Black Artists That Are Getting Slept On
By: Katherine Irby
Boogie is a Black rapper from Compton. He released his debut album, “Everythings for Sale,” at the beginning of 2019, but has been on the rap scene for over five years now. His style is comparable to artists like Kendrick Lamar and Chance the Rapper. He finds an interesting balance between singing and rapping on his tracks, and offers an array of vibes, including dreamy, vocally-driven “Skydive II feat. 6LACK,” and “Self Destruction” where he spits with precision and flow to a hype beat.
Rico Nasty (pictured above) is a female rapper from Washington DC, who released several mixtapes before making her way toward the main scene. She describes her style as “sugar trap,” and her sound is original and unique to anything else on the scene. More recently, she has collaborated with bigger names, but her solo work is also fire. The track I know her best from is “Tia Tamera” with Doja Cat, and her song “Smack a Bitch” also goes hard. Listen to her if you’re in search of a female rapper who will both get you hype and make you feel empowered. It’s incredibly difficult to make a name for yourself on the rap scene as a woman, and she is more than deserving of some room.
Doja Cat is another great up and coming female hip-hop artist. She both raps and sings, and has a collection of songs that reach from light-hearted and funny, like “MOOO!,” to romantic vibes on “So High.” Her versatile sound is hard to compare to any other artists. Her most popular tracks you might have heard are “Tia Tamera” with Rico Nasty, and most recently “Juicy.” The “Juicy” remix with Tyga made its way on to the RapCaviar playlist on spotify (Spotify’s most popular HipHop playlist, with nearly 13 million followers, and even more frequent listeners), where it sat as the only track by a female artist (that wasn’t a feature) on the entire playlist for multiple weeks.
Gallant is an R&B singer who has been making his way onto the scene since 2013. He has incredible range, with a full and emotionally-driven voice. He tells personal stories through his music and bares all of himself to his listeners - he is a far distance from the superficiality that has become common to popular music. Although widely ~slept on~ he has received wide critical acclaim for his first album, “Ology,” as well as some of his other music. My favorite track of his is “Weight in Gold;” some other good ones are “Cave Me In” and “Sweet Insomnia” with 6LACK.
H.E.R. is an up and coming R&B artist. Her voice is smooth and full, but she also has serious vocal skills - she makes it sound easy. Her debut album, H.E.R., was released in 2017, and since then she has released a second album in 2019, and has dropped several tracks with other artists that have gotten the most attention, such as “Best Part,” with Daniel Caesar and “Slide” with YG, but her 21-track self-titled album is completely solo and is absolutely incredible. Some of my favorite tracks are “Changes,” “U,” and “Rather Be.” On her second album, she also includes spoken-word poetry in several tracks, mainly politically driven, which is something we rarely see in the realm of more popular music. She wears sunglasses in all her performances, public appearances, and photos, as her way of saying that she wants the focus on her artistry to be on the music she makes, and not on her as a person or as a “star.”
(Article based on https://www.buzzfeed.com/briannaholt/underrated-black-music-artists)
