September in Singles: Experimental Hip-hop

1. “Evil World,” Bladee, Yung Lean

“Evil World” has this ill, silky sound that contrasts with Yung Lean’s rock-derivative Jonatan (2025) and the rage beats on Bladee’s Cold Visions (2024). A disorienting, droning pad melodizes while a techno lead repeats in intervals of double sixteenth notes. Lean raps in the background in syncopation with the lead, his voice faint and hazy. A lead downbeat comes in accented, and Bladee starts his verse. His lyrics, delivered with a controlled, deep, and somber voice, express Nietzschean anguish; he laments the human body and physical pain as the only mediums of his existence, that “[he feels] nothing but terror in his chest,” that “there is no soul, just a carcass” (“carcass” is harshly whispered), and that “there’s no escaping this prison that is flesh.” Bladee’s despair extends from the individual human condition to the world and society; after asserting “this world is [EXPLETIVE]-ed,” Bladee almost directly echoes Nietzsche, declaring “your God is dust.” Bladee’s lyrics visualize this Nietzschean, “evil” world, where God is dead and the human body, and the agony of its limitations, are the only modes of being. This world sets the stage for Lean’s lyrics, which are less philosophically abstract than Bladee’s. Lean laments on his bodily, carnal impulses: he utters “daylight fade to black, spirits and lust” and rhymes “money, sex, lust” with “blood rush.” Lean raps his last verse with the syncopated flow and lyrics he used in the track’s intro, repeating “Sucker punched by fate / Drunk love hate.” In Bladee’s Godless world, Lean’s id takes over; he lets his surroundings, “fate,” control his life while acting on his compulsive urges: sex, alcohol, and violence.

2. “Starburst,” Danny Brown

The opening to “Starburst,” the lead single for Danny Brown’s upcoming album Stardust (2025), maintains the usual bravado found in Brown’s music: a spacey, percussive lead descends in pitch, and Brown hollers frenzied raps over fast kicks. But after a sling of fast-paced bars referencing everything from N64 games to O.J., the lead stops and Brown starts repeating “I gotta jump, hey-yo,” in a glitchy, raised voice accompanied by fast percussion. Accelerating techno leads start accenting the percussion as the track transitions from a catchy rap showpiece to a sort of avant-garde display of experimentation; Brown seemingly recognizes this, declaring “my art form remarkable.” As Brown raps, a plucked synth replaces the lead, harsh 808s rage, and “yeah” and “uh-huh” falsetto ad-libs boom in the background. Then, the techno lead returns along with piercing sirens. After Brown finishes his verse, more, faster “I gotta jump, hey-yo”-’s repeat over an airy pad, followed by a quick lead outburst. Claps and “hey-yo”-’s accent the lead until it stops; then, past Brown collaborator and one-half of hyperpop duo Frost Children Angel Emoji starts monologuing as subtle EDM chords play. Angel contemplates being “drunk with stardust,” a state of raw, uninhibited artistic production and creation where “we chase silence out of our world, ‘til Gabriel blew his horn.” It’s the high of “a carnivore spirit,” a hyperawareness that helps its users recognize “the minutiae of the world’s beauty,” the subtleties of everyday life. Her monologue recontextualizes Brown’s bombastic performance at the start of the track as that stardust high, upscaling his synthesis of hyperpop and trap from typical rapper self-indulgence to a proactive means of perceiving the world and proliferating it with art. Angel’s monologue feels more like a voiceover to a SoHo gallery video installation than an outro to a rap single. With “Starburst,” Brown uses hip-hop sensibilities to fashion himself as a modernist trailblazer: the type of creative just as likely to be featured at the Whitney Biennial as he is to drop a hit on SoundCloud.