you know i'm later than the latest and i'm uglier than ever.

1. playboi carti - "like weezy" (kelvin krash & ojivolta)
there is an old too $hort bar that i think about a lot, it goes "i grew up on the funk called p / but these motherfuckers growing up on me." this is a flex first and foremost but it's also a useful framework for thinking about how influence evolves in rap music, for imagining the genre's history as a perpetually narrowing funnel of inspirations. i mention this not only because playboi carti is unquestionably the most these motherfuckers growing up on me rapper of recent memory – his whole mysterious goth boi fashion vamp rage rap schtick has spawned a generation of cosplayers and homage-payers most of whom just need to go away already – but because so much of his splotchy and overlong and frequently brilliant fourth album, music, seemed intentionally designed to ground him in the before of that equation, to diagram his lived-in, pre-fame tastes – future voices, lex luger type beats, SWAMP IZZO drops ^[1], etc.. he grew up on the phonk called sgp.

and, like most everyone of a certain age in atlanta, he grew up on rich kidz, the pioneering and (until recently) vastly under-heralded westside crew that helped define the city's swag and melodic sensibility back in the futuristic late '00s. "like weezy" is built around a tinny little chunk of their "bend over" but it's less of a nostalgic gesture than a reset button, a portal to an alternate timeline where the boisterous myspace/mall rap of the late '00s was never supplanted by the brooding dark trap that ruled our '10s. carti's earliest work always felt like a spiritual holdover from the former era and much of his post-pandemic output has seemed like an intentional attempt to amplify the latter to its rawest and most brutal extremes so it is cool as hell to watch him close this circle, to hear him redirect all the lashing, chaotic energy of his vamp phase towards a previously lost palpable joy.

as always he's powered by the intangibles – check the hiccups in between the words as he rattles off all the drugs that fucked up his lungs or his yelped or his borderline pathetic sWamP iZzO impression that pops up between the first of three "tryna beat that pussy tryna get that pussy wet" incantations or the way he seems to be ignoring the sample source entirely until he abruptly blurts out the original "bottom liiine" hook. it's just such a kinetic performance, so alive (/"crank" voice). i've listened to this song a thousand times and it's still never quite clear where the words are going to land or if they are even going to be words. ^[2]

2. billy woods f/ yolanda watson - "a doll fulla pins" (jeff markey & messiah musik)
okay now onto the other best rapper alive from the other underground. when the people who talk about billy woods talk about billy woods they will usually situate him in one of two biographical contexts - either as the child of zimbabwean dissidents or as a member of the '00s indie rap def jux diaspora. these are both relevant and compelling biographical facts but sometimes i think i love his music the most when he focuses on the life he lived in between those two points. because he is a born and bred washington, dc rapper too. ^[3]

"a doll fulla pins" is based on true dc events but like most of what woods does it's not exactly a straightforward story, more a loose collection of microscopic details and resonant sensory fragments – "i hid twenty k in my mother's basement / dc summer suffocating / the air pregnant / the whole city just waiting." this is prog rap, but it's the rare sort of prog rap where the production changes actually serve the content of the rapping, with the time signature shifting and saxophonist mette rasmussen's playing unraveling, both at pace with woods' emotional state.

i've seen more than one review describe woods' golliwog lp as a "horrorcore" album but i think that categorization completely misunderstands its lineage. even at its most respectable (gravediggaz?), horrorcore was fundamentally shock and awe edgelord music. woods' main mode here is southern gothic dread, more in the spirit of what guys like witchdoctor and self jupiter were doing in parallel at the turn of the century.

3. nino paid - "tomorrow will be better" (kjmadeit)
landover md's nino paid has been instrumental in shifting the street rap landscape over the past few years, reclaiming pain in the name of actual rapping from throngs of rod wave wave crooners and redirecting the nihilism of his native dmv flow to more earnest, more emo (scarface-emo, not lilpeep-emo), and sometimes even explicitly christian (scarface-christian, not lecrae-christian) ends. it'd be easy music critic shorthand to call what he does "introspective" but as "tomorrow will be better" shows his best shit is more external than that. this is rap music to help people process their emotions, to get through the day. conscious rap is back.

4. quavo, breskii & yk niece - "take me thru dere" (metro boomin & bobby kritical)
was "like weezy" a post hypnotic trigger for a nation of stupid fruity sleeper agents? or is the natural nostalgia cycle just chugging along as usual? either way the best thing to happen to rap music in 2026 was the whole atlanta scene finally coming out from under its curse and collectively remembering how to have fun again, with the the old futuristic swag/sound/sentiment serving as its north star.

metro boomin, who was still a teen in st. louis when that swag shit first cracked, tried to put a bow on this trend with his a futuristic summa compilation, a welcome but minor revivalist project that was almost entirely populated only-slightly-tired-sounding veterans, like a top shelf 88 (minus the lie) for the aging lenox mall shopppper. ^[4] as much as skateboard skooly deserves some extra spotify streams and as nice as it is to hear young dro say the word "overly" again, it's not at all surprising that the album's best and biggest track was also the only one that properly centers the city's contemporary scene, specifically the emergent class of young women who have been the true driving force in course correcting for the long decade of fluoride stare rap caviar atl trap dominance.

co-produced by bobby kritical ("do it"), "take me thru dere" would perhaps be more accurately described as a pre-futuristic retro record, nodding loosely to the shop boyz and heavily to the snap era with its 808 rolls and steel drum presets but it's primarily a showcase for ykniece, who is a breakout star and, incidentally, a dro-style switch hitter, equally adept at crafting sugary pop bars and straight rapping her ass off. quavo sounds great for the first time in a long while too and breskii, a low profile stl expat, does a lot with her four words.

5. luhh dyl - "be foreal" (jucxee)
nothing in rap music more instantly melts my cynicism than a strong jazz loop and what could be stronger or more of a jazz loop than a mother fucking coltrane/ellington flip? detroit's luhh dyl dropped two tapes this year, and he generally seems to be shifting in the same emo-reflective direction as nino but on "be foreal" he's still only halfway down that road, alternating between i'm-that-type-of-guy-core shit talking and feet-up-in-the-bahamas aspirational stuff with standard issue slippery michigan flows that will never play out. according to his ig bio the producer jucxee is just 15 years old so salute to him that is a great age to get into john coltrane.

6. myaap - "fairy" (christiangetbizzy)
the first lady of milwaukee low end finally finds her much deserved populist footing (or at least her short lived tik tok dance craze) by gap gap yap yap gap gap wop wop chewing on bubblegum over a mystical harp sample that sounds like something nick peace might've given nickatina for conversation with a devil. i was not surprised to find out that the track was first conceived of as a mere low end milwaukee type beat but the sample source truly shocking. "@younginhard_9043 7 months ago Cant let the gang know but we secretly bumping this all summer 😂"

7. fredobagz f/ chaibenjii4 & lul freezem - "score again" (415Miir)
this one is clear and obvious bait for me – oakland taking they styles back via the triggerman path, unifying different strains of adrenaline boost rap music across decades and thousands of miles of geography. trivia time did you know that the first national release to sample "drag rap" actually came out of oakland, not memphis or new orleans? digital underground splinter group raw fusion looped the bones way back in 1991.

8. monaleo - "we on dat" (merion krazy, skrioo & avgotdrip)
houston's monaleo might be the most reliable rap hit maker of our time and this is frustrating because our time does not carve out a lot of space for actual hit rap records anymore. "putting ya dine" at least did some youtube numbers for her this year but i'm personally partial to the less popular "we on dat," probably because i'm a washed and chopped and cooked and pan fried triple unc who in my deepest heart still wishes it was 2006. unlike with a lot of old-to-the-new stuff on this list i can't even argue that this not a 100% throwback cosplay nostalgic record, with traces of "nolia clap" in its instrumental and ludacris in the flow but it works because mona still prioritizes rap songcraft over mood board referentiality, and because she knows that some of the best rap hooks can double as straight up school yard taunts. bonus points for working in an actual shout out to her label, the all-too appropriately named stomp down records, in between her light hearted threats of a good ass whooping.

9. lil tony - "answer my prayers" (dezeiioun & lil tony)
shout out to our lord and savior jesus christ for putting born again atlanta rapper lil tony on a his recent path towards bringing that old ~atliens, side b~ vibe back for the post drill generation. "don't let anger control you think twice then sit back, be silent" is the best advice i heard all year.

10. nba youngboy - "diesel" (tayo, sam barsh & jason goldberg)
urgently, "the fuck i'm doin with all this cash? that's how i walk around / how the fuck i come from out the parish with this big ass house? / i told that bitch i don't want no ass even made her keep that mouth / i told my therapist keep the pad imma use my mind sit behind the mic then i'm goin out / she tryna find my past but girl my future is so bright / it's a lot of money in my vision so see a better life."

11. bunnab - "mad again" (fazo)
another example of atlanta finding its smile again, even if bunnab's perpetual grin is bit more shit eating on this one than elsewhere. check her bigger hits too for even more throwback happy-sassy atl rap and flawlessly executed mike jones tier adlib inventions – "i-ice cream girl"/"ah-dah dah-dah" (she also has found the most wholesome rap sidehustle since the d-block juice bar - a daycare) . here's hoping that every other rapper and rap scene can rediscover fun in 2026.

12. m row - "real or fake" (nyks.jellyy)
hailing from manhattan's upper west side, m row is one of the more consistent rappers to come out of the deeply inconsistent ny drill scene, mostly only because he has an outstanding ear for beats. it was a toss up between "real or fake" and his completely burnt/brutal club paced number "critical thinker" but i had to go with the former for foregrounding some of the best sample drill fodder in a long time via kero kero bonito's dubby neo post punkish tiktok standard "i'd rather sleep." ^[5] say what you will about that platform but it has done wonders for at least occasionally broadening street rap's textural spectrum. we need more dub drill, please.

13. standing on the corner - "man may not last" (standing on the corner)
i'm not entirely sure how to succinctly cram the essence of standing on the corner into a little blurb for this little list but here it goes: the multi-purpose pan-genre brooklyn arts ensemble can count the occasional on-the-books production credit for the likes of earl sweatshirtand mike in their discography but typically prioritize less easily commodifiable creative vehicles like limited run cassette-only drone releases and community acupuncture clinics. "man may not last" comes from their dvd mixtape, dvd which was initially available exclusively via in-person $50 cash purchases from a guy with a duffle bag wearing a mickey mouse costume and posted in times square on september 11th ^[6] and it's one of the more rappingest tracks to ever pop up in their discography - six solid minutes of just-bars backed by helium voices echoplexed to infinity and out-jazz piano clangs. the guests are not attributed on a track by track basis so it was a real jolt to hear none other than the ghost, styles p, creeping out the cut talking about "what would you do if everyone you knew was fucked up?" the unidentified woman rapping about sticking her skull in the sand at the midpoint of ladybug mecca and june tyson kills it too.

sotc is obviously on their own journey forever but it would be cool to see them record with chill old head new york rappers more often. get them in on the bigavelli revival, send them kurious' number, let them exec prod the next de la album.

14. mexikodro - "remy" (aviiniice & bapebrazy)
fuck it, more atlanta, more christianity, more nostalgia (but wait don't call it nostalgia okay). mexikodro first came to prominence as a producer more than a decade ago, helping to pioneer the micro/macro soundcloud subgenre plugg. somewhere along the line he found god, ^[7] put on some crocs and picked up the mic. he's a superficially sourpuss but ultimately pure of heart reclusive rap everyman who just wants to stay inside, work on his cars, go to sleep early, etc. he raps in a plodding numb-heavy tone reminiscent of eightball or maybe gorilla zoe but writes more like bftd3 era chief keef, all dead eyed bluntness at the edge of hilarity: "i be tired in my bed 'round nine / why you always in the crib? 'cause it's mine."

there is something almost inspiring about how formulaic dro gets on his still goin the ep ep (which confusingly contains fourteen tracks). every song follows roughly the same structure – ~75bpm, ~two and a half minutes long, ~30 second instrumental intro, one long verse on which he kicks approximately the same flow as he does on all the others, and then each song title is just whatever the last word he said on the verse was. real workmanlike magic.

15. pluto f/ yk niece - "whim whamiee" (prxdbyjai, one play mike & xtcsuki / zaytoven)
another one from atlanta, even if it is now obvious that pluto is the yc to ykniece's future (first hit, wrong artist). as one of the few survivors from the "uh no it's not" side of the 2000s hip hop is dead wars i cannot tell you how vindicating it is that one of this year's biggest hits was inspired by both oj the juiceman and d4l mook b deep cuts, or that that zaytoven type beats have so thoroughly taken over the world that zaytoven himself didn't even initially realize that this was his track when he first heard it.

16. ebk jaaybo - "fuck everybody (free maxx)" (yvnng ecko)
i won't pretend to be tapped in enough (or enough of a weirdo internet gang voyeur) to understand the specific stockton street politics at play here and i'm sure the real life context is inconceivably bleak but just as far as pure acts of 2pacish rebel theater go coming home from prison and immediately making a song cursing out everyone who ever wronged you or your crew is a pretty glorious gesture. you might've thought that ecko's ominous choir thing would've played out by now but it definitely hasn't.

17. aesop rock - "john something" (aesop rock)
it's funny how aesop rock's popular reputation still positions him as the world's foremost esoteric hermetic lyrical miracle thesaurus-abusive nerd rapper when he's spent most of his late career just telling straightforward moral tales inna slightly more sardonic slick rick style. "john something," the highlight of the two very good albums he dropped this year, pays tribute to a man possibly named john who once gave a lecture that was supposed to be about photography but ended up just being a long riff the muhammad ali documentary we were kings. nothing else really happens in the lecture or the song but it's an inspired tangent about how an inspired tangent can stick to your brain for a lifetime.

i also think aesop deserves more credit for being one of the few producers in any zone of rap music for whom funk is still a major priority. it's like him, dj fresh and... ?

18. skino - "killing spree" (trapmoneybiggie)
afro-dutch free car ethnomusicologist trapmoneybiggie is still out here simultaneously busting skulls and making rich historical connections, this time tracing present day dc music back to '90s memphis by way of dirty red.

19. akai solo - "free the world" (august fanon)
when he says free the world that includes freeing me from writing these blurbs.

20. osamason - "inferno" (rok & osamason)
rage music is typically just an extremely skinny cool kid goth fashion rapper flopping around like a rag doll on the hardest loudest most distorted ear bleeder beat imaginable but what if it could be more than that? what if, in addition to causing tinnitus, the beat also induced nausea?

21. ezale - "hang with them" (olyver mom, russell peave, d3fb0t)
22. jaysanityy - "singsong flow" (barrakain)
23. rio da yung og - "different music" (wayne616 & homieshtt)
24. sunnitherapper & onlyheaven - "shake down" (alrightslab)
25. chef boy f/ rosecrans hopout, ys, phopho8ight & hitta j3 - "gang gang" (dj tray)
26. che - "make out with my choppa" (che)
27. sswampbabyy - "play my cards" (?)
28. mike mike & yonaa - "i got something for you" (emazon)
29. xaviersobased - "we discuss" (xaviersobased & cranes)
30. chuckyy - "my world" (bugg)
31. 414bigfrank - "there it is" (sunny lou)
32. skooly & rich kid shawty - "loose screws" (metro boomin & dj spinz)
33. too $hort - "brain surgery" (ekzakt)
34. aspen kartier, bigjadaa & lady binladen - "tryna crush (alo)" (?)
35. rockout danny - "how to bip" (krow)
36. b6 - "crack no beers" (jinxygotkeys)
37. hit-boy f/ spank nitti james, azchike & babytron - "start dissin" (hit-boy & scott storch)
38. bruiser wolf - boss up" (harry fraud)
39. meek mill f/ fridayyy - "proud of me" (fortune, musik spirit & fridayy)
40. bankroll ni f/ tootie - "true religion" (ymp cash & ymp gang)
41. lil lik - "micah birthday" (?)
42. slimesito - "ask me bout my fit" (connie)
43. meat computer - "still rare" (meat computer & dimalamperd flame prince)
44. happydranker - "chop spit" (?)
45. g herbo - "went legit" (southside, smatt sertified, pirate1pirate & hawky)
46. fly anakin f/ quelle chris, $ilkmoney & big kahuna - "my n***a" (shungu)
47. lazer dim 700 - "washed up ahh boy" (vansykut)
48. infinity knives & brian ennals f/ gabriela bibiana - "sometimes, papi chulo" (infinity knives)
49. jorjiana - "time" (emrld beats)
50. skrilla - "doot doot (6 7)" (1ellis)

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[1] "it's apart of the art meathead," got it tatted on my belly. ^

[2] wayne factors in heavily too here as the title and hook both suggest and as he does when it comes to basically all post 2007 rapping (yes still) especially carti's. i'm always reminded of this seemingly unfinished mixtape loosie as the most blatant precedent for carti's word-chewing, sound-over-meaning, adlibs-over-bars approach. ^

[3] like he must be the only national artist who has ever name dropped the ibex in a verse unless wale beat him to it maybe you can listen to some wale and let me know. ^

[4]i feel like i'm kilo ali in 1993 whenever i think about how we are now nearly as far removed from the first futuristic summa of 2008 as 2008 was from the juice crew era. ^

[5] beezyb probably deserves some credit for hitting it first, though.^

[6] artists take note: if you have no choice but to play the forced scarcity price gouge game at least try to do it with a little bit of panache.^

[7] yes all the best male rappers in atlanta right now are either fake goth vamp demons or born again christians, holy war forthcoming.^