2025 is Lefty Gunplay’s moment. Recently released from prison and benefiting from the huge exposure brought by his appearance on Kendrick’s “GNX” album, he releases his highest-profile project yet, in collaboration with JasonMartin. In the end, though, it amounts mostly to routine West Coast rap — but a few gems suggest that the Baldwin Park rapper could do much better.
Still unknown a year earlier, ABGR Lil Cory – the rapper from Hattiesburg, Mississippi – releases his debut album, following the success of the single “Old School.” And with this exhilarating release, with its naïve and infectious melodies about money, jewelry, and his hard grind in the kitchen, it brings an entire era rushing back to us: the blessed days of Gucci Mane’s late-2000s run.
DJ Drama is a fantastic curator. On his “Gangsta Grillz” mixtapes, he invites rappers to be fully themselves, right down to cliché and formula, in order to better extract the very essence of their art. And he succeeds once again, even at this late stage in his career, when he teams up for a second time with G Perico and elevates the South Central rapper’s highly referential West Coast style.
Flagboy Giz is a member of the Wild Tchoupitoulas, a group that has been enlivening New Orleans carnivals for decades while dressed in Native American regalia. Fifty years after his band worked with The Meters and the Neville Brothers, he delivers this Mardi Gras-flavored rap album. In doing so, he highlights the continuity of Louisiana music across genres and generations.
Signed to Fat Possum and heard during Kendrick’s Super Bowl performance, Ghais Guevara is enjoying a major moment in 2025. But the Philadelphia native remains what he’s been since “BlackBolshevik”, his breakout release : a committed, politically engaged rapper. His latest album is a critique of rap-as-spectacle, even if, and thankfully so, Ghais Guevara also takes part in it.
Of the four books we have published, “Independent Rap” is the most personal and the most substantial. Originally published in 2014, this work is the culmination of fifteen years spent exploring in minute detail the underground movement that, on the fringes of mainstream hip-hop, made a name for itself in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 2025, it is reissued in a revised and expanded edition.
With El-P, Cage finds a framework for his broken-man rap. The rapper who could have been Eminem instead of Eminem gets backing from some of the underground’s leading producers, tempering his provocations with confessions about his shattered childhood. “Hell’s Winter” is the most balanced album by a man who is anything but, and one of the finest releases on Def Jux.
One half of Mobb Deep, then serving time in prison, tells his life story. This autobiography is an account of the usual sex, drugs & rock ’n’ roll antics, transposed to the world of rap, with the same New York streets depicted in the duo’s lyrics as its backdrop. But it also explains how family heritage and a nasty genetic disease shaped Albert Johnson — how they created Prodigy, the rapper.
While Slug talks about his romantic troubles, opens up about his attachment to his family, his distrust of big business, and the everyday realities of life as an artist, Ant outdoes himself on production. Atmosphere did not become one of indie rap’s most iconic groups for nothing: they have released other outstanding albums. But this one may well be their most accomplished.
“Get Rich Or Die Tryin'” is one of the greatest successes in the history of rap, and of course, a milestone in the evolution of this music. With 50 Cent’s triumph, the gangsta register asserts itself ever more firmly as the heart of hip-hop, and blockbusters break free from regional formulas, drawing on whatever works best. Here, we truly enter the rap of the new century.
This third album is often regarded as Beanie Sigel’s masterpiece. On this blockbuster from Roc-A-Fella’s glory years, released while he was behind bars, the Philadelphia rapper – caught up by the criminal life he had been living – draws on the fury of a street hustler, the pride of a man who made it out, and the melancholy of a bad boy unable to escape the pull of the ghetto.
By the mid-2000s, Lil Wayne is on fire. He proves it everywhere: on albums, on mixtapes, and through his countless guest appearances on other artists’ tracks. And he proves it again on this project with his mentor and surrogate father. Together, striking their bargain-bin mobster poses, the two New Orleans rappers stick to the act they know best, and they churn out hit after hit.