Songs from Lil Baby, Monaleo, tana, and more stood out.
Every month, The FADER’s Vivian Medithi showcases all the standout rap songs from the past 30-ish days in one unranked list.
Lil Baby feat. YTB Fatt & YFN Lucci, “Plenty”
Lil Baby has taken a break from teasing Dominique, the sequel/counterpart to his January album WHAM, to begin teasing a CBFW group tape alongside Veeze and Rylo Rodriguez, among others. The first single from that project arrives with a verse from YFN Lucci, fresh off publicly ending his beef with Young Thug, and the diplomatic importance of the moment kicks Baby into higher gear, groaning about seized shipments and his various homes over a maelstrom of digital violins. But it’s YTB Fatt who really steals the show, swerving the Aventador through his neighborhood and packing out Vegas strip clubs before wheezily listing off a rollcall of women he’s messing with by name. It might be Fatt’s best feature this year, which is really saying something.
osoic, “SHARE SOME SWAG?”
According to his debut mixtape SWAGSCHOOL, Nigeria-via-Dallas rapper osoic (that’s oh-so-icy) has more designer clothes than the average SSENSE wishlist. His songs sound equally expensive, a bubbly concoction of slinky Autotune melodies and plush beats that draw from plugg, rage and alté. His stop-start bars saunter over trunk-rattling 808s on “SHARE SOME SWAG?,” detailing his Casanova lifestyle with aplomb. And his raps have just as much flair as his outfits thanks to his shifting flow and varied vocal tone, hissing one bar, yelping the next. It’s an ideal soundtrack for layering the perfect fall outfit.
Thirteendegrees feat. Lil2posh, “Chiraq Child”
Thirteendegrees is determined to beat the one-hit gimmick allegations on BLACK FRIDAYZ: his hooks are catchier, his verses are tighter, and the sumptuous beats recall Graduation-era maximalism. The mixtape’s exuberant peak has to be “Chiraq Child,” where he enlists frequent collaborator and fellow fashionista Lil 2 Posh for a typically slick verse. Despite the song’s title, Thirteen is more preoccupied with finding love between fast-paced flings than he is repping his hometown, but his cascading vocal runs help stick the landing on silly clunkers like, “addicted to ass and tits, that should be the damn title.”
Karrahbooo & True Making Noise, “FREE BOOO”
Atlanta rapper Karrahboo has spent 2025 in musical limbo, stuck in a record deal with Lil Yachty’s Concrete Boyz (Yachty tells it a little differently). Her January single “Bossy Boo” was quickly taken down off YouTube and DSPs, and she’s only occasionally released new music via features. She’s back with “FREE BOOO,” which largely sidesteps the professional drama to flex her on-call chauffeur and club appearance fees over a pounding kickdrum. That isn’t to say she’s totally unbothered: every time I hear her rap, “I’m on the net getting dragged and I can’t respond how I want without getting banned,” it’s like I can see her typing “kys” in the comment section.
tana, “Magic City”
After opening up for Lil Tecca on tour in 2024, 18-year-old tana has been steadily building hype for his next project. Following May’s hyperactive single “New Cash,” the Georgia rapper returns with this week’s laid back “Magic City,” crooning and squawking over a liquid Zaytoven beat about falling in love at the titular club. From the crystalline production to his polyvocal performance, “Magic City” shows tana’s careful attention to detail, crisply mixed and delicately layered.
Monaleo, “Open the Gates”
Last summer, Monaleo told me about how her time at mortuary school forced her to come to terms with death. Her new album Who Did The Body? is built around our mortality, sketching vignettes of fictional coroners and her own funeral. “Open The Gates” kicks off with blasphemous melodrama (“No way in hell I could’ve been Eve, I would’ve skinned that snake”), but suddenly plummets back to earth, mourning deceased friends. The sudden pivot turns up the contrast on Leo’s grief, emphasizing every milestone they’ve missed and the tiny human details studded throughout.
BNYX feat. George Clanton & Jahvor, “Interstellar”
Jahvor is a fairly adept SoundCloud rapper, but it’s hard to say he’s firmly established a sound of his own just yet. BNYX’s new LOADING… EP taps heavyweights including Clara La San, Earl Sweatshirt, and Yeat, and Jahvor meets the moment with his best Don Toliver impression on “Interstellar.” Given his Playboi Carti-indebted flows (and fits), it’s startling to hear Jahvor singing so effortlessly, but he is Akon’s son. Harmonizing with himself, his soaring melodies channel the rush of falling head over heels so well, you won’t mind the song’s saccharine verses.
Pradabagshawty feat. Babystaydown, “Perky Nap”
Pradabagshawty usually raps/sings in a drawled baritone, but when his voice jumps into falsetto he sounds a lot like Sahbabii. He deliberately leans into the impression on “Perky Nap,” going so far as to copy Sah’s onomatopoetically iconic “boi-oi-oing” on the hook. Red Flags & Roses is packed with plenty of Prada’s own earworm adlibs too: listen to how he wails “Yooo” over and over on “No Hulu,” or his rolled-R switch SFX on “Raincoat.” But his melodic skills are at their peak on “Perky Nap,” tracing out a sing-song cadence you’ll find yourself humming weeks later.
skaiwater — say jordan*
lily · say jordan *
“I love all my industry heads I took the blue pill,” skaiwater grins as the bottom falls out of “say Jordan,” almost literally: what was an increasingly blown-out, fuzzed-over bass bonanza is suddenly all treble on the beat switch. It’s hard to tell if we’re meant to take “say jordan” as elaborate autofiction or frighteningly true-to-life confessional: allusions to MAGA and Jeffrey Epstein bring a dark, lurid edge to skai’s psychological grappling, talking to their exes and their demons as the track implodes around them. Where their pink print EPs this year brought to mind a messy but controlled demolition, “say jordan” detonates on impact, skaiwater’s sharp-tongued bars like a million pieces of shrapnel.
Feng, “When I met you”
I ran into Feng backstage at Summer Smash this June; as far as I can tell, the 19-year-old Brit was just there to hang out, which is all he ever really raps about anyway. On paper, his bars are nothing to get excited by, but Feng’s slice-of-life raps make the most of his flatly melodic intonation and heart-on-sleeve honesty (M.I.A. allegedly wants to collab). “When I met you” is an especially tender cut over a whirring lakepine beat, ambling from meet-cute to the Uber XL one dorky metaphor at a time (“Let’s build something like LEGO”). The earnestness works: he sounds totally smitten crooning, “When I met you / you shined a light in the room,” like the feeling just hit him in the booth.
OsamaSon, “Inferno”
While OsamaSon’s soaring January album Jump Out favored fizzy melodies and undistorted vocals, this month’s psykotic frequently sounds like the first 30 seconds of Yeezus on loop, as heard with your ear pressed against the speaker. My favorite cut has to be the seething “Inferno,” which features an oscillating topline that could serve as an ambulance siren and a writhing mess of distortion and blown out bass. Out of nowhere, there’s an enormous, ultraclear kickdrum that reminds me of “Teach Me How To Dougie,” bringing a semblance of rhythmic structure to the detonating cacophony of synths. “We cause hell, we raise hell, we in hell now,” Lil O gasps on the hook; ricocheting around the moshpit when he performed it on tour last week, hell felt pretty damn good.