Image via Lil Xelly/Instagram
Steven Louis is afraid of audiobooks.
Lil Xelly – WTSC
Marcell Hebron was stolen from the world last Friday, reportedly the victim of a double homicide in Maryland’s Montgomery County. But the rapper and the feeling we know as Lil Xelly is inextinguishable. He went guts-out and grind-mode to ensure it. Despite a sedate and aloof flow, Xelly was unparalleled in his prolificness. He broke out nationally with a 105-track mixtape in 2017, then dropped at least two projects per month for the next several years. This was neither a rap-tech gimmick nor mass A/B content testing, just tunnel-visioned experimentation from a relentless and curious being. Xelly’s product was often featureless, but always daring and eminently listenable. He painted in grays, silvers, greens and purples, evoking a 2000s DatPiff pathos but staying present enough to drop Real Ball Knower names like Bojan Bogdanovic and Devin Duvernay.
Xelly seemed fully comfortable with who he was. One tape was named after The X-Files. Another was stylized like Doggystyle. He had a series of Final Fantasy drops, and languidly cut the plug talk with sad-boy emoticons. He welcomed extraterrestrial existence, then wondered aloud how it would affect the wholesale price of the P. Xelly put out seven projects in 2024, serving a solo effort called WTSC in December. It deserves to be bumped all year, nine tracks across 18 minutes that sublimate and paralyze its listener. “Dou” is analgesic Nuevo Flamenco. “P Side” summons a crowdedness in the cosmos. “HMW” is hypnotic and cold, its loop closed only by formality. Across his galactic discography, it felt like Xelly wanted to float without boundary — each miniature dreamscape bending into the next, truncated only by the Malthusianism of serving product.
To listen to Lil Xelly was to hop in the elevator, light up every last button and then shrug as it glided off the cables into liminality. His music is deranged and swaggy and hard to pin down. It reflects the past eight years of culture while sounding unmoored from time. “Woke up on the other side, I’mma stay there,” he raps on “Blu.” Those still sleepwalking on this side will miss his presence.
Mac Miller – “Do You Have A Destination?”
The second posthumous album released by Mac Miller’s estate is a creative companion to Faces — his 2014 dismantling of a teenage star’s psychic apparatus. Balloonerism rips for the same reasons: its searing gasps for clarity folded into abstract bacchanalia and Thundercat-gilded jazz corridor pacing. “Do You Have A Destination?” is a bit of everything Mac was good at. We feel the chamberized drums and cavernous wailing. We laugh at the idea of his girl waking up from a feverish nightmare to dutifully pour his bowl of cereal. “Where are you going” is neither a question nor an imperative, but a gentle anchor-drop from the unfurling hallucination. Much like Xelly’s best work, disclosure of location was never really possible.
Ralfy the Plug – “Long Live the Mac”
Ralfy’s at home, counting money and lamenting how the good die young. That saying is trite, sure, but the Stinc Team has already been subjected to every misappropriation of fate known to the western world, so let’s rock with it for now. Drakeo has been hovering, thunderously laughing at those mortal jabronis and imparting the eternal secrets of flu-flamming. Ketchy’s been watching as well, spilling mud and garlic butter from the great beyond.
But now Sayso’s up there — God dammit — and he’s serving as something of a Stinc Team mack game coordinator, headset and play sheet and everything. Ralfy’s official tribute finds him channeling Sayso’s velvet outlandishness, while also getting real. “If the drugs took your homie, how you gon get your get back?” The video ends with 2021 show footage and an old interview. It reminds me of something Sayso told me, not long ago, for this site:
“The internet is a weird thing. I can still see my friends moving and dancing and rapping in the song right next to me. And when I see it, the emotions that get released from my brain, it’s f*cking crazy.”
Frak & Passwurdz – “Airplane Mode”
With seemingly everyone else hauling out of Oakland, Pass and Frak pick up the moving truck just to cruise around and bar out. The former reads Voltaire while whipping his wrist; the latter recalls the CIA-backed coup of Iran. Suhail’s production is glimmering and glitchy, woozy yet deceptively fast at cruising altitude. This is 90-second music to scheme to, fighting forced relocation by every possible mode of transportation.
BabyTron – “Yew!”
Serves us all right, hopping on the Detroit Lions bandwagon for the first time since Gerald Ford lost that battle at The Shelter. At this point, it’s fair to assume BabyTron is just running a gauntlet of the highest-difficulty rap beats imaginable. “Yew!” whips us through Chinatown, incrementally shape-shifting across four-syllable schemes to arrive at a kilo of Crab Rangoon. The Bob Cousy drop by someone not contractually obliged to make one at The Ringer! The plug that’s always there when you call, and always on time! The rapper who was a dog in a previous life that now consists on Tris and Pedialyte! Big Mass’ beat is a torture chamber in less-capable hands, of which there are so very many.
stoneda5th – “Through Da Cottonwoods”
Moreno Valley’s stoneda5th does something remarkable — he fashions a banger from “Dead and Gone,” the Timberlake-addled nadir of T.I.’s late-aughts commercial run. Laudiano is truly the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of California sample beats. Stone has been building hype off a croaking, skeletal minimalism for a few years now, but here, he breaks midway into the vocal register of a panicked escapee. “I see death inside the mirror, gotta watch the way I live,” he concedes, before cracking another seal and coordinating another skit. Few rappers are as matter-of-fact outside with it. Moreno’s Cottonwood has both low-income housing and a USGA-rated golf course. Stoneda5th gives us the tour, and he’s thoroughly unamused.
Jayp – “Georgia peach” (feat. Scando The Darklord & 1100 Himself)
In which Scando and Jayp liken themselves to Abbott and Costello in the grooviest manner. It doesn’t matter who is on first or what is on second when there are hotties doing butt-shake dances right in front of us. Did you realize that Havana, Atlanta and Savannah all rhyme? 1100 faces a blunt in the corner. You wouldn’t even believe who he got busy with at Pismo Beach. Jayp is a flocker first and travel agent second. He and Scando also host Nef The Pharaoh and ALLBLACK on their collaborative 707 2 Da 253.
