Best Rap Releases of 2026 So Far: A$AP Rocky, Boldy James, Don Toliver & More | Friday to Friday

This is Friday to Friday, your weekly rap wrap-up going through the releases in rap and hip-hop from Friday to Friday. My name is Jacob and I have with me today producer and artist manager Matt. Say hello.

What's good? What's up?

Well, this is kind of like a special episode 'cause we're going to be going through 2026 up until the launch of our first episode. So this is like a highlight reel of the first couple months of the year of 2026 to catch up with what's been going on with the regular releases, what the weekly regular episodes are.

Basically, every week we go through the releases in rap and hip-hop. We keep you updated on the newest music. We listen to tons of music every week and bring you guys the best recommendations so nothing slips through the cracks. Because if you're like us and you want to keep up with all the latest releases, then Friday to Friday podcast will make that easy for you.

I want to hop into the picks for today. You want to kick us off, Matt? What's your first pick? For 2026 so far.

So I think the first one, which is probably one that you've been wanting to talk about too, is the A$AP Rocky Don't Be Dumb.

Oh my goodness. Anticipated. It's been a while.

Uh, not a guy who drops a lot of albums, right? Which it feels weird 'cause I feel like A$AP Rocky is a pretty big name, but this is only his fourth album, studio album.

He's almost more culturally relevant than his music has been relevant.

And not to take anything away, but you know, every album has been consistently good in my opinion. I mean, what I like about them is that it's not necessarily, you know, people will say they're either terrible or great. Some people will say they're somewhere in the middle. I find A$AP Rocky albums make you think. A lot of different production, a lot of weird sounds, and I think that's again what happened with this album.

Production-wise, this is the strongest album to date. I love the production on this thing. You get the weirdness, but it's also super concentrated. It sounds like a singular album. It sounds like one idea. Which is, I'm a huge fan of that. I love albums that really sound like albums.

And it's nice and polished 'cause I find sometimes with the weirdness, experimental, like some songs on certain Tyler the Creator albums will kind of not be unpleasant to listen to, but they're a bit hard sometimes on the ear. But this one, everything sounded just really well done, nice and tight. All of it is like ear candy.

And the vocal layering, he did some really interesting vocal layering where he would come in with a high tone and then layer a low tone on it and then continue with the low tone with the high dropped out, and just interesting layering stuff that kept every piece sounding really interesting.

Yeah, and something completely random, but the cover is drawn by Tim Burton, which is a—

That's right.

Yeah. He said something in an interview about the different characters that he had Tim Burton draw represent him over different periods of his career.

Mhm.

There's a whole kind of world-building element to dive into if you're interested in that.

I mean, if you can get Tim Burton on the phone alone, I think that's a really cool thing, but yeah. The Sauce Walka feature too, I thought was really just—I love Sauce Walka, and just to hear him on something so again weird and polished was really fun.

I have nothing bad to say about this album really. I think it's from beginning to end everything is interesting, everything is unique. There's nothing boring at all. Yeah, I don't know about you, but I enjoyed it really from beginning to end. Even the songs that I won't go back and listen to, I'm not mad that I heard them, you know?

Yeah, I don't have anything bad to say about this album either. In fact, just to spoilers here, like this is my album of the year so far. This beats everything else that we're going to talk about today, including The Fall Off, which we will have a separate conversation about.

Yeah, man, that's A$AP Rocky Don't Be Dumb. We were waiting a while for it, and for me it's my favorite project to this date, so I'm pretty happy with it.

Man, next I would really love to talk about IDK. IDK has what he's calling a mixtape, ETDS. This thing doesn't sound like a mixtape at all. You know, mixtape is kind of a funny term these days. It's almost more like—it's like what a label calls it so that they don't have to put the same type of budget behind it.

Basically, yeah.

But this is an incredible project. It has amazing features on this thing. You got Joey Valence and Bray, Black Thought. There's a posthumous DMX and a posthumous MF DOOM feature on this thing.

It just feels wrong sometimes to feel a bit of the—to hear the posthumous work, but it was good. It was good. I didn't mind it. It didn't make me uncomfortable or anything like that. And I find that with some artists sometimes they'll kind of get juiced a little bit after they pass away. There'll be like a lot of projects with them. DMX, I feel like it's kind of been a bit of a drip feed, which I'm happy with, and I'm happy honestly this was a good project for him to be on. Didn't sound like a gimmicky feature or anything like that. It was really nice to hear him.

Yes, I agree. And I also think he really got the mileage out of the MF DOOM verse. The way he set it up so that he's going back and forth with DOOM was really interesting and showed a lot of just skill with the pen. He like really played with it and went back and forth with him. It's super interesting.

And just like DMX, I find it's kind of hard to bring the energy, like when someone is already passed away and you hear something that, you know, you kind of ask yourself like would he have wanted to do that back and forth with IDK? Like did he—was this something that they would have done organically? But no, it sounded good, and I think as an artist, as a lyricist, IDK is very well respected, and I couldn't imagine MF DOOM wouldn't have wanted to do something like that with him. It sounded great, honestly.

Production-wise, I find IDK albums or mixtapes always have—there's a very similar kind of sound sometimes that he raps on. He has his lane, he has his sound, and it doesn't sound recycled, it doesn't sound annoying. It still works on this mixtape. It's still the same sound, just better, different, more of it.

I'm not fatigued at all from IDK. I would be willing to have another album this year, you know, next year. I find it's always a pleasure to hear his albums. It's all kind of similar, but it's not—I'm not fatigued yet 'cause I'm still just like loving everything he puts out.

It is with the lane of like the more lyricist rap, you know, rappity rap, but the production keeps it really interesting.

Yeah, and he's writing songs too, and by that I mean like he's not just creating songs to flex lyrics on. He's like got concept songs and powerful stuff, yeah. Great writer.

Uh, Nicholas Craven is just still doing crazy this year.

He's a machine for sure.

So I wanted to talk about next—he had Salvation for the Wicked is the name of the Ransom and Boldy James project produced by Nicholas Craven. This was an interesting combo. I don't know if I've ever heard Ransom and Boldy on the same song before. I just became really a fan of both of them last year in their own respects just through being Griselda adjacent. And I really like both the Nicholas Craven produced projects with Boldy last year.

Yeah.

So I'm honestly just on this Nicholas Craven train because of those two projects.

Even though it's kind of the same sound, it's explored a little bit differently on each project. Like it's definitely feeding a certain hunger that I know a lot of people had for that kind of production. I like the concept of there being no drums on certain songs where it's only instrumental, like instruments only. I think that's pretty cool. I don't love all of it, but it's interesting and that's what I like, you know?

Yeah, he does definitely hit that soul beat wave, like those no drum soul beats, which Boldy just destroys those every time. It's like always. He just hits that pocket like so nice. And then Ransom is nice with the pen too.

I mean, I enjoy Ransom. I know for sure Boldy and Nicholas Craven got multiple projects coming up. Ransom, I'm just assuming 'cause he has, you know, he drops consistently, so.

Yeah, and for me Nicholas Craven, I have to support 'cause I mean, he's a local producer. He's from Montreal as well.

Oh, okay. I didn't know that.

Yeah. So, you know, I'm always—I hear a lot about it, but it's just nice to see what he's doing. That's a good solid body of work. If I was him I'd be really proud of the catalog that he has so far.

Is there any other picks you wanted to go through?

I do have two more. I really feel like this year I'm hearing kind of a different direction in production. It just feels like last year the main conversation was that hip-hop was kind of at a stalemate when it came to the sound of it, and I find that on a lot of albums this year there's just a bit more risks. And so one of those albums was the Don Toliver album.

I find that I enjoy every Don Toliver album. I find the production is always great, but this one specifically, Octane, the production was just beyond interesting. Every song was unique, every song stood out. Don Toliver does what Don Toliver does, just sounds, you know, great and melodic on every song, but the production specifically, crazy, crazy to me. It just feels like maybe now there's a bit more of an appreciation for wanting to sound a little bit more unique and different. That's one of those albums to me that really kind of gave me that.

That's good to hear because I'm not the biggest Don Toliver fan, but hearing that makes me want to check it out, because if it was just more Don Toliver, then I maybe wouldn't, but if it's like he's taking risks, then I'm interested, so cool.

Also, I don't know if you checked out the Buddha Bless album, which came out February 13th.

I did give that a quick listen once through. I saw tons of amazing features.

It is his first solo project. It is, you know, again a lot of really good features like you said. The production is nothing crazy, but there is like the stuff that I liked I am going back to. It's just one of those albums that just sounded kind of fun to make, and it's fun to listen to. The song with Trendsetter James is really good, and I find that Trendsetter James doesn't get his flowers often enough, and yeah, it was nice to hear him on there. And the Kodak Black features as well. Like it just sounded fun. But yeah, those were my two other picks.

Okay, nice. What's coming up that you're thinking about, that you're excited about?

I mean, Iceman, Drake, you know, I like what it's doing for music. Obviously, I don't like all the animosity and, you know, whatever happens outside of hip hop, that's a different story, but I do like how much it's pushing forward the competition aspect of it. So I'm excited to see, one, you know, if it's going to be a good album. I think Drake has the machine and money behind him to make sure that this album just has hits on top of hits.

And then I'm more curious to see what will happen when he drops that album. Are we going to get that and then a Kendrick album? Are we going to get, I don't know, another J. Cole album? I really doubt it, but I mean, you know, what will happen? That's what I'm curious to see.

Yeah, there's a rumor that Kendrick is just waiting to drop on top of Iceman, which would be really fun.

Yeah, that's a win for everybody. Yeah, and of course, like, there's the entertainment aspect of like the beef and whatnot, which I, you know, I get a kick out of, but the more music the better. That kind of level of competition I find, especially like during the beef, it gave us a lot of really good music. I mean, if we can get that again, you know, I'm excited. That's something I'm definitely looking forward to.

And I would also be looking forward to—if Iceman is supposed to be an album that Drake is trying to—'cause the approach that Drake seems like he wants to take is kind of cement his position as someone who can get on the charts, and I want to see what kind of vibe Kendrick would put out where he would think like that would rival or equal Iceman. 'Cause I mean, when Kendrick wants to, you know, get the people moving and make kind of, you know, a little bit less lyrical songs, it really works. So if we can get two albums of that before the summer, I think that would be a beautiful summer for sure.

That's true.

Yep, he can get the people dancing when he wants to, or he can make a, you know, Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers when he wants to.

So I wanted to say one pick for upcoming. I'm pretty excited. This is very soon as of this date of record, which is Denzel Curry and the Scythe, which is like a supergroup. Super is not even the word. When I first saw the, I guess, the announcement of who the group was, it just feels kind of not like an overkill, but it is kind of like—I mean, to see Ferg back in a—and I'm calling him Ferg 'cause I don't know if I should call him A$AP Ferg, but to see him in a new group is just—I'm very interested.

It's pretty exciting. It's Denzel Curry, A$AP Ferg or Ferg, Tia Corine, BK the Ruler and Key Nyata. I'm curious to see the dynamic, you know, like for me, the way that I'm seeing it is that I think Denzel Curry is someone who takes a lot of risks musically, and Ferg is someone who sounds really good on musical risks because he has just a really nice flow. So I can kind of see maybe—I don't know if Denzel is the one who's going to take the reins and kind of, you know, orchestrate the sound, but I can see Ferg being put on the kind of production or maybe songs that would really kind of push his flow and make him, or allow him to kind of rap in really cool pockets. I'd love—I'm just curious to see what the dynamic's going to be.

Yes, absolutely looking forward to that. Is there anything else you want to talk about? Pick-wise, I think we went through everything that we could have went through.

Obviously, there's a lot more releases, you know, and we didn't pick these because everything else, you know, sucks. It's just that there's obviously a limited amount of time, but I think we're just solid.

Really just a highlight list. Lots of stuff we missed. DaBaby, Be More Grateful; Huncho, Not One of Them; YoungBoy Never Broke Again release Slime Cry. Lots of releases that we didn't cover, but you know, gave you guys some highlights.

So that was what's been going on in hip hop 2026 up till now. So why don't we talk about what we've been doing up till now this year. For me, at Frequency Overflow, the 1925 loop kit came out recently. It's a free loop kit. We also just consistently releasing on our YouTube at FO Beats, and just a ton of this year has just been getting this podcast ready. It's been a bit of work, but looking forward to getting it released and getting it going this year. What about you?

For me, honestly, this is my year of learning. Past few years I've been doing a lot of music production and I got to a point where I realized that basically I wanted to obviously have my own sound, so I started learning music theory, and that's really been my 2026 so far, which is just like learning a whole other language and, you know, every step you learn just opens up a whole other door.

And then other than that, my main artist, Lucius B. Thundercat, just dropped a single named Ruse de Guerre, which was actually mixed and mastered by Jacob here at Frequency Overflow.

Yep, that's right.

Yeah, but yeah, other than that, for me it's just been learning the language of music.

Thank you so much for listening. If you haven't already, please check out our first weekly episode that's releasing alongside this, and I'm looking forward to keeping you guys updated on the newest releases week after week.

To get a hold of us, you can email fridaytofridaypodcast@gmail.com. Our intro and outro music by Lunar G. Find him at prod by lunar.g on Instagram. Podcast edited by me, Jacob from Frequency Overflow. You can find me at frequencyoverflow. Join us every week Tuesday in tune with rap and hip hop releases from Friday to Friday. Peace. See you.