"Clearing Out My Mind"

This ain’t gonna be long. And I know a lot of people still may not know who I’m speaking on, or even agree with what I’m saying but I just felt like this needed to be said. Earlier this week, Complex Musi c named DaBaby as their best rapper alive for 2019, and although I wholeheartedly understand this decision and how and why they came to it. I unfortunately have to strongly disagree. DaBaby had a phenomenal year. Truly phenomenal. Between “Suge”, “Bop”, “Under the Sun”, “Cash Sh*t”, even “Panini” with Lil Nas’ X, everywhere you went, you heard dudes voice. I can’t knock it at all. He had a stronghold on the charts, Spotify playlists and social media alike. And having dropped two albums with 1 (Kirk) going number 1, it’s hard to question his #1 ranking. Yet… here I am to question it. https://www.discogs.com When we talk about rap, and the best rapper of 2019, the real answer to that question in Benny the Butcher, plain and simple. Aside from having what I truly believ...

Between “Life is Good” and the leak of “Desires” and a suspected full project being leaked on DatPiff early last week. It is almost abundantly clear that Drake and Future are gearing up a release to act as the follow-up to What a Time to be Alive, in the very near future. And although I am eagerly anticipating this project and can’t wait to hear what these two legends have in store, the impending release got me thinking about collaboration albums more broadly. In thinking on this, I came to the conclusion that honestly, less is more. In the last 5 year we’ve seen a lot of artists attempt this collaboration album model to varying degrees of success. And although everything pales in comparison to Kanye West & JAY Z collaborating on the masterpiece that was “Watch the Throne” in 2011, there have been a number of these projects which have reached great heights and produced some great music. Of course, the aforementioned “What a Time to Be Alive” , was an almost instant class...