AJ Suede

Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that highlights exceptional rising rappers. To read previous columns, click here. The conventional rap album cycle died sometime between the mid and late 2000s. No more waiting months (or longer) between the first album single and the release. Blame Napster and the like, countless G-Unit mixtapes, Tha Carter III leaks, or the internet. By the dawn of the blog era, rappers like Curren$y — the prolific stoner whose memoiristic verses could be columns in High Times or Car and Driver — were flooding DatPiff with mixtapes faster than fans (or DatPiff servers) could keep pace. AJ Suede is partly a product of that era, a Curren$y fan whose unflagging artistic drive has led to a similar prolificacy. Since 2015, the 27-year-old New York-born rapper/producer has re...