Issa Rae Reveals The Rappers That Helped Write Music For Her Upcoming HBO Max Show, ‘Rap Sh!t’

Later this week, Issa Rae will begin the next chapter of her career as her new show Rap Sh!t will premiere on HBO Max. The show follows two Miami-based rappers who are seeking success in the music industry. The first season of Rap Sh!t, which stars Aida Osman and KaMillion, will put forth eight episodes in total, with the first two arriving on July 21. In addition to work from Rae behind the scenes, Rap Sh!t also features contributions from a number of people in the music industry. During a recent interview on Late Night With Seth Meyers, Rae spoke about some of them.

During their conversation, Meyers asked Rae how she was able to have authentic rap lyrics and songs on the show. She revealed that there were artists in the music world present in the show’s writers’ room to help craft the songs. Rae said that she was able to “employ some of my favorite rap artists” like PineappleCITI, Ncognita, and Dreezy to construct songs for the show. Rae also noted that she is “really proud of the music on the show.”

In addition to the aforementioned artists, City Girls’ JT and Yung Miami will serve as executive producers on the show while Devonte Hynes, also known as Blood Orange, is the show’s music composer.

Find Rae’s full sit-down on Late Night With Seth Meyers in the video above.

Issa Rae’s ‘Rap Sh!t’ Takes On The Double Standard For Female Rappers In Its Official Trailer

After previewing her upcoming HBO Max series Rap Sh!t with a twerk-tastic teaser, Issa Rae finally shared the official trailer today, revealing more detail about the show’s plot. While previous descriptions had the show sounding like an unofficial City Girls biography (they’re listed as executive producers), the series will actually address the fractious dichotomy facing women who pursue careers in rap.

The narrative follows two estranged high school friends from Miami, Mia and Shawna, as they reunite and form a rap duo. However, there’s friction within their ranks as Shawna (comedian Aida Osman) dreams of making it as a more socially-conscious rapper, lamenting the industry’s expectations of booty-baring and rump-shaking for women in hip-hop (as one observer puts it in the trailer, “Just say you want to be Queen Latifah!”). Meanwhile, the more freewheeling Mia (Love and Hip Hop: Miami star KaMillion) is a single mother willing to do whatever it takes to provide for her four-year-old daughter. Over the course of the show, they will learn to lean on their sisterhood, even when they’re at odds over how to present themselves as Black women in entertainment — or in general.

They’ll also encounter Miami nightlife characters who try to help them reach their goals, such as Chastity a “sex work manager” with connections throughout the industry as a result of her profession, and Jaboukie Young-White’s music producer Francois Boom, whose arrogant social media posts both inspire and discourage Shawna, his former classmate. News flash, kids: That money your favorite rappers flash on camera isn’t always the real deal.

The show seems to tie together threads from the last few years of discourse as new female rappers have emerged on the scene and detailed their struggles with the rap biz’s double standards for them, such as Rapsody and Cardi B being pitted against each other, Latto’s insistence that women have to do twice as much as their male peers for less recognition, and City Girls’ own insistence that they could have made more “relevant” content but that consciousness isn’t commercially viable. I guess you could say the show kind of is their biography — and the biography of any woman trying to make it in hip-hop.

Watch the official trailer for Rap Sh!t above.

[WATCH] HBO Max Releases Trailer for Issa Rae’s New Series ‘Rap Sh!t’

HBO Max Releases Trailer for Issa Rae's New Series 'Rap Sh!t'

Insecure may be over but Issa Rae is back with a new show for HBO. On Monday, HBO Max revealed the trailer for the new series Rap Sh!t.

The new show is set to release on July 21 and will highlight the work women have to do to break into the Hip-Hop industry. The story will focus on Shawn and Mia who form a rap group.

“I think this is just such a unique time in hip-hop, especially when it comes to female rappers, because there’s such an abundance, and it doesn’t feel like they’re all in competition with each other. I’m a child of the ’90s, and there used to always be a tendency to put two women against one another,” Rae said to BAZAAR.com. “It feels like we’re in an era where there’s such a supportive environment now because of that abundance. All of that, combined with just my own story of coming up, became the next story that I wanted to tell.”

You can see the trailer below.

The post [WATCH] HBO Max Releases Trailer for Issa Rae’s New Series ‘Rap Sh!t’ appeared first on The Source.

Issa Rae’s ‘Rap Sh!t’ Trailer Riffs On City Girls’ Twerking-Fueled Success Story

Ever since the series finale of Insecure, Issa Rae fans have waited with bated breath for her next big television project. They didn’t have to wait long; Issa and HBO announced that the multitalented creator would be crafting a show semi-based on the come-up story of Miami duo City Girls, Rap Sh!t. Today, she shared the first trailer from the show, which included a Guapdad 4000 (aka Guap) cameo. The show follows a pair of Miami strippers turned aspiring rappers named Mia and Shawna as they find fame and navigate the trouble that comes with it. Sound familiar?

Issa’s certainly accumulated her fair share of experience with the music industry — and not all of it has been good. She started her own label, Raedio, under Atlantic Records and signed her first rapper, NCognita, but also encountered the unbalanced contracts that have unfortunately become industry standard over the past few years. The experience prompted Issa to call the music industry “the worst industry I’ve ever come across,” characterizing it as “an addiction industry.” How much that will inform her depiction of the industry in Rap Sh!t remains to be seen but if the response is similar to any of her other projects, the show is sure to be a hit, even among those who don’t know the behind-the-scenes workings of the average record label. Check out the trailer above.