Moments in Timelessness

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...