Blue Chips
Blue Chips: Reaper Mook
Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that highlights exceptional rising rappers. To read previous columns, click here. If the sun were shining, Reaper Mook and NiceGuyxVinny would be sitting in the shadow of a lighthouse. But few rays crack the concrete sky on this overcast mid-August afternoon in downtown Long Beach. The locally-revered rapper and producer (respectively) share a wooden bench, conversing while watching the rancid ocean water sway nearby docks. Long Beach natives, collaborators, and now roommates, they could be discussing anything from the muggy weather to their next project and the rent. Mook nods behind dark Versace lenses when I arrive and lifts his broad, 6’7” frame from the bench. He regrets to inform me that Parker’s Lighthouse, the upscale seafood restaurant he sel...
Blue Chips: Fatboi Sharif
Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that highlights exceptional rising rappers. To read previous columns, click here. There’s nothing inherently wrong with horrorcore. The word emerged as a shorthand for rap that shares commonalities with horror films, songs that traffic in physical and psychological terror. Geto Boys’ “Mind Playing Tricks on Me,” one of the greatest rap songs ever written, fits the bill. But somewhere between Gravediggaz’s “1-800 Suicide” and the first Gathering of the Juggalos, horrorcore became a hackneyed subgenre. Gallons of blood (and Faygo) and graphic dismemberments became an end rather than a vehicle for meaningful social commentary. “I honestly hate that word,” says Fatboi Sharif, one of the brightest and strangest rappers from New Jersey. He speaks from his a...
Blue Chips: 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...
Blue Chips: Rome Streetz
Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that doubles as a scouting report. Each month, SPIN selects a rapper (or group of rappers) who could be Rookie of the Year candidates turned Hall-of-Famers or forgettable flashes in the pan. Only the passing seasons (and the number of streams) will tell. To read previous columns, click here. Griselda Records rappers have dominated the conversation surrounding New York’s street rap renaissance for the last five years. Individual and consolidated talent, the Shady Records affiliation, album packaging, musical glut, onomatopoeic gun noises — there are reasons for their prominence. But their shadow often obscures New York rappers equally gifted at delivering grimy vignettes in slick, simile-laden rhymes. If you scan the credits of recent projects from Griseld...
Blue Chips: Bruiser Wolf
Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that doubles as a scouting report. Each month, SPIN selects a rapper (or group of rappers) who could be Rookie of the Year candidates turned Hall-of-Famers or forgettable flashes in the pan. Only the passing seasons (and the number of streams) will tell. To read previous columns, click here. Rap is rife with songs that celebrate the fast money and material goods drug dealing can afford. Just as many, though, weigh powders, pills, and profits next to the threat of death or life imprisonment, the pressure of providing for a family, and the psychic toll of watching fiends whittled to bone. Bruiser Wolf knows every side of the game. “We can’t always have the highs of the dope game. We can’t always be getting money,” the Detroit-based rapper says over Bluetoot...
Blue Chips: YUNGMORPHEUS
Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that doubles as a scouting report. Each month, SPIN selects a rapper (or group of rappers) who could be Rookie of the Year candidates turned Hall-of-Famers or forgettable flashes in the pan. Only the passing seasons (and the number of streams) will tell. To read previous columns, click here. Academia is an insular world with a limited, often privileged audience. Economic and racial disparity is the norm, and institutional change is incremental at best. After four infuriating years at Boston College, YUNGMORPHEUS didn’t want to become one of many (and too few) Black academics stymied by systemic hurdles while questioning his reach. > “You may be saying some ill shit, but who are you talking to? There’s just a gang of schmucks in here like, ‘I’...
Blue Chips: February 2021 in New Hip-Hop
Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that doubles as a scouting report. Each month, SPIN selects a new starting five, a group of rappers who could be Rookie of the Year candidates turned Hall-of-Famers or forgettable flashes in the pan. Only the passing seasons (and the number of streams) will tell. To read previous columns, click here. Babyface Ray – “Real N—-s Don’t Rap” [embedded content] Chicago rap broke nationally in the early 2010s with Chief Keef, Chance the Rapper, Lil Durk, G Herbo, Saba, and many, many more. Now, the Midwest is having another rap moment. While Detroit and other parts of Michigan (e.g., Flint) have exported promising rappers for decades (e.g., Danny Brown, Payroll Giovanni), there’s been a wealth of talent and increased coverage following the ascent of street rap s...
Blue Chips: January 2021 in New Hip Hop
Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that doubles as a scouting report. Each month, SPIN selects a new starting five, a group of rappers who could be Rookie of the Year candidates turned Hall-of-Famers or forgettable flashes in the pan. Only the passing seasons (and the number of streams) will tell. To read previous columns, click here. 26AR – “My Set Pt. II” [embedded content] Producers often make great A&Rs. A Lau — the New York producer behind some of the most punishingly percussive and catchy beats in Brooklyn drill — has been scoring the verses of the scene’s most promising young talent for the last year. In addition to producing for recent Blue Chips pick Rocko Ballin, A Lau has credits on dozens of tracks for an equally gifted rapper: 26AR. A Crown Heights, Brooklyn native, 26AR b...
Blue Chips: November 2020 in New Hip Hop
Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that doubles as a scouting report. Each month, SPIN selects a new starting five, a group of rappers who could be Rookie of the Year candidates turned Hall-of-Famers or forgettable flashes in the pan. Only the passing seasons (and the number of streams) will tell. To read previous columns, click here. Ketchy the Great – “Another One” [embedded content] If you need a microcosm for the racism of the U.S. justice system — or a case that illustrates the life-threatening discrimination rappers face with every lyric — see the nearly three-year judicial and carceral nightmare of Drakeo the Ruler and the Stinc Team. Drakeo was charged with benefiting from a murder he didn’t commit, and the Stinc Team was labeled a gang. While Drakeo fought his case and spent almos...
Blue Chips: September 2020 in New Hip-Hop
Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that doubles as a scouting report. Each month, SPIN selects a new starting five, a group of rappers who could be Rookie of the Year candidates turned Hall-of-Famers or forgettable flashes in the pan. Only the passing seasons (and the number of streams) will tell. To read previous columns, click here. Bobby Sessions – “Reparations” [embedded content] Texas isn’t synonymous with capital-P Political rap, but neither is it a monolith of glinting, candy-painted slabs and syrup-filled double cups. The Geto Boys and UGK, E.S.G. and Fat Pat—countless artists have chronicled Black life in Texas neighborhoods, lives that are politicized and affected by racist redlining, policing, and judicial systems. If you need off-record evidence, Scarface ran for Houston City C...
Blue Chips: August 2020 in New Hip-Hop
Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that doubles as a scouting report. Each month, SPIN selects a new starting five, a group of rappers who could be Rookie of the Year candidates turned Hall-of-Famers or forgettable flashes in the pan. Only the passing seasons (and the number of streams) will tell. To read previous columns, click here. Big Yavo – “Country Boy” [embedded content] The list of rappers who claim they “don’t write” grows every day. The implication seems to be that every song is spontaneous, one-take with no punch-ins, re-recording, etc. This is patently untrue. Jay-Z — one of the first to vocally declare he doesn’t use a pen — cleared up that misconception long ago. Big Yavo (pronounced yay-vo, not yah-vo) first gained attention outside of his native Alabama when he released “No...
Blue Chips: July 2020 in New Hip-Hop
Blue Chips is a monthly rap column that doubles as a scouting report. Each month, SPIN selects a new starting five, a group of rappers who could be Rookie of the Year candidates turned Hall-of-Famers or forgettable flashes in the pan. Only the passing seasons (and the number of streams) will tell. To read previous columns, click here. 30 Deep Grimeyy – “Say Cheese” [embedded content] Did you really listen to “Country Grammar?” Nelly hit the top of the charts while couching the promise of a drive-by in a children’s song. In the second verse, the St. Louis native slyly lets the world know that he and the Lunatics wouldn’t hesitate to shoot up the club. Two decades later, 30 Deep Grimeyy has no patience for sugarcoating the violence in St. Louis. In 2019, CBS declared the Missouri city the mo...
