Moments in Timelessness

  Part 3 Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2026 42 Dugg Legal issues and incarceration made for a long road to 42 Dugg’s debut album, 2024’s  4eva Us Neva Them . With that milestone behind him, the Detroit native returns to his  Young & Turnt  mixtape roots for the half-hour outing  Part 3 . As should be expected from this highly collaborative artist, he’s joined throughout by familiar faces and fresh friends, each of whom adds their own spin on the raw yet melodic sound the rapper continues to cultivate. He mourns differently with Lil Baby and Rylo Rodriguez on the chilling Luniz interpolation “ It Is What It Is ” and schemes fearlessly with longtime studio foil EST Gee on “ No Fakin .” GloRilla adds to the ever-present realness on the ruthless “ To the Side ” while G Herbo emphasizes the consequences of crossing them with “ Still on Dat .” Still, there are ample solo opportunities for Dugg here, too, with “IDB” and “Fake Friends” in particular reinforcing his c...

IT'S NOT YOU IT'S ME Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2026 Nafe Smallz

B4EM Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2026 Nine Vicious

BE MORE GRATEFUL Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2026 DaBaby Affirmations and resolutions can prove to be helpful self-empowerment tools, and DaBaby seems like one of those people. For the Charlotte rap star’s fifth proper album—his first since 2022’s  Baby on Baby 2 —he symbolically steps back into the spotlight after a tumultuous period with  BE MORE GRATEFUL . The titular attitude of gratitude permeates the proceedings here, manifesting via the erudite rap game rejoinders of “ PAPER LOW ” and the highly personal musings of “RAIN RAIN.” He opens up about his own pain on the melodic and melancholic “ WHAT ABOUT ME ” and exposes his interpersonal vulnerability amid the reflections of “MARINATING” and “MIC CHECK.” Speaking more on his own experiences, he proffers unsolicited albeit useful advice for others on “LETTER TO MY YN” and the snarky, soulful “OUT YA BUSINESS.” That said,  BE MORE GRATEFUL  is hardly some resolutely somber affair from the rapper who gave us “ ROCKSTAR ”...

OCTANE Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2026 Don Toliver Since breaking out on the Travis Scott  ASTROWORLD  highlight “ CAN’T SAY ,” Don Toliver has propelled himself into hip-hop’s mainstream with melodic stylings that willfully and efficiently blur the bounds between rap and R&B. Following the leather-clad rock star moves of his 2024 album  HARDSTONE PSYCHO , the Houston rapper returns roughly a year and a half later with an album that enhances that larger-than-life aesthetic while remaining committed to the ultramodern sound he’s spent half a decade cultivating. He opens  OCTANE  with a fuzzy, Isley Brothers -esque funk rock flair on “ E85 ,” a track that soon renews itself in a more maximalist mode. With a seemingly unstoppable energy, he catalogs romantic exploits and sexual conquests with aplomb on revved-up tracks like “Gemstone” and “Rendezvous.” Continuing the Neptunes worship from  HARDSTONE ’s hit single “ATTITUDE,” he borrows from Justin Timberlake ’...

Khaotic Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2026 Wiz Khalifa If 2025 was a victory-lap year for Wiz Khalifa, during which he celebrated the 15th anniversary of his seminal  Kush & Orange Juice  with both a reissue and a guest-heavy sequel, the seasoned lifestyle rapper had a clean slate entering into 2026 with  Khaotic . Packed with features from other notables and hitmakers in hip-hop, the roughly half-hour-long outing pushes his extravagant 420-friendly narrative signature over decidedly hard-hitting trap beats. Save for two truly solo tracks, “I Put That Shit On” and the ethereal “ La Vida ,” he’s scarcely ever on his own here, mixing it up with repeat collaborators Juicy J and 2 Chainz on “ If You Know You Know ” and “ Wit My Twin ,” respectively. Notably, RMR appears no fewer than three times, fixating on sex and success for “ Head Money Trees Clothes ” and flexing alongside a freshly freed Max B on the 808-bumping throwback “ Back Against the Wall .”

Slime Cry Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2026 YoungBoy Never Broke Again Knowing YoungBoy Never Broke Again, it wouldn’t be long into 2026 before the wildly prolific MC dropped his first project of the new year. Indeed, just 16 days into the thing, YoungBoy delivered with  Slime Cry , a 30-track epic that finds him getting ever closer to the ideal form of his diaristic, heartbreakingly honest pain rap .  Slime Cry , like most YoungBoy releases of the past few years, finds the rapper moving between shockingly vulnerable reflections on his struggles and the somewhat regular breath of fresh air where he allows himself to look back on how a broke kid from Baton Rouge hustled his way onto the Mount Rushmore of rap . “Anti-Social” represents one end of that spectrum, with YoungBoy reflecting on how the traumas of his childhood have manifested themselves in adulthood. Despite the occasional victory lap, this is a theme that appears again and again in the rapper’s music, and one that will nev...

Don't Be Dumb Album ∙ Rap ∙ 2026 A$AP Rocky When A$AP Rocky first emerged online in the early 2010s as the face and figurehead of the trendsetting Harlem collective known as the A$AP Mob , he was already primed for stardom, with model good looks, a strong curatorial eye, and a sound that drew from brolic New York street rap, DJ Screw tapes, and trippy underground electronics alike. Parlaying the hype from his acclaimed debut mixtape, 2011’s  LIVE.LOVE.A$AP , the Harlem native soon found himself in hip-hop’s upper echelons, testing the boundaries of genre and style. But for years, Rocky mostly applied his ambitions elsewhere: He embraced acting, taking on roles in 2025’s  Highest 2 Lowest  and  If I Had Legs I’d Kick You , co-chaired the 2025 Met Gala (for which he designed his own look), and meanwhile, became half of pop culture’s coolest power couple, starting a family with his partner, Rihanna . Some wondered if the fashion killa had outgrown rap entirely. His l...

everything is a lot. Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2025 Wale everything is a lot.  marks Wale’s first full-length since his 2021 album  Folarin II , titled after his nickname. While  everything is a lot.  shares some of the joyful DNA that courses through the project named after his alter ego, Wale Folarin , it showcases another side of the D.C.-born rapper’s personality—more introspective, alone, and yearning than ever before. Throughout the album, Wale works through relationship struggles while readily admitting that he’s part of (if not all of) the problem. On opener “ Conundrum ,” he notes that his heart is colder than most, before explaining why it’s this way: “My ex, I was in love with her/Passionate sex but couldn’t cuddle her/Tell me, was it lust or did I love for her?/Her clothes off, I’m closed off, which one is worse?” On “ Power and Problems ,” Wale croons over live drums and gentle keyboard chords. He implores himself to slow down, noting that life in the fast l...

Light-Years Album ∙ Rap ∙ 2025 Nas &  DJ Premier Any telling of Nas’ story would be woefully incomplete without mentioning DJ Premier. Back in the day, the esteemed Gang Starr producer laced the then-rising Queensbridge MC with three beats that made his game-changing 1994 debut,  Illmatic . That professional connection continued with placements on albums like  I Am…  and the triumphant  Stillmatic , further linking the two artists in the annals in hip-hop history. As such, the arrival of  Light-Years , fully produced by Preemo at the virtual halfway point of Nasir ’s improbable 2020s run, seems like the fulfillment of rap destiny. Naturally, these men have grown and evolved in the three decades since their first team-up. Nas’ references to crypto portfolios and Saudi investments on “ GiT Ready ” and “ Welcome to the Underground ” are exceedingly far from those found on their initial studio collaborations, a better reflection of the artist as c...

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE STREETS? Album ∙ Rap ∙ 2025 21 Savage Since breaking through with 2016’s icy  Savage Mode , a joint EP between himself and Metro Boomin , the Atlanta-based rapper has countered menace with candor, revealing his story in glimpses between scenes of cold-blooded murder and exorbitant flexing. It’s not that 21 Savage has let his guard down exactly, though on his third solo album, 2024’s  american dream , he let go of the pure nihilism of his early work to begin to open up about his family and his past. The 33-year-old rapper’s fourth album, announced just four days before its release, centers around familiar themes—chiefly, trying to make it in a bleak and cutthroat world. On “ DOG $HIT ,” featuring GloRilla , 21 makes balling out sound sinister, and on “ HA ,” he turns a supervillain laugh into a hook over a Zaytoven production straight out of the aughts (with a sample of a 2007 Gucci Mane mixtape cut for good measure). But on closing track “ I WISH ,” with...

The Leaks Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2025 Lil Baby Lil Baby’s most die-hard fans know that some of his best work never made it onto his albums. Whether shared as snippets or leaked in some form or another, several such songs have become the stuff of legend in the Quality Control Music artist’s wider catalog. Dropped auspiciously on the occasion of his 31st birthday,  The Leaks  gives many of these cuts, as well as some unexpected tracks, a proper release for the first time. In the preceding weeks, a handful of these tracks appeared in an official capacity as  Wham Wednesday  singles, including “ Otha Boy ,” “Try to Love,” and the success self-assessment “Middle of the Summer.” These and the rest of the collection take a looser approach than his better-known material while remaining representative of various stages of his career, from his exciting beginnings to his hit-making era. Songs like “Violation” and “What She Like” reflect a range of his solo stylings, though man...

Lil Herb Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2025 G Herbo When the rapper known as Lil Herb broke through in 2012 with his searing Lil Bibby duet “Kill Shit”—an instant classic in the Chicago drill canon—he was a baby-faced 16-year-old with the voice and gravitas of a grizzled veteran. Since then, G Herbo (as he’s been known since 2015) has watched the genre he helped pioneer become a worldwide juggernaut. Meanwhile, he grappled with the trauma of the lifestyle that informed his storytelling on albums like 2020’s  PTSD  and 2022’s  Survivor’s Remorse , which upped the studio gloss without sacrificing his visceral intensity. Stardom fit the former street rapper like a glove. But for his seventh album, titled after his original alias, the 30-year-old rapper felt drawn back to his past, revisiting old songs like 2015’s “Briks & Mansions” or 2017’s “ Street .” “I was just trying to tap into that stage and that era—just trying to find the hunger again,” Herbo tells Apple Music’s Ebro ...

Lil Herb (Extended) Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2025 G Herbo When the rapper known as Lil Herb broke through in 2012 with his searing Lil Bibby duet “Kill Shit”—an instant classic in the Chicago drill canon—he was a baby-faced 16-year-old with the voice and gravitas of a grizzled veteran. Since then, G Herbo (as he’s been known since 2015) has watched the genre he helped pioneer become a worldwide juggernaut. Meanwhile, he grappled with the trauma of the lifestyle that informed his storytelling on albums like 2020’s  PTSD  and 2022’s  Survivor’s Remorse , which upped the studio gloss without sacrificing his visceral intensity. Stardom fit the former street rapper like a glove. But for his seventh album, titled after his original alias, the 30-year-old rapper felt drawn back to his past, revisiting old songs like 2015’s “Briks & Mansions” or 2017’s “ Street .” “I was just trying to tap into that stage and that era—just trying to find the hunger again,” Herbo tells Apple Mu...

Still Goin the Ep Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2025 MexikoDro