil wars ravaged the area and led to thousands of deaths. In 1984, when Yalo was about four years old, the family made the tough decision to leave their homeland, but with a goal to seek a better life in Israel by first reaching a refugee camp in neighboring Sudan.

To reach their destination, the family and other group members needed to cross a perilous path inconspicuously, risking their lives daily. Hiding in caves and bushes during the day and walking across the desert after dark became the way of life. The impact of the trip continues to resonate with Yalo, who says his vulnerability as a child helped inspire the group to keep moving as he sang.

“The people were happy,” says Yalo. “Singing in this [journey] is a hard role. When you are desperate and you see a small kid, [going] through all these difficulties and he doesn't understand the difficulty, they [group] were inspired by that.”

After reaching the refugee camp in Sudan, the family began planning another dangerous journey — this time to Israel. At the time, disclosing an alliance to Judaism placed people at the Sudanese refugee camp at risk of harm.

As a result, the Israeli government covertly began Operation Moses, an evacuation of Ethiopian Jews from Sudan to Israel. Yalo and his family waited each day for the green light from Ethiopian-Jewish connections within the camp who worked with Israeli central intelligence agency Mossad.

After several months of eating salad almost every day, painfully walking around without shoes, and surviving a serious case of malaria, Yalo and his family received the message they could leave. They traveled by foot for two hours, loaded onto an overcrowded truck, and boarded a Hercules military plane bound for Israel. 

The opportunity to sing and perform professionally

In Israel, Yalo quickly learned Hebrew and attended school. As an eight-year-old, he was asked to sing on the school bus during a field trip. Yalo already had garnered a school fan base singing to his peers and was encouraged to audition for a local religious choir called Pirhei Yerushalaim. The audition landed his first lead singing role, which Yalo credits as the beginning of his professional singing career.

“Four years earlier, I came from Ethiopia and suddenly started touring the world,” Yalo says. “It was wonderful. It gave me a lot of points of view into this world. I extended my limits and saw a lot of things. I got a gift.”

As one of the first Ethiopian-Jewish, Hebrew speaking members of the choir, Yalo and his voice stood out. “I think people were really shocked to see a Black guy singing religious songs in Hebrew back then,” he says. “I think people liked it very much. I had a nice voice as well. I got this opportunity because I was traveling the world. For most of the people, it's the first time that they saw a Black kid singing or talking in Hebrew. [It was] unique back then, but today it's very normal.”

As a teenager, Yalo attended boarding school and eventually enlisted in the army where he auditioned to sing in the army musical troop. “I got in, so luckily instead of holding a gun, I was singing.”

After leaving the army, Yalo joined a cover band, and began traveling around the world. Eventually he became the lead singer for the Israeli reggae group Zvuloon Dub System

At that time, Yalo sang mostly in English. “It wasn't fashionable to be Ethiopian, at my early age,” he says. “I was trying to be more Western and trying to make only English songs.” But racism in both his personal and professional life was eye-opening, and inevitably changed his musical trajectory.

The Ethiopian-born, Tel Aviv-based artist speaks about his life journey. He performs at the Cedar Cultural Center on Saturday, October 1.


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