Hip-hop

Khalif “Swae Lee” Brown and Aaquil “Slim Jxmmi” Brown were an unknown pair of brothers from Tupelo, Mississippi, when they caught the attention of Atlanta super producer Mike WiLL Made It. He signed the duo to his Ear Drummers label, and flipped the company’s name backwards to dub their group Rae Sremmurd. They were soon off to the races with a smash debut single, “No Flex Zone,” that was remixed by Nicki Minaj and Pusha T, and have been rubbing elbows with major stars regularly ever since. They’ve assisted on singles by Wiz Khalifa and Ty Dolla $ign and branched out into EDM with Baauer and Dillon Francis. And Swae Lee has become in demand as a writer, notching credits on songs by Gucci Mane and even Beyonce.

Click here to subscribe to the Spotify playlist.One of the greater meta-narratives in hip-hop in recent years has been the genre’s embrace of gospel music. Kanye called his album Life of Pablo a “gospel album with a whole lot of cursing” and arguably hip-hops biggest new star, Chance the Rapper, has an album that unapologetically tackles themes of spirituality. Kendrick Lamar, meanwhile, has spent his career mapping out a space for spirituality amidst inner-city carnage.While it’s kind of unusual the degree that this thematic strand has risen to the forefront, hip-hop has been flirting with the sacred for nearly its entire existence. Outkast, Tupac and Mos Def have all skirted the spaces between the sacred and the profane. The tracks compiled on this playlist aren’t “Christian rap” exactly — as with Kanye, there’s some cursing on many of them — but they all tie back to the genre’s debt to gospel music. -- Sam Chennault

Hip-hop brought black America at its most unfiltered into the mainstream like never before. And rappers have been pushing the envelope for sexual content dating back to even the genres earliest pop crossover moments. (Recall the "Rappers Delight" verse about "super sperm.") But it took some time for hip-hop to get really dirty. In the late 80s and early 90s, it was often gangsta rap pioneers like Ice-T and N.W.A. that set the bar for explicit sex talk, but it felt almost like a side effect of their penchant for breaking other taboos.Miamis 2 Live Crew became one of hip-hops first major acts to center their image on sex, and, in the process, upset the same censorship advocates that had been so focused on Prince a few years earlier, becoming unlikely champions of free speech. Throughout the early 90s, gangsta-rap albums continued to be peppered with odes to orgies and oral sex, and even relatively clean-cut acts like MC Hammer made ass-shaking anthems like "Pumps And A Bump." LL Cool J evolved from hip-hop love-song pioneer to the sex god of "Doin It." Sir Mix-A-Lots "Baby Got Back" became a pop phenomenon in part because of his cleverly cartoonish approach to sex, but, as his career continued, he got even more anatomical with songs like "Put Em On the Glass."In the mid-90s, the burgeoning hip-hop underground allowed more leeway for kinky lyrics that didnt even try to get past radio censors. Akinyele of "Put It In Your Mouth" fame dedicated his career to obscenity. Kool Keiths Dr. Octagon project became an indie-rap touchstone with a playfully absurd cocktail of sci-fi themes and sex raps. And R.A. The Rugged Mans 1994 debut album contained such perversely nasty lyrics that even the presence of rising mainstream star Notorious B.I.G. on "Cunt Renaissance" couldnt keep it from being shelved for several years.Early sex-positive female rap stars like Salt-N-Pepa gave way to X-rated pinups like Lil Kim and Foxy Brown, and in the early 2000s, Khia and Trina. By the 2010s, nearly every female rapper of note is as comfortable and unapologetic in rapping about ass and pussy as their male contemporaries, from superstars like Nicki Minaj to underground upstars like cupcakKe. Meanwhile, the rise of the Internet has reduced radios role as a gatekeeper, giving tracks like "Fuckin Problems" and "UP! (Beat the Pussy Up)" more room to thrive on the pop charts without being cleaned up for broadcast.

In the mid-90s, RZA negotiated the famous "Wu-Tang deal," where the Clan as a group were signed to Steve Rifkinds trailblazing Loud Records, but all of their solo albums would be spread out across multiple major labels, ensuring that the industry would be working for the crew, not the other way around.Raekwon was approached by Puff Daddy about signing to Bad Boy, but he chose to stay in-house with Loud Records to drop his landmark debut, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…. Puffy saw Raekwon as the perfect weapon: smooth enough to glide on R&B features—as he and Ghostface did on Jodecis "Freek‘n You" remix—and rugged enough to stomp beats like he did on Mobb Deeps "Eye for a Eye." Puffy had perfected this formula with The Notorious B.I.G., and Raekwon was a worthy choice to follow (this was before they became rivals on the infamous “Shark Biters” skit). Instead, Raekwon made the best drug-dealer album of all time, but never found the breakthrough mainstream success of Biggie or Puffy.Twenty years later, you can hear hints of Puffys vision on Raekwon’s recently released seventh solo album, The Wild. G-Eazy, Lil Wayne, CeeLo Green, Andra Day, and J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League all pop up on the record, instead of Method Man, GZA, RZA, and crew, to make sizeable waves with newer audiences. Raekwon can thrive outside of the beloved Wu-Tang sound—his freestyle over Drakes "Pound Cake" is a perfect example—and his work on recent R&B tracks by Mack Wilds, Ryan Leslie, and Faith Evans proves hes still a capable voice on lighter fare. His radical slang therapy on albums by Ghostface, Prodigy, and Statik Selektah continues to keep his razor tongue sharp.The Wild has moments like "Cant You See," “Nothing,” and "This Is What It Comes Too" that can hang with anything from Raes past work, but a stronger plan of attack mightve made the album bulletproof instead of a mixed bag. Rick Ross is a good example of a contemporary street rapper who mixes mafia-flick visuals with sax-laden R&B, all while cranking out gothic bangers. And he’s even done a thing or two with Puffy over the years.Nonetheless, Raekwon is the most active and beloved member of Wu-Tang in the industry, popping up on albums from Kanye West, French Montana, ScHoolboy Q, A$AP Mob, 2 Chainz, and Action Bronson. The Wild fails to match up to his contemporaries, but the abilities that Puffy and RZA saw twenty years ago are still evident when other people call on the Chef. This playlist pulls together the sleek and sinister works of Raekwon: R&B sprinkled with Snow Beach pullovers, crack and weed, Staten Island killers who love Gladys Knight, crushed velour tracksuits, and Moët.

Some think that Young Thugs elastic, start-stop flow and roaming, stream-of-conscious lyrics make him future of rap, while others question hes merely a Lil Wayne clone given way too much hype. Make up your mind via this excellent overview from Beats Neil Martinez-Belkin, which features early hits and guest appearances.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Long Island rapper and producer Roc Marciano hails from a late-‘90s era when thug talk was the vernacular in New York hip-hop. His sound, along with that of contemporaries such as Ka and Westside Gunn, has been described as a revival of dusty-fingered, sample-heavy, old-school boom bap. Roc Marciano was a product of Busta Rhymes’ Flipmode Squad and later formed his own group, the U.N., with help from Pete Rock.But by the time he started dazzling critics and crate-digger aesthetes with his 2011 solo debut Marcberg, his music didn’t quite resemble the rotten apple rap of the ’90s. His softly confident, matter-of-fact tone sounds like he’s speaking to you from the driver’s seat of a plush Cadillac, and he often crafts his own beats using drums sparingly, resulting in music with a spacey, opiate-like haze. It’s boom bap 3.0, filtered through the weed-crusted psychedelic influence of beatmasters like Madlib and The Alchemist, both of whom he’s worked with; in particular, with The Alchemist on the one-off project Greneberg.But if his friend Ka is the Brooklyn clocker-turned-basement mystic, then Roc Marciano is the OG braggart teaching grasshoppers about real hustlers. He lays out the game in vivid detail on his latest album, the revelatory Rosebudd’s Revenge, a title that pays homage to the totem of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. The lyrics are full of pimps, big booty girls, and fine threads, but more important is the aura he projects—this is music that transports you to a film in your mind, whether it resembles Super Fly or something else entirely.The selections on this playlist include tracks from his three solo albums and mixtapes like The Pimpire Strikes Back, plus cameos like last year’s appearance on De La Soul’s And the Anonymous Nobody.

Psychedelic music emerged in the mid-60s as a mutant offspring of the British Invasion and American garage rock, but has since morphed into so many different forms that it is more accurate to describe it as a feeling than a sound. Be it the the brain-melting feedback of Jimi Hendrix or Ty Segall, the dreamy reveries of Spiritualized and Tame Impala, or the heady, head-nodding beats of Flying Lotus and J Dilla, psychedelica is hard to pin down—but you’ll know you’re hearing it when you feel your mind altering. Heres our curated guide to the best head music to help you chase the rush, including our genre-spanning psych playlist (at right) and links to past Dowsers mixes for even deeper trips.

PSYCH RAPPsychedelic music has drifted into every form of music, and since any worthwhile hip-hop producer keeps their ears open, its only natural that it’s became part of the mix. Revered producers J Dilla and Madlib have made hip-hop tracks that oozed with so much mood and shimmer that they didnt even need MCs to rewire the listeners brain, while the genre’s heady offshoot, trip-hop, has been obliterating genre lines and listeners’ minds for more than two decades.Recommended Listening:Great (Post-Donuts) Instrumental Hip-Hop TracksBehind the Beats: Madlib and DillaBest Trip-Hop Tracks

PSYCH FUNKPsychedelic music has traditionally been used as a way to explore the inner workings of your mind. But if you take off the headphones, its also a great way to explore your body on the dance floor. Soul, funk and R&B have a long tradition of making music that rocks the hips and the third eye at the same time, from Eddie Hazels righteous riffing on Funkadelic’s Cosmic Slop to Dâm-Funks alien synth-funk bangers.Recommended Listening:A Deeper Shade of Psych SoulThe Afrofuturist Impulse in MusicInto the Nite: Synth-Funk Fantasias

PSYCH JAZZAt its mid-’60s moment of origin, psychedelia immediately found a natural host in jazz. After all, both are concerned with evoking a feeling and a mood, and following inspiration wherever it leads—from the spiritually searching compositions of Alice Coltrane to Mulatu Astatke’ slippery Latin-flavored explorations to Flying Lotus dedication to feeding brains with jazz-damaged trance whispers.Recommended Listening:The Black Experimental Music MixtapeChampions of Ethiopian GrooveThe Best of Brainfeeder

PSYCH-TRONICAWhy settle for rocking minds and rocking bodies when you can do both at once? From the Chemical Brothers to Neon Indian to Boards of Canada, many of the most cutting-edge electronic-music producers spend equal amounts of time focussing on booming beats as well as keyboard lines, sine moans, and digital gurgles designed to tickle the mind. And if you need to rest after a night out, theres plenty of trippy ambient chillout tracks for that as well.Recommended Listening:Essential Acid House TraxThe Art of Psychedelic Disco-RockThe Best Electronic Shoegaze

INDIE PSYCHPsychedelia never dies, it just keeps getting weirder. Animal Collective threw down the gauntlet with 2004’s Sung Tongs, their childlike, free-spirited update of psych rock, and a generation of indie artists have taken up the challenge. From Deerhunters fearsome ambient punk to Zombys scrambled dubstep to Ariel Pinks wounded daydreams, the youngest generation continues to push music inward.Recommended Listening:Animal Collective’s Outer LimitsDreamy Noise Sounds: The Best of Kranky RecordsNew Tropics: The Modern Los Angeles Underground

PSYCH ROCKWhen rock first got psychedelic in the 60s, the most obvious proponents were self-professed freaks like Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa. But nearly everywhere you looked, you could find someone trying to access their inner mind via some radical noise, from cult acts like Love and The Fugs to icons like The Beatles and Pink Floyd. Since then, every generation since has found their own way to look inside, from the Dream Syndicate in the ’80s, to Slowdive in the ’90s, to My Morning Jacket in the 21st century.Recommended Listening:Bad Trips: The Dark Side of the ‘60sSpace Rock: A Cosmic JourneyHow Psychedelia Reclaimed Modern Rock

PSYCH FOLKIn the beginning, psychedelic music was associated with guitar gods like Jimi Hendrix and waves of feedback. But that big bang was soon followed by generations of artists—from 60s Greenwich Village folkie Karen Dalton to Bert Jansch and his 70s British folk group Pentangle to modern dreamweavers like Devendra Banhart— who used acoustic guitars, pared-down arrangements, and dexterously plucked melodies to pull the listener into their headspace without the need for amplification.Recommended Listening:Way Past Pleasant: A Guide to Psychedelic FolkReligion, Rock, and LSD: A Brief History of Jesus Freaks

PSYCH PUNKThe common myth about punk is that it formed in opposition to bloated 70s rock, and rejected Pink Floyd and anything associated with psychedelia. But the truth is that plenty of punks, such as restless hardcore purveyors Black Flag and volatile noiseniks the Butthole Surfers, not to mention punk-adjacent acts like the Jesus & Mary Chain and Dinosaur Jr., looked back to the ‘60s when deciding how to expand their sound and beguile their fans.Recommended Listening:When Punk Got WeirdPsychedelia in the ‘80sThe 50 Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time

Launched in September 2015 by Snoop Dogg and marketing entrepreneur Ted Chung, Merry Jane is a site that focuses on cannabis culture. One of its regular features is a Spotify playlist called “Takeover.” Earlier this May, Run the Jewels curated a collection of tracks for it that includes their own songs, other New York rappers like Your Old Droog, late-’60s garage rock savants The Shaggs, current garage punk faves White Reaper, and mysterious R&B singer H.E.R.It’s mostly rap, and lots of it—124 tracks to be exact—and its theme is hard to discern; it comes off as a data dump of whatever’s been percolating on El-P and Killer Mike’s hard drives (or, perhaps more accurately, streaming service accounts). Unfortunately, Patrick Lyons’ accompanying Q&A doesn’t go into how El and Mike selected the tracks for their list.With such a large and unwieldy buffet to explore, it may be best to head toward the more exotic fare. St. Louis rapper Tef Poe, buzzy Canadians like Ebhoni and VNCHY, and Chicago rapper Lud Foe are just a few to start with. But if you’re just looking for a good banger like Danny Brown’s “Really Doe,” well, there’s that too.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

Gangsta rap is supposed to be all about bravado and bluster -- a fantastical playground of platinum-plated pistols, barely dressed women and John Woo worthy shootouts. Houston emcee Scarface provides a dose of realism to the genre with his finely detailed narratives of guilt-ridden murderers, sorrowful drug dealers and disposed "civilians." First as a member of the Geto Boys and then throughout a lengthy solo career, Scarface is one of the Souths most respected and enduring lyricist. For a 2013 Complex feature, he picked his favorite tracks from his extensive. Its a comprehensive playlist that covers hits such as "My Block" or "Mind Playin Tricks," but also dips into deep catalog picks such as the excellent "A Minute to Pray and a Second to Die," a stand-out song from his debut that hinted at the narrative nimbleness and moral complexity that would become his calling card.

Whether on his own, or one half of the legendary 90s NYC rap crew Heltah Skeltah, recently deceased rapper Sean Price was always one of the grimiest, obscene and aggressive rappers in the game. But there was also a sense of humility and depreciation, especially durig the second half of his career. On "Hearing Aid" from his standout solo album Jesus Price Superstar , he quipped that hes a "broke rapper thatll spit for a G," and provides a quick auto-biography: "I started, out broke but then I made a little change/ And blew it all my money on a damn dice game." And, in terms of old-school rappers who were long written off before making an unexpected comeback, he resembles MF DOOM. But as where DOOM trades off an esoteric persona and dense, nearly inscrutable lyrics, Price is the approachable, nice-unless-your-not perennial underdog. I met him a couple of times during various Duck Down events. He was always very nice and quite twisted. Once at SXSW, when I was working for Rhapsody, we shooting an "On the Record" video series where we asked various musicians to discuss their favorite albums in 45 seconds, with a timer displaying on the side of the screen. Most musicians wanted to go over, and we had a buzzer that we would press, which would frequently startle them (I once almost got shot backstage at a Wu Tang concert when said buzzer accidentally went off during a tense moment at 3am). But Price picked Redmans Muddy Waters as his album, and he only talked about it for 25 seconds. I told him that he had about twenty more seconds to go. He added a couple of things and then just out on his mean mug and silently stared at the camera. You can watch it here.