Image via Paco Panama/Instagram
Steven Louis is a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Illmac – “Frown”
Gratuitous 2025 Resolution: five sets of 100 frowns a day, scowl intervals and skulk training
Welcome back, valued Rap-Up readers! It’s a new year, a new us, and we’re going to get in the best shape of our lives. How, you ask? Los Angeles by Portland’s Illmac will explain.
“It takes more muscles to frown, now I’m gettin’ big” is a banger of a hook, but don’t mistake catchiness for frivolity. This is important — if we adopt this thinking, we can become the strongest and healthiest readership in the game. Comrades, we can build tone and muscle off finding Travis Scott insufferable. We can lose weight while languishing under private equity and rotting sulfur.
Chase Moore’s beat walks its writer down like a patient southpaw, creating something of a rose-colored funhouse for us to wander through. Illmac’s sick — pet allergies, or, hair of the dog — but he’s blowing his 64-cent royalty check as soon as he bounces back. Is that monthly charge an overdraft or a subscription? Is that dandelion wisps or designer ashes?
“Frown” is clever and eminently approachable. It’s ankle weight music for whatever banalities the next 12 months bring.
Paco Panama – “Paintman (Player Side)”
Gratuitous 2025 Resolution: if the frown routine doesn’t work, try Paco Panama’s crack diet
This is what it would’ve sounded like if Phil Jackson gave Shaquille O’Neal a kilo and a burner phone, instead of Siddhartha and Devean George.
D.C.’s Paco Panama makes upside-down empty hallway joints. The opener to his latest full-length (very full, at 32 songs and 81 minutes) is both sedative and eerie. It’s cold nostalgia for the growling of old fiends, the snapping of rubber bands, the whirring of the old Rolls Royce.
Coltcaine’s production fashions closed loops in glowing shades of gray. Paco will thank him profusely in his People’s Choice Awards opening monologue. The Southside Birdman has never seen you nor I in the field, and he doesn’t sound insulted or even disappointed — just mildly unamused by all the amateurism surrounding him. Even as Paco’s flow feels a half-step behind the beat, the delivery is full, thorough and complete. “Paintman” is the sound of birds flying south for the winter.
Big Sad 1900 – “Heard The Rumors”
Gratuitous 2025 Resolution: stop scrolling Instagram when off the drugs
Sad has been one of Los Angeles’ most reliable rappers of the post-Pandemic Era, and last quarter’s 1937 South Corning St. felt like a coronating moment — billboards around the city, a single about eating lobster, etc. He dropped the deluxe to tip off 2025, and “Heard the Rumors” feels like the instant standout of the new tracks. “If the police take me out this b—-, it’d be a cold march,” he cracks, conjuring an abolitionist rally with seal-crackers in Moncler puffers.
In my opinion, rap criticism is far too eager to lend words like “confessional” or “candid” to music that’s either Rod Wave macabre or NLE Choppa horny. Big Sad isn’t wailing into the upper register, and he’s not name-dropping opps. Quite the opposite — he prays for Lil Rabb and Tiny Strange, and laments the fact that his homie’s phone is now state evidence. Mike Made the 808s produces with Victorian brushstrokes.
After a particularly disrespectful exchange across Instagram last year, Big Sad officially clears the air:
“Ain’t no beef with Ralfy, ain’t no beef with the Stinc Team / reacted to some comments, said some things that I ain’t mean / really I get moody off the Percs and when I drink lean / they wanna discredit the Ruler, he did some great things.”
It’s commendable, if not a bit humorous. And it’s the hardest kind of straightforwardness — no explosive revelation or dramatic reveal, just a man reconciling with mundane imperfections.
Lil Baby – “Dum, Dumb, and Dumber” (feat. Young Thug & Future)
Gratuitous 2025 Resolution: appreciate every new Thugger drop
This is largely replacement-level Atlanta rap for NBA arenas and TNT interstitials. Get your sync credits, Wheezy. I do appreciate Baby saying he has OCD. A collabo with Howie Mandel would go a long way in destigmatization. Future also lights up the FreeBandz Bingo Board — check off “bean,” “syrup,” “codeine,” “Celine” and “princess cut.”
Why are we here? For Young Thug, of course. After emerging from the longest criminal trial in Georgia’s history, our protagonist laughs about how he didn’t actually feel locked up, “for real for real.” He jumps from the penitentiary to the matte black Cullinan, and swears off American women for the foreseeable future. “Pocket full of grandparents” is an incredible way to talk about having money. We’re so very back.
Lil Bro PushazInk & Gotdamnitdupri – “Make Sense”
Gratuitous 2025 Resolution: attend more banquets
No one does more with minor key saxophone runs than Dupri, one of LA’s best and most ambitious beatmakers of the last half-decade. Lil Bro PushazInk has a Dougie flow and a kinetic energy between the bass thumps. He raps about black-tie casino payouts and shaking butts that makes the Richter Scale jump, while showing a heartened sympathy for American immigrants. “Got some habits I ain’t proud of so I gotta change ‘em.” New Year, new us, Bro.
