Fake For Real

Exalted being the third collaborative mixtape from Nacho Picasso and Blue Sky Black Death released in a few months, it was somehow expected that, at that stage, the Seattle rapper and the two producers would get a bit less relevant. But actually, it didn't happen that way. Released not long after Lord of the Fly, this project was, in reality, the best of the trilogy. It was also the first they didn't release for free. They might have assumed that, by then, their fans and listeners had become so addicted to their music, that they would be willing to pay for more.

Projects are, in the US, an equivalent for the French HLM. They are large real estate schemes, launched by the public authorities, and aimed at the poorest; and quite often, they end up being no-go areas, where criminality is the only alternative to poverty, and where violence and drugs reign. Of Haitian descent, Dieuson Octave grew up in one of these places: Golden Acres, in Pompano Beach, North of Fort Lauderdale. And most of his inspiration is coming from there, judging by the titles of two mixtapes he released while he was still a teenager: Project Baby, by the end of 2013, and the excellent Heart of the Projects, one year later.

False Hopes is not just one record, but many. Indeed, such were named several solo projects, released in the mid-naughties by various members of Doomtree, before they recorded a joint album with the same title. Prior to this, actually, P.O.S. and Cecil Otter had founded a duo under the same name, even before they created the Minneapolis collective. But others would reuse it as a manifesto, and more particularly their female rapper, Dessa Darling, or Dessa. With the five songs of her own version – songs so good that she would reuse them on her second album, Castor, The Twin – she delivered actually one of the best of the series.

Those familiar with Starlito's - strong - latest releases may have noticed this: the Nashville rapper now frequently collaborates with a man called Mobsquad Nard. He featured on several of his projects, Manifest Destiny, Hot Chicken and Funerals & Court Dates 2. His very first appearances, though, predated these collaborations. The Jacksonville rapper, actually, started being noticed with his song "Right Ni", in 2015. And afterwards, he has been taken in charge by Cinematic Music Group, the Sony subsidiary already supporting rap luminaries like Joey Badass, Mick Jenkins and G-Herbo, which allowed the young man to start being covered by the media.

So, Kodak Black was not alone in Pompano Beach, in the Floridian county of Broward. Revealed in 2016 with his The Koly Bible mixtape, Koly P was another rapper coming from there. And of course, the two of them were connected. The guy formerly known as Kolyon had originally been a member of The Kolyons, with Dirty 1000, and Kodak B had been associated with them. The first time the duo was noticed, actually, was when it featured on "My Wrist", on Heart of the Projects. And they had collaborated even before. Nowadays, though, Koly P is his own man. And, after the warm welcome his first mixtape received, thanks to "Rich Gang" and "Gooked Out", he confirmed his greatness on April 18, 2017 – on his birthday – with a new release with a religion-inspired title: Rap Game Messiah.

By the end of the noughties, a dance called jerk, or jerkin', became all the rage in the streets of Los Angeles. Soon, it would create its own musical genre, a bit like its Bay Area cousin, hyphy. Though ephemeral, this craze helped putting dance back to the heart of West Coast hip-hop, and prepared the ground for ratchet, another style, popularized later on by the likes of YG and DJ Mustard. Among the bands at the spearhead of jerkin' was Pink Dollaz, a quintet exclusively made of female teenagers, with a taste for sexually explicit lyrics. Like the movement it belonged two, the band was short-lived, but a few years later, twin sisters Cammy and Cee Cee would become visible again, under the names of Cam and China.

The wait was long, before Fatimah Warner's first project, Telefone, was disclosed. Released in 2016 only, it had been heralded three years earlier, when Noname Gypsy – now just Noname – made a name for herself with her contribution to Chance the Rapper's Acid Rap mixtape. Quicker to feature on others' projects than to record her own, she also participated to Mick Jenkins's conceptual – and very strong – The Water(s), and more recently, to Late Knight Special, an album from New-York's rapper and producer Kirk Knight, and to Saba's Bucket List Project.

By 1997, just when some feared that hip-hop was getting corrupted by its own success, "independent" and "alternative" had become buzz words. And no other claimed them louder than Company Flow. A product of New-York's underground, these self-produced and self-promoted rappers had created their own label, Official Recordings, and they targeted the music industry as the main enemy. And their slogan, a very definitive "independent as fuck", was everything but ambiguous.

Prior to this album, Qwel was mostly known as one of the Typical Cats, a rap trio who had helped making Galapagos4 a central label, in Chicago's indie world. His two albums, If It Ain't Been In a Pawn Shop... and The Rubber Duckie Experiment, had also collected praises in the underground. As for Maker, he had authored Honestly, a semi-instrumental record, and produced Seconds Away, another great album recorded jointly with DJ DQ and the rapper Adeem, under the name of Glue.

Lady Leshurr is one of those who, recently, benefited from the grime resurgence. Along with others like Skepta or Stormzy, this British rapper caught the attention of her American peers over the last few months, with her "Queen's Speech" freestyle series. The fourth of them even made it to a Samsung commercial, exposing her to a large audience. And in her recent interviews, she mentioned potential collaborations with US heavyweights like Bangladesh and Timbaland.