The most prominent power players in hip-hop this year were largely defined by their musical omnipresence. YoungBoy Never Broke Again, rap’s MVP of 2022, released a 30-track studio album, four mixtapes, and two collaborative projects in under 365 days—and he still might drop another release before December is up. Yeat, the reptile-sounding rookie of the year, dropped an album in the first quarter, followed by an expanded “Geëk Pack” with nine new tracks, and then an EP that was about as long as most LPs.
Those two and their massive catalogs aside, some other names on this list were able to achieve or maintain cultural pervasiveness in other ways. As per usual with any given year of hip-hop, the best the genre had to offer covered a wide variety of styles, modes, and moods—and, most importantly, came from such a varied cast of pivotal personalities, whether it be TikTok sensation GloRilla, Megan Thee Station, Kendrick Lamar, or Bad Bunny. Others, like Benny the Butcher and Roc Marciano, kept it low-key, while younger talents like Ken Carson and Bladee proudly did their own thing and couldn’t care less what others thought of it. Paul Attard
42 Dugg and EST Gee, Last Ones Left
What do you get when you put a high-wired rabble-rouser from Detroit in the same room with a no-nonsense shit-talker who hails from Louisville? A harmonious pairing, it turns out. Last Ones Left, a collaborative mixtape between 42 Dugg and EST Gee, finds the two Midwest rappers operating in near lockstep. While their label affiliation might first suggest monetary motivations (both are signed to Yo Gotti’s Collective Music Group), they shoot those naysaying theories down early on with standouts like the wintery “Thump Shit” and pounding “Spin,” both of which feature shrill vocal melodies from Dugg on the flamboyant choruses and straight-faced verses from Gee. Their splashy chemistry is downright infectious whenever they’re doing what they do best: act belligerent as hell over a larger-than-life beat. Attard
700 Bliss, Nothing to Declare
Philadelphia poet/spoken-word artist Moor Mother’s work, which ranges from jazz to hip-hop to noise, is typically a solemn affair. Although this is still true of Nothing to Declare, her second album as half of 700 Bliss, her back-and-forth banter with fellow rapper/producer DJ Haram, who boasts a more casual flow, lightens things up. The album mixes Arabic hand percussion with programmed drums, electronic squeals, and pitch-shifted vocals, offering noisy yet accessible experimentation. Moor fires lyrical shots at billionaires (“Discipline” calls them out for engaging in psychological warfare) and celebrates the history of dance in the African diaspora, but the duo has enough of a sense of humor about themselves to deliver a self-mocking skit too: “They always talk about the end of the world…Literally, who wants to hear that shit?” Steve Erickson
Bad Bunny, Un Verano Sin Ti
The scope of Bad Bunny’s 80-minute, 23-track Un Verano Sin Ti allows the Puerto Rican rapper-singer to explore the full breadth of his romantic and sexual proclivities. For the first several songs, the album immerses us in Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio’s restless lust, his love of ass, and unabashedly dirty passion for the female form, which he conveys with an undeniably winning charisma over cheekily mournful reggaeton arrangements. Rather than play culture vulture and attempt to embody an ascendant style disingenuously, Bunny doubles down on his heritage and cultural identity. He pays tribute to the Afro-Caribbean communities of Puerto Rico with samba drumming on “El Apagón,” before declaring his love for the island’s women, closing the track with, “Esta es mi tierra, esta soy yo” (“This is my land, this is me”). Bunny’s paramours are, in fact, the protagonists of Un Verano Sin Ti, living lives that are, as he depicts with a melodramatic anguish, just outside of his reach. Charles Lyons-Burt
Benny the Butcher, Tana Talk 4
Released independently just before Benny the Butcher signed to Def Jam, Tana Talk 4 sounds tormented by the difficulty of leaving the streets behind. Benny can’t escape danger, mentioning that he spent his 36th birthday in the hospital after getting shot in 2020 and that politicians in his native Buffalo can’t believe he got rich off his music rather than crime. The album looks back to a lineage of ’90s New York street rap, complete with boom-bap beats, tense piano loops, and a response to the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Ten Crack Commandments” that advises drug dealers to go straight. The anxieties of hustler-turned-hip-hop-star classics like Biggie’s Ready to Die and Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt are reprised here, still urgent in a world where, just as they were in the ’90s, successful rappers remain targets for violence. Erickson
Bladee, Spiderr
Unlike last year’s decidedly more pop-adjacent The Fool, Bladee’s eighth studio album, Spiderr, is a for-the-fans affair that might make even the most die-hard of Drainers re-consider their unfailing loyalty. Some of the compositions are so chaotic that they feel like they’re about to come apart at the seams, like “Drain Story,” which sounds like a bunch of Bop Its being tossed down a flight of stairs while Bladee’s boyish vocals provide an aloof presence to the otherwise tumultuous track. The album’s closing track, “Uriel Outro,” finds Bladee praying to the titular angel of artistic perfection, singing her praises and requesting her divine grace in his future endeavors. Which, while a graceful note to end on, may not be all that necessary. Because whether you love him or hate him, whether you think he’s sincere or just a peddler of kitsch, there’s no denying that Spiderr presents Bladee at the peak of his abilities. Attard
Ken Carson, X
Ken Carson leaves very little to the imagination. “Lil’ shawty just want my baby, lil’ shawty want my semen/I made her pop a Plan B ‘cause her plan A was to keep it,” he merrily sneers like a teenage boy on “PDBMH,” a track from his sybaritic debut, X. Three tracks later, on the similarly crude “Going Schitz,” he opens with a nonchalant brag about how he “fucked the fuck out that bitch.” He’s deeply unlikeable across the majority of the album’s 20 blown-out tracks, oozing an indulgent, narcissistic energy that borders on unbearable. However, even if one actively chooses to tune out some of the more objectionable elements of Carson’s lyricism, his bratty energy can also be downright thrilling. Case in point, on the comparatively structureless “Freestyle 2,” and over a typically titanic-sounding beat from Working on Dying’s F1lthy, Carson’s aloof presence exudes total confidence, even when he’s practically stuttering out a slur of half-formed adlibs. But perhaps more representative of X‘s overarching impudence is the hyperactive “MDMA,” where Carson, assisted by his Opium label mate Destroy Lonely, delivers a giant middle finger of a verse, one similar in tone to the album’s irreverent cover art of a young child flipping the double-bird. Attard
Conway the Machine, God Don’t Make Mistakes
Conway the Machine provides plenty of grime-soaked slabs of boom-bap revivalism on his second album, God Don’t Make Mistakes, like the disconsolate “Drumwork” and anxiety-inducing “John Woo Flick,” but the Buffalo rapper also balances out his usual frosty machismo with some unexpected pathos. On “Stressed,” the album’s unguarded centerpiece, Conway truly bears it all, characterizing his rampant alcoholism as a byproduct of years of physical abuse, along with him being “stressed” because he’s “depressed,” and he’s “depressed ‘cause I’m just tired of this shit.” Even while surrounded by all of this darkness, God Don’t Make Mistakes still ends on a note of optimism: After a torrent of self-doubt, the angelic voice of Conway’s own mother reassures him that, regardless of whatever he may believe, his life ultimately has meaning. Attard
Fly Anakin, Frank
Fly Anakin’s debut studio album plays like an informal autobiography, often eschewing poetry for tell-it-like-I-see-it prose. The Virginia rapper’s long-winded verses are filled with observations about domesticity, drugs, regional pride, and women. The beats are bleary-eyed and sedated, but they’re also ethereal and swirling, with a sense of being stuck in a stupor. Sonically, Frank is a 38-minute assemblage of vibes you want to get lost in, Anakin’s hoarse, gravelly delivery and shuffling beat choices calling to mind the similarly dazed aesthetic of Isaiah Rashad’s music. For how near-prosaic his lyrics can be, Anakin will all of a sudden get at something more abstract and nebulous on songs like “Black be the Source,” which contemplates the implications of Blackness and how society attempts to commodify and harness it for its own purposes. Maybe this is poetry after all. Lyons-Burt
GloRilla, Anyways, Life’s Great…
GloRilla’s inaugural EP, Anyways, Life’s Great…, is rife with delicious punchlines, boasting some rejoinders to lousy men that belong in the Misandry Hall of Fame. The Tennessee rising star reports that older men are no better than novices (“No More Love”), derides those who won’t eat her out as she compares her vagina to fentanyl (“PHATNALL”), and laments a man who can’t resist blowing his load (“Nut Quick”). At 26 minutes, the EP is a blip written in permanent ink, an unforgettable introduction of a gruff, take-no-shit persona conveyed with gravitas and a lovable, booming, molasses-thick Southern accent. In bookending Anyways, Life’s Great… with two less rowdy, more pensive cuts, Glo shows an interest in delivering a more well-rounded project than one might expect from an introductory EP. And if the various styles she cycles through—drill, crunk, boom-bap—can occasionally feel like diet versions of these modes, well, I’m sure she’d have a great put-down for me in response. Lyons-Burt
JID, The Forever Story
Throughout The Forever Story, JID’s rhyme schemes are tightly wound, his verses bulging with imagery and personality and delivered with an enthusiasm for the outlandish. This playful spirit tonally balances out the weightier detours into realist depictions of a childhood in poverty on songs like “Crack Sandwich” and “Kody Blu 31.” This isn’t quite conscious rap, backpack, or what we’re used to from most present-day Atlanta rappers, but somewhere at the nexus of all three. JID’s rhetorical calisthenics are set to impressive but rarely fussy beats and choice contributions from 21 Savage, Earthgang, Ari Lennox, and Yasiin Bey, among others. When JID decides to follow up Lil Wayne’s display of mastery on “Just in Time” with his own smooth but ferocious verse, you have to hand it to him for approaching Weezy’s brilliance. Lyons-Burt
Kendrick Lamar, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers
Kendrick Lamar has long established a reputation for fearlessly confronting his inner demons, wielding his music as a tool to purge his doubts and insecurities. But the rapper has never been quite as bracingly self-interrogating as he is on his fifth studio album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. Dotted with the alternately nurturing and combative feedback of his partner, Whitney Alford—who begins the album urging him to “tell ‘em the truth”—as well as snippets of advice from spiritual guide and self-help author Eckhart Tolle, the album is an at times uncomfortable balance of self-evaluation and social critique. Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers can be emotionally ugly, even unpleasant, but it never feels less than completely authentic. Though the album isn’t Lamar’s most incisive work, it’s a gripping treatise on the codependent relationship between his inner turmoil and an ever-evolving cultural landscape, its bluntness a risky externalization of deep-rooted confusion spurned by political upheaval. Lyons-Burt
Leikeli47, Shape Up
New York rapper Leikeli47’s primary goal is to loom large. On “Zoom,” from her third album, Shape Up, she threateningly describes a run-in with one of her exes’ baby mamas at a convenience store: “And keep your hands where I can see or Imma have to violate her.” Charmingly, though, she makes a hard pivot on the next song, the lovely “Done Right,” evincing a rare vulnerability and at least reluctantly entertaining the idea of inviting a potential lover over. For most of the album, she delivers cutting barbs in succinct, compact verses that wryly cut to the point of things, with repetitious, insistent choruses that pronounce her autonomy and strength with assaultive force (“This my pussy I can do what I want”). These assertions are paired with beats that are correspondingly minimalist and an array of snares, handclaps, bass hits. Lyons-Burt
Roc Marciano & the Alchemist, The Elephant Man’s Bones
The Elephant Man’s Bones is a laser-focused effort with a weathered worldview. Roc Marciano is a vivid storyteller whose stony raps tend to make an immediate impression on a first listen, as on the album’s magnetic title track, where he elegantly situates himself over a laconic, vintage-sounding soul sample provided by the Alchemist. Together, the two forge an album founded of raw grit and determination, reaching an apex on “The Horn of Abraxis,” whose mixture of sinister organs, ominous drum and snare rolls, and a harrowing spoken-word interlude from Ice T detailing a particularly gruesome brush with death make the track sound like it’s straight out of a ‘70s horror flick. Attard
Megan Thee Stallion, Traumazine
With her second album, Traumazine, Megan Thee Stallion has gone completely mask-off. The title of “Not Nice” sums up the rapper’s current state of mind: “I’m on my fuck you shit, bitch, I’m done being nice/And when it come to cuttin’ people off, I don’t think twice,” she proclaims. Song after song is dedicated to revenge, with sex only a secondary, if still prominent, concern. The album describes living through a barrage of jealousy and condescension, with an added layer of anger directed at other rappers and former friends. On the flipside, Megan displays more vulnerability on “Anxiety” than she ever has before, letting the person behind the swagger show: “Bad bitches have bad days too,” she admits. And she dips her toes into the political on the sexually charged “Gift & a Curse,” with an all-purpose statement about women’s autonomy: “My motherfucking body, my choice.” Erickson
Pusha T, It’s Almost Dry
For his fourth album, It’s Almost Dry, Pusha once again enlisted Kanye West along with fellow Virginia native Pharrell to create a paranoiac, vacuum-sealed atmosphere. The latter’s circular piano lines and hissing snares expand on Ye’s established palette, as Push offers his pun-filled verses with a measured, hypnotic confidence—never frantic or hurried, which is ironic given the effects of the powder he fixates on. These fable-like cartel yarns are treated by the MC as absolute, stone-faced realism (though there are wisecracks aplenty, like “Cocaine’s Dr. Seuess”), which fascinatingly heightens the sense that the posturing and tall tales are concealing a vulnerability that we’re never allowed to access through all of the perfectly composed artifice. “Tennis chains to hide all my blemishes,” Push spits on “Just You Remember.” Maybe one day he’ll reveal what those are, but the intricately constructed It’s Almost Dry is still part of a now decades-long roll-out attesting to his bravado—and we’re not complaining. Lyons-Burt
Raw Poetic, Space Beyond the Solar System
Raw Poetic’s Space Beyond the Solar System suggests a lost ’70s Afrofuturist sci-fi movie score as composed by Alice Coltrane. In many ways, the Virginia-based MC’s sound is a throwback to both conscious rap and more overtly jazz-influenced hip-hop. Rather than merely sampling electric pianos and breakbeats from Blue Note records, though, collaborator Damu the Fudgemunk’s production seamlessly mixes its samples with live instrumentation. And while Raw Poetic quotes ’80s-era hip-hop acts like Run-DMC and Public Enemy, the album’s sonic vocabulary is cinematic and rhythmically sophisticated, with frequent beat switches and synth sounds lifted from the ’70s. Erickson
Vince Staples, Ramona Park Broke My Heart
Vince Staples’s music has never offered pleasure or swagger without a sting. Even his most upbeat songs are deceptive, hinting at the constant possibility of violence and the damage caused by growing up around it. Named after the Long Beach, California, neighborhood where he grew up, the rapper’s fifth studio album, Ramona Park Broke My Heart, is a little more sonically buoyant than last year’s Vince Staples, but it strips away all the braggadocio, as Staples raps in a soft, anguished tone, looking for reasons to be hopeful and explicitly acknowledging his music’s—and hip-hop’s—lineage with the blues. Erickson
Earl Sweatshirt, Sick!
Earl Sweatshirt’s Sick! grapples with the isolating experiences of living through a global pandemic and the inequities that it’s exacerbated. Exploring how isolation affects one’s mental health might seem like fertile ground for an artist as creative, idiosyncratic, and introspective as Earl, and for the most part, the album delivers on that promise. At just 10 tracks and 24 minutes long, Sick! is an intensely compressed listening experience similar to Earl’s Some Rap Songs from 2018. But whereas the latter is a dense, fragmented collage of music and speech, Earl’s fourth album is comparatively more straightforward. He brilliantly blurs together the past, present, and future throughout Sick! as he attempts to come to terms with an increasingly detached and unjust world. Thomas Bedenbaugh
Yeat, Lyfë
While hip-hop certainly provided us with plenty of colorful characters in 2022, few sounded as truly off-the-wall as the ever-eccentric Yeat did on Lyfë. Things rarely let up, starting with the incendiary opening of the red-hot “Flawlëss”—where Yeat howls out that “you don’t exist” over a barrage of ear-splitting synths and clamorous drums—and all the way to the jerky, arrhythmic “Systëm,” which swiftly strings along a bunch of nonsense phrases like “glock with the switch, with the dick, with the big old clip on the burn’.” Largely produced by BNYX of Working on Dying, a production collective that’s helped shape such cult classics as Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red and Lil Uzi Vert’s Eternal Atake, Lyfë is a dark, strange, and inebriating ride from one of the genre’s most exciting and idiosyncratic new voices. Attard
YoungBoy Never Broke Again, The Last Slimeto
YoungBoy Never Broke Again’s music has always been highly theatrical. On the one-hour-and-20-minute The Last Slimeto, his final album for Atlantic Records, the prolific Louisiana rapper reprises the styles and themes of his past work—namely melodrama marked by fatalistic romanticism and a flirtation with the specter of death—while also trying out a handful of new moves. In keeping with its title, the album plays like the end of an era. Like Playboi Carti, YoungBoy is a descendent of Southern-trap forbearers like Future and Young Thug, who each receive multiple subtle shout-outs on The Last Slimeto. More so than perhaps all three of those artists (except maybe Thug), YoungBoy is most distinguished for his bravura and tightly wound verses. Lyons-Burt
