Month: October 2021

Rapper YoungBoy Never Broke Again made history with the release of his latest studio album Sincerely, Kentrell, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts this week. The 21-year-old music superstar dethroned Drake, who sat strong at #1 with Certified Lover Boy for three weeks, and he became just the third rapper ever to release a #1 album from behind bars, joining Tupac Shakur and Lil Wayne in that category. 

The second-week sales projections have officially arrived for YoungBoy Never Broke Again, and while it looks like he will lose his #1 position and slide a few spots down in the rankings, he’s still expected to finish with some very strong numbers.

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Sincerely, Kentrell is presently set to move approximately 60,000 album units in its second week, moving down to #4 on the charts. Taylor Swift will likely lock down the top spot, selling 155,000 equivalent album units of Fearless (Taylor’s Version), with much of those numbers coming from pure sales. Drake is projected to be at #2 with 110,000 sales, and Meek Mill will debut at #3 on the charts with his new album Expensive Pain, which is projected to move 89,000 units. 

Rounding out the top 5, Lil Nas X’s MONTERO seemingly is guaranteed to be at #5 next week. Kanye West is expected to slide to #7 with DONDA.

What do you think of everyone’s sales figures for next week? Is this a win or a loss for YoungBoy?

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On October 8, 2019, City Girls rapper JT was released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Florida, and transferred to a halfway house in Atlanta. While she officially remained in federal custody until March 2020, her release from prison in 2019 allowed her to finally experience City Girls’ newfound popularity firsthand, and to celebrate her freedom, JT followed in the storied Hip-Hop tradition of releasing a “First Day Out” freestyle.

JT’s “First Day Out” started off strong with the lines, “When I was countin’ down, these bitches counted me out (Yeah)/Now I’m back, I got ’em shocked, these bitches droppin’ they mouth.” The freestyle also featured some background on her legal struggles, as she rapped, “Went in the same day Drake dropped ‘In My Feelings’/I was in prison on my bunk, really in my feelings.”

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Two years after its release, JT’s “First Day Out” has garnered over 6.1 million views on YouTube alone, but according to JT, her huge solo single is surprisingly not one of her favorites. 

“Y’all I did not like my first day out cause I literally had to put what I wrote on a beat I never heard in the first hours I was out,” JT recounts, remembering how rushed the creation of her “First Day Out” was. “I felt like it wasn’t perfect or in pocket, that’s why I don’t talk about it much.”

Revisit JT’s “First Day Out” below and let us know if you were feeling it when it first dropped two years ago.

From the time Baby Keem dropped Die For My B*tch back in 2019, it has been clear that the 20-year-old rapper is ascending to stardom. 

With the success of singles like “Orange Soda” and “Rockstar P,” as well as Keem’s family ties with Kendrick Lamar (the two LA rappers are cousins), Keem has been on an upward trajectory for a minute now and the last month has served as a culmination of many steps forward. 

Releasing his debut album, The Melodic Blue on Septmber 10, Keem secured a top-five Billboard Top 200 record and with the viral successes of Lamar-assisted records “family ties” and “range brothers,” the young rapper has exploded onto the scene in a major way. Not just because of the buzz surrounding him, but because of the music. 

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Where “family ties,” “range brothers” and “durag activity” featuring Travis Scott may have introduced fans to Keem and The Melodic Blue, album cuts like “issues,” “first order of business” and “lost souls” featuring Brent Faiyaz have given a window into a more introspective, more melodic, more musical version of Baby Keem. 

And on the 2021 BET Hip Hop Awards red carpet, The Melodic Blue rapper revealed that is a path he is going to continue down. 

Acknowledging that he just dropped and is taking some time to himself, Keem ensured fans that he would be back in the lab soon. 

“Right now, I’m on a little mental break right now. Just having some fun to myself, you know,” the “16” rapper said. “(I’m) experiencing the world. But we going back in and we gon’ work on some new shit. New, personal, humble beginnings in the music. Tapping into what growing up was like. It’s going to be very personal.”

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Certainly an exciting message, it is no surprise that more personal records are on the way. The way Keem can transition from brash lyrics and instrumentals to real storytelling over smoother beats, a shift towards more personal music is inevitable. In both the music video and Tonight Show performance of “issues” Keem takes on a much more stoic persona and it fits like a glove. His songwriting and ability to bend his voice to perfectly fit the environment of the record is impressive and lends a hand to creating introspective music. 

When we will hear any of this new, personal music is yet to be seen but Keem said he and his team would be going back in so for now it’s fingers crossed that the rising star will bless us with more music sooner rather than later. 

In the meantime, keep spinning The Melodic Blue and let us know what you think of this Baby Keem shift down in the comments. 

Legendary rapper Snoop Dogg found himself in a terrifying situation this week after getting into a car crash while driving in the rain, showing the damages to his vehicle in a video posted on Instagram.

“Crashed in the rain. Y’all b careful on them [streets],” wrote Snoop as his caption, flipping the camera to show the damage to his rims. While it’s not entirely clear what happened to cause the accident, it’s likely that Snoop hydro-planed and ended up with messed-up rims as a result. It’s also unclear if this was a single-car accident, or if another driver was involved.

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The rapper has earned support from many of his peers, including Anderson .Paak, DJ Clue, Jay 305, and others, who all commented on the post. Shortly after making his initial post, Snoop assured fans that he was safe, sharing another picture with his other cars, which remain in perfect condition. “Bac up n moving,” he wrote.

It doesn’t rain often in Los Angeles, but when it does, it’s usually best to avoid the roads. It can get pretty dangerous and slippery. We’re glad that Snoop Dogg is alright, and that his vehicle damages aren’t more serious.

Check out his posts below.

When Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine and Benny the Butcher team up on any sort of Griselda project, they give us some of the hardest rap music we’ve heard in the decade. When Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine and Benny the Butcher are on their solo waves, the spectrum of their offerings broadens immensely. 

Gunn is into expensive art and high fashion, Conway spits with the ferocity of a whole pack of lions and gives us arguably the best raps out the eastside Buffalo collective and Benny does it all.

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Always rocking designer and telling stories of his time in the streets and his time after the streets, Benny has veered out of the rap exclusive lane and has really focused on visual storytelling. Music videos remain the most common medium for this but, like with Boosie Badazz’ recent film My Struggle, Benny has also gotten into movies. 

Releasing Conflicted earlier this year, the Tana Talk rapper dove into the gritty Buffalo streets and turned his raps into a full-length movie. And according to the Butcher himself, there’s another full-length movie on the way. 

In a Balenciaga all-over print sweater and his customary Roc Nation paper plane lid, Benny took some time while walking the BET Hip-Hop Awards red carpet to talk about his upcoming movie. 

“I’m working on a new movie,” Benny told red carpet cameras. “It’s a movie that I wrote. I produced it. I got a couple of y’all favorite actors in it. About to start shooting real soon so we can get it out.” 

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Despite not revealing who those specific actors are, it seems that there are going to be some pretty big names in The Butcher’s upcoming movie. Conflicted saw the likes of Gunn and Michael Rapaport, who are already big names in their own regard, so it will be interesting to see who Benny tops those two with. 

Few details about the new movie have been revealed but based on the subject matter of mostly everything Benny does, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that we will see some of our favorite actors transported into the Buffalo underworld and will get to see how they handle situations The Butcher saw in real life. 

As Benny said, the film has yet to be shot, so it shouldn’t be expected that we’ll be seeing this new movie any time soon but we all know about the prolific Griselda work ethic so it wouldn’t be surprising to get some sort of glimpse at the project before too long. Either way, Benny’s revelation that he’s back working on movies is an exciting one and whenever more information surfaces, be sure to check back here for those updates.

In the meantime, let us know in the comments if you caught Benny’s last movie Conflicted and if you’ll be checking for this new film whenever it comes out.