Lojii
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...
The 50 Best Songs of 2020 (So Far)
Great songs have a freedom that albums don’t because great songs only have to pull off their trick once. It’s like how a great SNL sketch can be a terrible movie or why Vine was an underrated miracle of online comedy. Sometimes an artist can get a lot more done in miniature. When people say that no one listens to albums anymore, they’re obviously mistaken, but they mean that no one listens to certain kinds of albums anymore. They won’t wait to get to the good part, and an industry that’s been padding out their wares for decades has had to adapt to a new reality where the customer is always dope. From Hailey Whitters to Hayley Williams, from King Von to Christine and the Queens, here’s a supercut of just the good parts: The songs that have challenged and delighted and comforted us through a...
