A year dominated by the Kendrick Lamar-Drake beef, 2024 made it all too easy to let underground hip-hop slip through the cracks into obscurity. Whilst many alumni of the alternative scene – Vince Staples, Denzel Curry – saw their success recognised on a larger scale, some of the year’s best releases missed out on commercial success. Here are five albums not to let pass you by as we enter into 2025:
We Buy Diabetic Test Strips – Armand Hammer (billy woods and ELUCID)
We Buy Diabetic Test Strips is without doubt billy woods and ELUCID’s most impenetrable work to date, with the pair laying their trademark abstract lyricism over beats that are even more fragmentary and collaged than those on their previous albums.
The most impressive cut is the closer, ‘Doves’ (added to the album in 2024 to form a final version), with production that fuses wailing backing vocals with a static fuzz. The nearly nine-minute track’s standout verse is a hopeless woods lamentation on mortality:
“They called like ‘come now he doesn’t have long to live’
I dress slowly
Came back that night and took my baby out the crib so I could hold him”
To attribute the miracle of We Buy Diabetic Test Strips to woods alone would be a disservice to ELUCID, himself instrumental in working together the sonically disparate elements that make up the album. In an interview with Clash, he described the “patchwork of sounds and ears and hands” that led to its creation – recordings from a jam session he had organised between four musicians who had never met before (including flutist Shabaka Hutchings) were sent to producers in what became the backbone of the LP. The result of this ‘patchwork’ is anxious beats that bring with them endless jeopardy and intrigue, and Armand Hammer’s most impressive work so far.
Pinball – MIKE, Tony Selzer
When MIKE burst onto the alternative hip-hop scene with 2017’s ‘May God Bless Your Hustle’, he bore a pen game unmatched in its introspection and a production style that he had helped pioneer, one straight from the school of Navy Blue and Earl Sweatshirt. If 2023’s ‘Burning Desire’ was a stylistic continuation of his previous work, ‘Pinball’ serves almost as an antidote to it – MIKE coming up for air after a slew of cathartic efforts – a breathing-space in a discography of baggage-shedding.
With ‘Pinball’, MIKE abandons his trademark sombre, broken sample-chops in favour of Tony Selzer’s goofy trap and drill-infused beats over which he lays his most lively vocals yet. It’s a sonically fluid effort, with springy 808-driven tracks dripping in 80s-video-game nostalgia side-by-side with laid-back stoner cuts. In tackling less emotionally heavy subject-matter on ‘Pinball’, MIKE’s lyrical wit is able to shine, and the words are as usual all his own: “ain’t off the top but it’s still off the noggin”.
Groovy Steppin Sh*t – Lisha G, Trini Viv
On ‘Groovy Steppin Shit’, South Carolina rapper Lisha G spits comically un-conscious lyrics over production from Philadelphia’s Trini Viv: the resulting sound is a highly addictive substance. The latter – in his own words – crafts: “synthetic, heavy hitting grooves”, psychedelic, phasing beats. In producing something so innovative, Trini Viv pushes Lisha G – who could easily fall back on simple green-eggs-and-ham flows – into new territory. She effortlessly switches from catchy, short flows into finding longer pockets, all without compromising her smugly nonchalant cadence. Lisha G is building an image here, from her trademark ad-lib “‘sgettitman” to her endless stock of punchlines and quotables: “I could take your baby daddy and then send him back.” With the average track clocking in at under two minutes and the full length well below half an hour, Groovy Steppin Sh*t makes for prime earwormy low-stakes cloud-rap, and has surprisingly more to offer sonically than its cover might suggest.
Nobody Planning to Leave – ShrapKnel, Controller 7
PremRock and Curly Castro are ShrapKnel, signed to billy woods’ NY-based Backwoodz Studioz. In many ways, their music is derivative of woods’, with PremRock opening the album with a deliciously abstract verse. In addressing his distorted sense of self as he shoulders the weight of the past, the Pennsylvania native introduces the sky-high stakes of this LP – surviving as an authentic artist in an industry that demands compromise:
“I don’t wanna bury the dead
Pallbearer for the carried dread
Funhouse mirror, stake it to the nearest thread.”
Whilst striving for the same lyrical complexity as woods, ShrapKnel opt to diverge from their label-mate in their delivery, with Curly Castro’s bars bearing a dynamic, almost playful cadence. PremRock speaks with woods’ sincerity and melancholy, but he’s far more inclined to flow with the beat rather than cut across it as woods might. What results is a pair that can deliver songs with endless mutability, loaded with humour (such as Castro’s opening of ‘Dadaism 3’) or solemnity (such as PremRock’s musings on ‘Human Form’). Controller 7’s beats are suitably unpredictable to match the two vocalists – drums that wouldn’t be out of place in traditional boom-bap tracks meet anxiety-inducing industrial production along with genuinely beautiful string samples. It’s a match made in heaven for any fan of New York’s alternative scene.
40 – Jawnino
Faceless London rapper Jawnino’s debut offers the optimal mixtape experience. Not married to a single genre, the rapper lends his words to production that bridges grime, jungle and garage. What ties it together – in his own words – is that it’s a “UK record” – a homage to the many cultures that have come to define the British club and hip-hop scene. Lyrically, Jawnino works on a micro-scale, opting to detail his (often seemingly mundane) day-to-day personal experiences rather than grander narratives. 40 makes for a lyrical and sonic snapshot of London life from the playbook of Jim Legxacy, and an innovative addition to the UK hip-hop canon.
