Hip-Hop

Vince Staples came to prominence as an associate of the L.A. underground rap collective Odd Future, making multiple appearances on Earl Sweatshirt’s 2013 album Doris. Two years later, Staples released the acclaimed album Summertime ’06 on Def Jam, which featured an appearance by frequent collaborator Jhene Aiko and established the Northside Long Beach rapper as a brilliant and distinctive voice in hip hop. Despite his irreverence toward traditional hip hop gatekeepers, Staples has proven an able collaborator for conscious veterans like Common and Dilated Peoples, as well as an agile MC who can tackle adventurous tracks from producers like Flume and Clams Casino. With the sheer variety of collaborators he sounds at home with, Vince Staples has enhanced the unique place his solo work occupies in the musical landscape and the ways he can express his sense of humor and political perspective.

Nas may be known primarily for classics albums such as Illmatic and It Was Written, but his work on other people’s tracks reveals new dimensions of his work. On earlier classics such “Verbal Intercourse” or the vastly underrated AZ collaboration “Mo Money, Mo Murder (Homoside),” Nas seems primarily concerned with sensory detail and pure sound -- the clanging consonants and sly insertions of internal rhymes that melt the rusted metal of his harrowing imagery into pure liquid poetry. As his career would progress, he became more interested in carving out meaning, and tracks such as “Road to Zion” -- his collaboration with Damian Marley -- and “Music for Live” are thoughtful post-colonialists critiques set to boom bap. His recent verse of DJ Khaled’s “Nas Album Done” verifies that, 20+ years into an already legendary career, the rapper is still near the top of the game. The power of his voice is matched by the subtlety of his language as he pushes for equality through economic re-investment in black communities. Yeah, it’s admittedly strange this is taking place on a DJ Khaled track, but the track has to be encouraging for all Nas fans.

Subscribe to the Spotify playlist here.Just as the Flamers mixtape series from 2008 to 2010 made Meek Mill the toast of Philadelphia, the Dreamchasers series became the franchise that made him a national star. The first volume in 2011 celebrated Meek’s signing to Rick Ross’s Maybach Music Group and featured his breakthrough single “Ima Boss,” as well as the first of his narrative “Tony Story” tracks, demonstrating the MC’s commanding voice and his chemistry with Philly producer Jahlil Beats. 2012’s Dreamchasers 2 was so highly anticipated that its arrival crashed the servers of mixtape sites, and 2013’s third installment was a star-studded affair with multiple appearances from Nicki Minaj and French Montana. And 2016’s DC4 was a confident comeback after a year of beef and controversy.

Five years ago, Mike WiLL Made-It took over the airwaves, his murky, undulating trap beats powering Juicy J’s “Bandz A Make Her Dance,” Rihanna’s “Pour It Up,” Ace Hood’s “Bugatti,” Lil Wayne’s “Love Me,” and many more hits. Meanwhile, he orchestrated Miley Cyrus’ emergence as a Top 40 libertine, delighting poptimists and infuriating others in the process. His sound was difficult to escape.Today, while fellow Atlantan Metro Boomin has taken over as mainstream rap’s omnipresent producer, Mike WiLL Made-It has scaled back. He’s focused on his Ear Drummers’ camp, particularly Rae Sremmurd, the brothers from Tupelo, Mississippi who made surprisingly durable pop-raps like “No Flex Zone,” “No Type,” and last year’s Billboard chart-topper “Black Beatles.” When it seemed impossible to play a mainstream rap hit without hearing his Brandy-supplied audio signature, Mike WiLL Made-It’s beats swung like pendulums—sort of like a trap version of those damned drops that bedevil electronic dance music. Listen to “Bandz A Make Her Dance” and “Love Me” back-to-back for those similar percussive builds.Mike WiLL Made-It’s latest full-length production showcase, Ransom 2, reveals that his techniques have grown far more complex. For “Razzle Dazzle,” he arranges a frizzy feedback storm over a booming kick drum; on Rae Sremmurd MC Swae Lee’s “Bars Of Soap,” he pairs 808 drums with icy synths reminiscent of Giorgio Moroder aficionado Alchemist; another Ear Drummers protégé, Andrea gets “Burnin” with a flurry of menacing cowbell percussion and dancehall chants.With cameos by Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, and other boldfaced names, Ransom 2 proves that Mike still has plenty of juice. And while no one may have paid attention to his 2015 Miley disasterpiece, Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, he can still orchestrate a beautiful pop catastrophe: On the one-off single “It Takes Two,” Carly Rae Jespen and Lil Yachty remake Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock’s funky hip-hop classic into a thinly veiled advertisement for Target. Hear the latest evolutions of Mike WiLL Made-Its sound on this playlist.Click here to add to Spotify playlist!

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Damu The Fudgemunk operates in a niche known as instrumental hip-hop. It’s a subgenre that has existed since the late ‘80s, in the days of DJ Mark The 45 King, and has occasionally drawn wide attention through DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing….. and Clams Casino’s Instrumental Mixtape. But it’s mostly limited to listeners who like hearing beats without all that talking—or “wavy singing”—over it, as well as fledgling MCs looking for loops and breaks to rap over. Then there are the chic hair salons, hookah lounges, and coffee shops that occasionally sprinkle in a little instrumental hip-hop amidst the chill out, downtempo (yes, this still exists in 2017), and smooth deep house that make up their daily aural wallpaper. As a result, instrumental beatmakers like Damu tend to go ignored by all but the most committed listeners.Damu hails from a mid-2000s era when underground hip-hop drew an ever-decreasing audience as an industry dazzled by the rise of Dirty South virtually ignored it. He started out as a DJ with Panacea, a duo whose ghostly new age excursions—like 2007’s The Scenic Route—elicited few critical notices. He established himself by working with Boston rapper Insight as Y Society, and their zippy, ecstatic sunshine tones on 2007’s Travel At Your Own Pace made the album a cult classic among true-school rap fans, with OG vinyl copies trading for hundreds of dollars. Damu has since created a virtual cottage industry of beats, compiling them for indie labels like Redefinition Records and Kilawatt Music.His latest album, Vignettes, reveals how the Washington, D.C. producer is so much more than just a Pete Rock disciple. On the standout track, “Get Lost to Be Found,” he weaves a midtempo beat that slowly ripples and roils like an ocean wave. It’s a hypnotic body of music, full of subtle changes in rhythm that last for stretches of over 12 minutes, and it’s emblematic of how Damu can subtly twist instrumental hip-hop tropes—the Pete Rock-ish horn lick, the DJ Premier-like sample chop—into his own elegant sound signature.There’s so much Damu The Fudgemunk material on the market that it’s difficult to recommend a canonical release for listeners who aren’t immersed in beats culture, the intricacies of which can’t fully be explained here. But in light of the enthralling Vignettes, this playlist is a good start.

Young Thug says “Metro Boomin want some more,” Kodak Black says “Lil Metro on that beat,” and most famously, Future says, “If Young Metro don’t trust you, I’m gon’ shoot you.” Regardless of which rapper is identifying Leland “Metro Boomin” Wayne at the moment, odds are you’ve heard his name and his beats on the radio a lot in the last few years. The St. Louis native began driving to Atlanta to collaborate with musicians as a high school student. Since his flashy piano work on 2013’s “Karate Chop,” he’s been one of Future’s closest collaborators, and he’s slowly expanded his clientele across the music industry, from Kanye West to Nicki Minaj.Although Metro Boomin is a master of the heavy bass and busy hi-hat programming of Atlanta’s ubiquitous trap sound, his work isn’t as singular or distinctive as previous kings of the scene like Lex Luger and Mike WiLL Made-It. Instead, Metro has distinguished himself with the sheer variety of sounds that he’s integrated into the trap blueprint, from the haunting chords of “Bad and Boujee” by Migos to the ethereal flute sample of “Mask Off” by Future.Metro Boomin is also a big collaborator, crafting the woozy groove of ILoveMakonnen’s quirky hit “Tuesday” with Sonny Digital and working alongside three other producers on Big Sean’s “Bounce Back.” His ear for bringing together the contributions of others served him well as he executive produced Drake and Future’s hit collaborative album What A Time To Be Alive and 21 Savage’s breakthrough mixtape Savage Mode. Sample 2017’s hottest producer with this playlist of his greatest hits.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

We all have our passion projects. For some of us, it’s tending a garden or collecting vinyl, while others write novels or cut vanity records. JAY Z, being JAY Z, thinks on a much larger scale. For the past two years, he has been singly focused on building his fledgling streaming service, Tidal. He’s squeezed favors from friends, spent ridiculous amounts of time and money on promoting the service, and even gotten his wife involved in the proceedings (though, it must be noted, her contribution came wrapped in a bow of marital discontent). At first, this very much seemed like a business decision. Most of us never really believed the line about him trying to empower artists with a (somewhat) more fair streaming business model. The best guesses by industry insiders was that he would build it out, and then flip it for a couple hundred million in profit. After all, he is a business, man.But, increasingly, JAY Z seems to be motivated less and less by altruism, or even business acumen, and more by hubris. This is a man who’s not used to losing, and turning his back on Tidal—either by shutting it down, or selling it for scraps—definitely feels like an L. So, here we are. JAY Z has a new album, 4:44, his first since 2013’s critically panned but commercially successful Magna Carta Holy Grail. And that album will be available exclusively on Tidal. There’s been a lotofinkspilledabout why exclusives are bad for the industry and bad for fans, and those articles seem to focus on two basic principles: 1) Forcing fans to shell out for an additional music service is fundamentally unfair, and 2) it frustrates the fans, encourages privacy, and shrinks the marketplace. We generally agree with this line of thinking, albeit with a few caveats—the streaming marketplace isn’t as frail as it once was, and there are consumers with the resources and the motivation to buy what is effectively a bigger bag of popcorn. But, ultimately, the true casualty of the exclusivity wars is the artform.Music is a living medium. It’s supposed to be heard, discussed, and reappropriated into new forms. In short, it’s a conversation between millions of fans and artists, and if you have that conversation in a closet, or behind a velvet rope, then it’s a pretty shitty conversation. The fact that The Beatles took 10-plus years to get into the subscription music marketplace, and were so protective of their online presence, meant an entire generation had limited exposure to what is undoubtedly the most influential rock group of the past half century. It’s probably not a coincidence that most of the retro-minded bands of past decade have gravitated towards the bluesy, garage rock that was championed by The Rolling Stones. It’s simply what they had exposure to, and what they heard. And while the reservoirs of Boomer Beatles nostalgia is nearly endless, the band felt largely invisible to millennials for the better part of a decade.This is not to suggest that JAY Z’s legacy is in any immediate danger—he more or less owned hip-hop in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s—but it’s also pretty clear that the release strategy for 4:44 will hurt its overall cultural impact, even if, by some miracle, it boosts Tidal’s bottom line. It certainly hurt Beyoncé’s Lemonade. That was one of the strongest albums of the decade and arguably the best of Beyoncé’s career, but its impact and cultural cachet already seem to be waning just because many people can’t listen to it.To be very selfish, The Dowsers is a magazine exclusively devoted to playlist criticism and analysis. When an important record comes out—say, SZA’s CTRL or Solange’s A Seat at the Table—we pore over its influences, samples, collaborations, and impact in an attempt to put it in a larger context and make sense of it for our readers. It’s our part of the conversation around popular music. But we can’t do that with JAY Z’s 4:44. We can’t even create a playlist around his previous albums; they’ve also disappeared from Spotify. So, instead, we’ve opted to create a playlist that focuses on his guest verses. It’s an awesome playlist, of course, but it also feels like a missed opportunity—and that’s on JAY Z.

One of the ugliest figures in rap is obsessed with some of the prettiest music. But we should expect nothing less from Tyler, the Creator, a self-described “walking paradox” whose music has been obscured by his public persona ever since he disrupted rap with his Odd Future crew in 2008. You could be forgiven for writing him off entirely after reading his notoriously homophobic Tweets. He’s since walked back most of that language, and has perhaps even come out as gay—or at least inhabits a gay character on his 2017 album Scum Fuck Flower Boy.As a rapper and producer, he’s been open about his influences since day one, and theyre all over the place: Pharrell’s sweet falsettos and uneasy chord progressions; the alien pop and library music of Broadcast; late ‘80s R&B (not a lot of that on Spotify, sadly); the harsh provocation and technical wizardry of Eminem; the stagey, orchestral hip-hop of Jon Brion-era Kanye West. He’s particularly into deep album cuts and soulful music with cinematic aspects.There is still nobody quite like him, even outside music, with his brightly colored fashion line and Neverland-esque penchant for throwing carnivals. And while his music has developed a capacity for gentleness over the years, he’s still a man who will shout vulgarities, if only to drive people away so he can sit at the piano alone with his jazz chords.At any rate, the most interesting paradox of Tyler, the Creator is that while he always seemed bent on fame for himself and Odd Future, he never “dumbed down for dollars” a la JAY-Z—or seemed to ever consider watering down his art in any way.

A$AP Mob has been having a productive summer. A$AP Twelvyy released his debut album 12, and A$AP Ferg dropped his Still Striving mixtape. The group’s sophomore studio album, Cozy Tapes Vol. 2: Too Cozy, is scheduled to be released on August 25.Although the collective is still going strong, they’ve been through a lot since they first rose to prominence earlier this decade. A$AP Yams, co-founder, music business guru, and de facto leader of the group, passed away in 2015. A$AP Rocky, the Mob’s biggest star, hasn’t released a new album since that year. As is the case with any popular group, their momentum has begun to slow.In 2012 and 2013, when the buzz behind A$AP Mob was just beginning to peak, Complex ran a series of features highlighting various members’ favorite albums. A$AP Rocky and A$AP Ferg both listed their top 25 albums, with A$AP Yams listing his top 42.This playlist consists of songs from the A$AP Mob members’ respective lists of albums, which vary widely in genre and sound. A$AP Rocky, whose choices account for the first 23 tracks on this playlist, lists rock groups like Nirvana, Colplay, Cold War Kids, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jimi Hendrix among his favorites alongside rap legends like Rakim and Big Pun. A$AP Ferg likes Selena. A$AP Yams liked Stillmatic more than Illmatic. A$AP Rocky specifically mentioned he didn’t like College Dropout, only Late Registration. A$AP Ferg liked both, plus 808s and Heartbreak and Kid Cudi.Despite the differences, there are commonalities. Everyone in the A$AP Mob loves Cam’ron and Dipset, which is unsurprising considering both hail from Harlem and brought global attention to their New York neighborhood by utilizing the group format. All three also list DMX among their favorites. A$AP Rocky said he listened to DMX to remind him of home when he had to move to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania as a child.The A$AP Mob members reference the styles that influenced their sound, citing New York classics from the era in which they grew up as well as the Texan sounds of UGK and Scarface that A$AP Rocky notoriously incorporated into his music. Most of the songs on the playlist are recognizable singles or classic tracks, to underscore the fact that the group’s members have been inspired by music everyone likes. They’ve already produced work of their own that should stand the test of time, and hopefully their new music continues in that tradition.

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were already anachronisms when they met as jazz-obsessed teenagers in the late ‘60s and began to write the droll, harmonically complex songs that made Steely Dan one of the greatest and most unique bands of the ‘70s. So it’s not surprising that the duo who worked tirelessly to get the best performances out of skilled session players never had much interest in hip-hop and the art of sampling. They even made it difficult to clear samples; they negotiated for the entire songwriting credit and publishing for the Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz hit “Déjà Vu (Uptown Baby)” and only allowed a “Kid Charlemagne” sample on Kanye West’s “Champion” after West sent the duo a passionate handwritten letter. But even Steely Dan’s stingy attitude towards sample clearances hasn’t stopped dozens of artists from doing the necessary paperwork to obtain use of the band’s gloriously recorded jazz-rock grooves (though De La Soul may not have, which could be why one of the most famous Steely Dan samples, the “Peg” loop on “Eye Know,” isn’t available on streaming services). But while the Dan’s tightly syncopated grooves and densely detailed arrangements clearly attract crate-digging producers the most, Donald Fagen’s voice figures into a surprising number of samples, boasting “Yes, I’m gonna be a star” on Amiri’s “Star” or chanting “They don’t give a fuck about anybody else” on one of Super Furry Animals’ biggest UK chart hits. The Steely Dan songs that have been sampled by multiple artists offer a case study in how many options the band’s rich arrangements offer to beatmakers. Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz went for the obvious but irresistible opening bars of “Black Cow,” while MF Doom zeroed in on a lovely keyboard flourish that happens just once in the song’s bridge. And where Audio Bullys looped the hypnotic guitar lick from “Midnite Cruiser,” legendary Atlanta production team Organized Noize played the riff at three different speeds to create a whole new chord progression for Sleepy Brown’s solo track “Dress Up.” Becker, sadly, passed away on September 3, 2017. But his music lives on—and continues to find new audiences—through the many hip-hop, rock, and R&B tracks collected here.