New Music Tuesday #21

Rap Beef, Coachella & Childish Gambino

I’ll be on Twitch on 4/17 from 2-4pm EST and also Shouting At The Screen is back at Nitehawk’s Prospect Park theater on 4/25 and you can get tickets for that here.

---

How many Youtube links is too many? I always ask myself this exact question every week because I send a LOT of Youtube links. This is one of those weeks where I honestly could have sent more but I chilled cus I feel like it’s all icing no cake.

This weekend is slim on new music but I’ve got a bit of news and stuff before we get to the new music.

Rap Beef vs AI Leaks

Rap beef is at an all time high and everyone is fighting everyone. If I was into conspiracy theories I’d say they were all trying to distract us while Puff flew to Bali for yoga classes but I’m just happy that Joe Budden and Akademiks are too busy cuddling to play host to contrarian hate peddlers during an election year. It’s bad enough that Charlamagne thinks he’s Chris Haynes but the last thing we need is Joseph poddin with Candace Owens.

…my bad this was about rap beef. It’s honestly too much to keep up with at this point but let me try to catch you up to speed. Kenny teamed up with Metro Boomin and Future to diss Drake and Cole caught a stray. Cole dropped an album with a response on it then renigged with an apology and took the song off of his album streaming. Rick Ross jumped in dropped a diss record then unfriended Drake. Weeknd jumped in too? Drake then drops a response that is dissing everybody that dissed him and simultaneously pops up on an album with the same guys that dissed Drake?

And trust me I am leaving out a lot in this summary but I think this video sums it up pretty well

Not to mention the City Girls broke up and got back together, Glorilla and Latto was goin at it and Ari Lennox posted an IG story that was just footage of Joe Budden getting punched on loop.

Messy. We are all stuck in the shadow of the solar eclipse that was Katt Williams’ Shanon Sharpe interview.

But the dumbest part of all of this is that every leak that drops we have to figure out if it’s AI or not. It’s a silly footnote to all of this but I’m absolutely dreading when the actual election starts up and we are all being deepfaked into another four years of OJ the Conman.

Cast your vote here about the battle and feel free to comment down below if you have any hot takes you need to share.

Coachella

Couchella (where you watch Coachella livestreams from your couch) started this weekend and I got to catch bits and pieces. Khraungbin was good, Yachty was interesting, No Doubt was cool. (It was really weird seeing kids mosh to Yachty and not No Doubt.)

The two viral moments I saw so far was J. Balvin bringing out Will Smith for the Men In Black song (which was cool but confusing cus why?) and Lil Uzi Vert voguing and doing a death drop in the middle of his set (which is impressive based cus what?!)

I wanted to see Tyler but I fell asleep cus I’m adult man with stuff to do in the morning (even on the weekends) I haven’t had time to go back to the the stream and watch it but here’s a bootleg of the show since Coachella hasn’t posted it up yet.

He brought out a few guests and one of the ones that got everyone hype was Donald Glover because everyone loves him and he’s been pretty quiet on the music front as of late. Per this GQ article from a few years ago has mostly been on his farm growing fruit and running a creative agency named GILGA.

2 Childish Gambino Albums

It looks like he’s coming back with two new albums this year and some of the music leaked on GILGA radio which is a show that I just found out existed doesn’t exist. I’m currently trying to figure out where to hear the show at and I don’t know but It streamed on IG live and from the sound of this interview it sounds like he is just interviewing himself on a fake radio station. A diligent fan on reddit took notes of the whole radio show. I am trying to track it down if for anything else than to hear the fake commercials he made for it.

It has press release/album roll out vibes which is great. There are some great quotes in there though and hearing the host say “let me let you get back to your farm” is unintentionally funny because this nigga think he Kelis

(Dunno if you’re reading this Donald but it’s just jokes.)

Detroit Rap

Gmac Cash is probably one of my favorite rappers that I never think about. He went viral a while back for making a song about Detroit Gov Gretchen Whitmer named Big Gretch and has since stayed true to his style of rapping about extremely Detroit shit in an extremely Detroit way.

Recently he was offended by a new sign that Detroit got installed and had a few bars for it. I personally think rappers beefing with infrastructure is top tier art. Give this man the key to the city.

Speaking of Detroit another artist that is on my radar is Nasaan who is Proof’s son. Proof is Eminem’s rhyme partner who was killed many years ago and it’s really dope to see his son not only upholding tradition but doing it with both skill and a unique approach. He also directs and edits his own videos which makes it even better.

Here are two of my favorites

The choreography moves with guns in this is hilarious. Also it makes me think about Tim Vocals aka the OG R&B thug. Nothing but respect for that innovator.

Okay this is a more straight forward rap song. The video is killer too. It’s also a dope little easter egg that Royce has on the outfit that Nasaan had on during their recent press run.

(I pay way too much attention to small details)

Mick Jenkins & TOBi Documentary

The folk who gave us the Little Brother Documentary have dropped this mini documentary and I’m sharing it sight unseen cus I have enjoyed everything that Rap Portraits have done so far.

ALBUMS

I did not get to listen to most of new music this week but I did track it to listen to at a later time. Here’s the stuff that is of interest to me.

Not fully sure who this is but I skimmed it and I like it.

Asher Roth been building a community on discord and working in quiet with them for a while now and he is still rapping at a high level. He also has a Substack. Tap in.

Don’t know much about this person but I saw BADBADNOTGOOD listed and figured it was worth sharing.

I haven’t heard this album yet but Nickelus F has yet to let me down.

DRAM is always worth a listen.

Shabaka’s album is fantastic. I played it like 3 times and it was a very soothing experience. 10/10 recommend if you need something to vibe out to.

Silent Knight be mufuggin R A P P I N G.

SINGLES

ADDENDUM

Shout out to everyone who has subscribed to, read or recommended this newsletter to folks. I can’t thank you enough for spreading the word about my words. #bars

I really appreciate all the emails, comments and feedback that I get about it. I’ve even gotten real time responses in the wild which is kinda cool because I genuinely don’t think people have time in their day to read this nonsense and/or click my random ass assortment of links but for those of you who do it means the world to me.

This Substack is actually my very rough attempt at a one man music magazine of sorts. New Music Tuesday (formerly Recc’s N Effect) is the weekly new releases, news and events portion while The Almanac of Rap is for the podcast, essays and researched stuff.

With that said I am still wrestling with my drafts folder over the more researched pieces and I’ve come to the tough decision of paywalling the future ones. Mostly because they take a bit more time and energy to do but also because I’d like to give the paying people a bit more bang for their buck. Maybe I’ll make that paywall stuff time lapsed to go free at some point or maybe I won’t. I’m still figuring it out in real time and I do know that I enjoy people seeing them so it’s definitely a tough decision to make!

Regardless this section New Music Tuesday is an exercise in consistency and it will remain free because sharing new music (and my opinion in general lol) is important to me.

Okay dassit. See you next week.

Peace.