Bruiser Wolf, E L U C I D, Boldy James, Mickey Factz

This is Friday to Friday, your weekly rap wrap up going through the releases in rap and hip hop from March 13th to March 20th. I have with me today producer hailing from Detroit, Michigan, Lunig.

What up?

And producer and artist manager hailing from Montreal, Canada, Matt Kerier.

Yo yo, what's up?

All right, let's get into it. This week's releases are Bruiser Wolf produced by Sheffy McFly with Push and Paint. Elucid with I Guess You Had to Be There. Boldy James produced by Your Boy Poska with Hook Line and Sinker. Hoodrich Keem with Slur Words. Jack Harlow with Monica. Staro and Bandplay with Not the Country You Know. Kim Gordon with Play Me. Miss Banks with South London Lover Girl. Wally the Sensei with Mad Dog. Mickey Factz with The Plague, Billion with Revenge, Buddy with House Jam, Dooop Kane with The Godfather, Killowan with Addicted to Nostalgia, Tom McDonald with Declassified, Unity TX with Somewhere in Between, and last but not least, Pink Sifu with the Deluxe Edition of last year's Black Antique, with Black Antique Onyx. Gav, you want to start us off with a pick this week?

Yeah, I'll start off with Monica, which it took me by surprise. I will say that I had seen some of the comments that he made about, during some interview he said he went blacker with this album. So I was like, "All right, well, that kind of sets the tone for some polarizing comments. We'll see what everyone has to say about it." But yeah, that was pretty crazy this week.

Yeah. I'm like, I had no idea where that came from. But I've been listening to Jack Harlow since like 2016 or 17 when he was putting out like Dark Knight and some of his older tapes. So this was kind of cool for me. I felt like lately he had lost some of what got him popular. So I really liked that this totally took a different direction and it felt like it kind of came out of nowhere. Like I'd honestly been thinking like, where'd he go? So thought there were a couple good songs like Lonesome and Prague and Living Alone. It's kind of more like R&B throughout the album.

Yeah. A lot cleaner, a lot more down to earth. Like it's really great and, like you said, it took me by surprise too. The last few years we got a lot of those braggadocious anthems or a bit more, I guess varsity bars is what you call it, you know. So it took me by surprise. Unfortunately, I feel like I saw the interview and the memes too early in the sense that I listened to the album right away on release and then I didn't give it time to sit with me. And so when I saw the comments, I was kind of surprised with how the project seems so down to earth, especially that Jack Harlow's whole thing I always found, because I've listened to him for a while too, which is like I found he always had a really crazy self-awareness of the awkwardness or the goofiness or certain bars that coming from someone else might be a little bit cringe, coming from him, you know, they're confident. So I'm glad I listened to the album before seeing all the memes and everything. Now since seeing all that, it's hard to go back to it. But like you said though, on my first listen, I had no problems with it at all. No critiques. It was great. Just very low-key, very kind of...

Yeah, it was mellow.

Not busy on the ears. So far the releases this year, everything has been very production heavy and trying to wow people with production, just because in general in hip-hop, you know, people have been finding it stale or whatever. And I can see that producers are really trying. And so this album was a lot more concentrated on the vocals and I guess the assembly and vibes of everything together. It was nice to hear.

Yeah, I thought it was a pretty solid release. A lot better than the last one in my opinion. The past couple projects have just been really focused on commercial appeal, especially like a lot of collaborations with just whoever is the most popular in the industry at the time. So I was like, man, that's crazy. It just sucked. Kind of like you said, he used to be very, very down to earth and so it's nice to see that kind of come back full circle. Right on. So that's Jack Harlow with Monica.

Next off this week, I wanted to talk about the Boldy James and Your Boy Poska with Hook Line and Sinker. Your Boy Poska, I think I'm saying that right. He also did Magnolia Laflair from last year, which was one of my top two favorite Boldy James projects from last year, which is saying a lot considering there was like 10...

At least.

And we got a Conway feature, who is one of my all-time favorites. And it was short. I also couldn't tell if he was going for a different vocal tone or if he was maybe sick at the time that he recorded it, but he had like a more raspy tone than usual.

Yeah.

But it worked for the style of instrumental. So I was thinking maybe he recorded a demo while sick or something and they were like, "Actually, it works. Let's just keep what we got." But it was cool to hear Conway on here. I did want to give my line of the week to Boldy James on the track Pint of Purple. He says, "Judge handing out sentences way longer than the run along. He was all laughs and giggles till he got shot in his funny bone."

Oh, that one perked my ears up immediately. There were so many bars on this that I felt like were just like, "Holy [expletive] dude." The word play was crazy. Like I really liked Crime Scene and Dope Boy. I thought those were two standout tracks. These beats are where he's like in his element. Like it felt like he just kind of floated through these drums. No drums. It didn't matter. The vocals were the instrument for half the songs. A lot of no-drum style beats. So it was just kind of, yeah, him floating as an instrument over the whole track. His hooks, usually you can't even tell it is a hook until it comes back up around at the end of the song. He'll so casually flow from the verse into the hook.

I find every single Boldy project is very short. So you don't have time to get annoyed by the sound or tired of the sound because you still want to hear a little bit more. So I mean, this formula he's got going on is phenomenal. The consistency, I feel like I say the same thing. I mean, we've had Boldy releases, I think, pretty much every week so far.

Damn near.

Like, damn near.

Yeah. And again, like, I'd love to say this one was the best one I've heard. Honestly, it probably is. It's just I've heard so many. But yeah, this one was again phenomenal. And like you said, the production specifically really kind of wrapped around a bit more his style. It seems like he's really kind of testing the waters with a lot of different producers of the similar sound, but this one nailed, I guess, the small details.

I totally agree. I thought that the beat selection was just [expletive] crazy on this one. Like it was really, really solid. And to your point, I think that's part of his genius with keeping himself from being too oversaturated with how many releases he has, is like just be careful not to keep them too long.

And so like he keeps them right around, it's like 26 to 32 minutes usually or something from what I have noticed. And it's like if they added another song or two, you could still probably get away with it. So I like that, like it leaves you wanting more. And I'm always impressed by his streaming numbers, too. On paper, in my opinion, if you presented this artist to me on paper, it'd be hard to believe that he gets as many streams as he does on each release.

Because you think people would kind of get fatigued after a while, but each release gets like a decent amount and people are always checking out for it. I've never heard of anyone, you know, say like, "I'm tired of Boldy," you know, like it's just consistency. Nailed it.

Definitely another super consistent one from Boldy as expected.

Matt, you want to do a pick?

Yeah, it wasn't mentioned in the beginning, but there was a two pack that was released by Boss Man Dlow, Ocean Party and Let's Go Get Him. I'm bringing it up because I feel like the last few Boss Man releases were kind of not stale, but it's like it's the same flow basically over and over and over again. And so one thing I was really looking forward to was for some kind of instrumental, some kind of beat that would just break him out a little bit from the mold of the same kind of cadence. So with this two pack, one of the songs is a sample from Khia, My Neck, My Back.

Yeah.

And it doesn't have the same feeling as the last Boss Man releases where I'm like, "Oh, it's the same thing." This sounded refreshing. I feel like with artists like that, you got to be smart with the beats that you give them.

Yeah. And like it always kind of concerns me with these artists where it's like when you start to like one of those artists and then project after project, you kind of see that they stay in that zone of comfort. Like you really want to see a little bit of that evolution, a bit of that growth. So, and you see kind of a sliver of it on these releases. Nice.

Cool. Next up, I want to talk about Elucid's I Guess You Had to Be There album. Elucid, half of Armand Hammer. I really enjoy this weird [expletive]. This level of abstract hip-hop where it has just abandoned any song structure and just defies so many of the classic conventions. The lyrics are so damn abstract. It's very poetry-based. It's like you can interpret things he's saying in so many different ways. It's not like when a lot of rappers just will kind of say what they're trying to say. Everything Elucid is saying is like in the middle of an onion that you have to peel to try to understand. It's deep. As someone that's into more dark hip-hop with less song structure and defying more of the classic conventions, I really loved it.

See, I do [expletive] with that kind of stuff. So I'm excited to see what it is. Especially like I like Billy Woods. I liked Mercy, like Armand Hammer's last album. So excited to see what this is.

So I also want to talk about Mickey Factz, The Plague. This is a full diss album on battle rapper Averb. This is seven songs. Each song is representing a deadly sin. He went high conceptual with this thing and he released it over the course of a week and each song is talking about how battle rapper Averb represents one of the seven deadly sins. It's very battle rap highbrow kind of stuff. So these two, Mickey Factz and Averb, have been going back and forth for a while. They battled on RBE in 2023. Then, supposedly the rumor is Averb paid another battle rapper named True Foe $500 to make a diss song on Mickey Factz. And then that's when Mickey decided to turn things up and make that whole project. This project is called The Plague. It's pretty damn good. It's like I listened to it a few times not knowing what the context of the project was yet and was like, this is cool. He's clearly pissed at somebody but I'm [expletive] with this whatever it is. And then I dug a bit deeper and I was like, oh, these are all at one person. Oh, okay. Wow.

See, I didn't know the battle rap scene was still this alive and well.

It is for the people that are there to follow it. I feel, you know, it's not huge, but when you have enough people who love it, you know, when you have like a thousand really good fans, you can put on a show.

Anything feels huge.

As long as you have 100 people that buy a ticket, you know, that's all you need. 100 people per city.

I had heard of the project, but I hadn't heard of all the backstory behind it, but now I'm definitely interested in listening to it. I was kind of concerned at first because I find battle rapper projects sometimes are a little bit hit or miss for me. But seven disses, you said it was seven, right?

Mhm.

Seven aimed at all one person. Yeah. I'm sold.

Actually, there is an eighth track also that features someone else that he added as a bonus after the fact, but...

Is it the guy that Averb paid?

No, it's some other guy that has like deep battle rap history with Averb. So I didn't really understand the context of it because there's so much history behind understanding battle rap. But I agree with what you said, Matt, that a lot of the times albums from battle rappers are not as good as you would expect them to be. And that skill doesn't translate as well to writing a finished album as you might think.

Oh, it's an entirely different environment. Feeling like you don't have someone in front of you that you're dismantling and, like, you know, thinking of metaphors and funny ways to call them a fat whatever. Like when you're in the booth and know you're just writing, it's a whole different game. But yeah, I'll definitely check this one out.

Yeah. So that was a really entertaining way to take down your opponent in a battle. I had fun with that for sure.

I like concept albums.

Yeah, that's the thing, too, is it was really cool on a concept album level, too. Even outside of the battle rap side of it.

Like that alone is enough to pique my interest.

And you know what did you guys think about Push and Paint? You guys listen to that one?

Yeah. Let's talk about Bruiser Wolf and Chiefy McFly, Push and Paint. Definitely.

I loved it. Thought it was sick.

And by the way, Chiefy McFly is also a really prolific painter and he did the album art for this, which it's a great portrait of Bruiser Wolf.

No way.

Yeah, you should definitely check out his art. It's really solid.

I love seeing when you already like how an artist sounds. It's nice to see them on different styles. And I really enjoyed, he had done an album with Harry Fraud last year, which is a completely different sound entirely. It was nice to hear him on these kind of vibes. And it's very like E-40-esque kind of instrumentals, but it was modern. It was refreshing. Even though it is like a bit of an old-schoolish flow in some of the bars and the things he says, but it sounded modern. It was really nice.

Super unique artists sometimes are kind of like a niche or like a flash in the pan kind of thing where it's like a shtick or something. But I think like you said, the fact that he's done this with multiple different producers, different styles, different subgenres, it shows that there's versatility and I think that it'll probably last.

Yeah, absolutely. To be able to have such a distinct vocal style and then put that same vocal style over completely different beats and have it still work, that's a recipe for longevity for sure.

Yeah, there was a couple pretty decent features on here.

Oh, GT. I don't know if he consistently gets those on previous albums. I mean he's worked with Harry Fraud so he clearly has access to, you know, a network of people, but this had, I was surprised, Sada Baby, which was, you know, there was expensive-ish names, I would think, or Baby Tron too, I'm sure.

People like him in the city, so yeah, a lot of the Detroit artists like GT, he's kind of a legend here.

Never got a...

A Detroit artist.

Okay, I didn't know that.

Super, he's not commercially popular but he's... okay. So almost all the features are Detroit artists then. So total list of features, the Detroit artists are GT, Payroll Giovanni, Sada Baby, and Baby Tron. And then also there's Kim Ali and Pilo. And Apo makes tons of sense because he's a Bay Area rapper. And you have that sort of Bay Area E-40 vibe going on here. So that was cool to see.

So it's kind of like he did like a posse cut with Bay Area sounds, which is really cool. That's cool. Bringing like a bunch of people with one sound and putting them on a completely... yeah, I know. That's really cool.

I didn't realize, it didn't click in that everyone on here except for Kilo were all from Detroit.

Except for Kilo and Akim Ali.

I really liked his verse though. I'm not going to lie. Like I thought his feature was solid. It kind of grabbed my attention at the end of Common Go. I was like, "Oh, I didn't expect that. I like that." But yeah, like a couple of the Detroit artists are a little more low-key, so it's not hard to kind of miss that, especially if you don't know like history of them and stuff. Like GT especially, I think.

You're always putting me on to the Detroit history and the Detroit rappers, man.

We've been popping lately, dude. We've had something almost every week to talk about or some sort of ties. So I'm like, "Hey, man. It's been a long time since that was the case."

I think that it's a sound that is developing very well. And I think that like for a long time, you guys kind of had the same kind of gatekeepers, if that makes sense, like the really big artists. Yeah.

But man, I don't know what's going on the past like, what, like five, six years. It almost feels like since COVID.

Yeah.

I don't know if people wanted to just get out and show that sound, but it's happening. It's definitely happened. The whole wave.

Yeah. It's sick. Really started with Flynn. Yeah. Everyone just caught fire.

Yeah.

There was a new Rio single I think last Friday, right? The big three.

Yes.

Baby Face E, YJ, and Rio. Bro, that's...

Yeah.

That's going to be hard.

You guys are well fed.

And that's all Flint. That's all Flint. YJ is the one that had, I'm the Coochie Man. I forget what that song, I think it was just called Coochie Man or something. But yeah, he's like viral rapper. I really like Louie Ray. Louie Ray is probably one of my absolute favorite Flint rappers. He does not get enough love. Like Motivator. Very, very good.

Um, I have two more I want to talk about. Both producer projects, as we've been discussing, has been a big part of this year. First off, Hoodrich Keem with Slur Words. And this is part of Hoodrich Keem's new Slur Words record label and sort of movement. And if you don't know, he was mentored by the legendary Atlanta producer Wheezy. Great beats on this as expected because he's an incredible beat maker, but there's a really large disparity in the quality of vocal mixing on this project, which really makes it feel like a mixtape rather than an album. You get features from Key, Currensy, Baby Face Ray, great tracks, really well recorded and mixed. And then both features from Bali Baby, it just gave me real like "giving my homie a chance on my album" type of energy. But then I looked at his Spotify and I was like, "No, he's a real rapper. I don't know why this is mixed so poorly. I'm very confused." But I'm just, I'm a mix engineer, so I'm kind of sensitive to that.

Until you mentioned the sound quality, I was looking at the track list. And it seems like this is a project with the features and everything that would have had a bit of a budget, right?

Yeah. And I think it did. I think it was...

The Key lock features, like...

And the Key features sound amazing and they're mixed correctly. So I'm just like, just get the same engineer to mix this other guy. I don't know. Yeah, it was still cool. I still playlist a few off here, especially the Key lock and the Baby Face Ray tracks. So, but I just like, you know, the continuation of the producer projects this year.

And that's why I also want to talk about Staro and Bandplay with Not the Country You Know, Unhappy Hour. So Staro is a southern rapper from Nashville, Tennessee. He came up in the mid-2000s working with Jeezy, Yo Gotti, Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane, some classic trap rappers. Standout tracks for me on this, one song called This Ain't That I loved. There's also one called Nasty Player that has this dope violin loop that carries the beat really well. And then one other track called How You Want to Play. It features Sixth Street Lil Mac. It's some true southern rap. The instrumentation has these two piano melodies that kind of intertwine in a dope way and then just a super classic organ sound that kind of comes in periodically to beef up the beat. Really dope.

I love Bandplay. I've been following him since 2015. I actually bought some beats from him back in, I think like 2016, before it was too expensive. Yeah. And I have been following him since. And that's a guy who's just, I don't know if he sleeps, but every few years he becomes the new like own producer of a different label kind of thing.

Like at one point he was just doing tons of Young Thug projects. Then he was doing all the Dolph and the Key Glock projects. This man is working.

I know him. I could not remember where I knew him from. I'm like, this name, this name. Who is...

Bro? Dolph and Glock. Two of my absolute favorites. The tag is "let the band play." Oh my god, bro. That's every Key and every Dolph song ever, bro.

Yep. Exactly.

Pretty epic story that you bought a beat from them before he blew up.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's hard to pick because again that's a guy who once you have the ear and you know how to produce, you can make 15 good beats in a day, you know, and then out of those 15 one of them becomes a hit, you know. And I think that's been his recipe, is just when you're able to, quantity and quality.

Mhm.

Nothing can stop you.

It's crazy the amount this guy has produced. I'm happy to see he's producing for Staro, which is so random because lately it's been he's been producing for Big X, a lot of like newer artists. It's kind of nice to see him go back to the OG artist, but I don't know if this guy just, I don't know if it's samples. I don't know if he plays everything because it's a lot of the beats sound sampled, but then some producers are just capable of building those kinds of beats as well.

True.

But whatever recipe he's got going on, it's perfect.

I'm leaning not sampled because of the quantity, because it would be too difficult. But although there's Alchemist, how does he get everything cleared?

I feel like Alchemist must have this like obscurity black hole of depth that he has to keep up with constantly. The amount of money required to clear all those samples, but then he puts out phenomenal projects, right? So it's like, yeah.

It's true. And I feel like the obscurity level helps, too. Like some of the samples that he uses, it's so few and far between that you can place them. Especially if Alchemist really, like he definitely is a guy that goes, you know, crate diving. So I'm sure he's put some money in pockets of people that...

Alchemist doesn't go crate digging. He goes crate diving.

I was just thinking the same thing. I was like, that boy just swims through them, bro.

He's breast stroking. He's butterflying. Backstroke, crazy.

Yeah. Can you imagine getting the call like, hey, this song that your grandfather made, you know, 60 years ago, 70 years ago, he died broke but like, hey, it's getting love now. Here's a nice little, you know...

Last little thing on this Staro and Bandplay project. There is another album in the works for later in 2026 with a different subtitle. It's called Not the Country You Know, Last Call. So I'm not sure if it's a deluxe planned or a full other project. It could be that they were just already setting up the plan to do a deluxe or...

Oh, they're both out.

They're both out.

Yeah, it's two projects.

Wait.

Hey, I didn't even know about it. I'm not going to lie. So I mean, like...

Here I am talking about how I've been following Bandplay and everything.

My guy, the guy works too much. If I had to follow everything he does, I would not be sleeping either.

Holy [expletive]. Wait a second.

There you go. Two projects. Speaking of working hard...

Insane.

I'm telling you, this guy does not sleep.

Oh my god. And I feel like when you're a trap producer or, not, I don't want to put him in that box, but when you're a producer of a specific genre, you don't get the flowers that guys like Alchemist get, but like, no, that guy produces.

Wait a second. Okay, so I have a whole other Staro Bandplay album to check out now that I didn't know about. Thank you for putting me on to that. That's amazing. I'm adding that to my playlist right now.

It's a very risky thing to put out two albums the first day.

Yeah, I mean I pay close attention to this [expletive] and I totally missed it.

For sure. One project has a lot more streams than the other.

Really interesting. Okay, looks like that's everything from this week. So to go over that one more time, we got Bruiser Wolf and Chiefy McFly with Push and Paint. Elucid with I Guess You Had to Be There. Boldy James and Your Boy Poska with Hook Line and Sinker. Hoodrich Keem with Slur Words. Jack Harlow with Monica. Staro and Bandplay with Not the Country You Know. Mickey Factz with The Plague. And then the stuff we didn't cover: Kim Gordon with Play Me. Miss Banks with South London Lover Girl. Wally the Sensei with Mad Dog. I should check that one out. Billian with Revenge. Buddy with House Jam. Doc Kane with The Godfather. Killowan with Addicted to Nostalgia. Tom McDonald with Declassified. Unity TX with Somewhere in Between. And Pink Sifu with the deluxe edition of Black Antique, Black Antique Onyx.

All right, that's everything from this week. So let's talk about what else we've been doing in music the last week. For me, I've been doing the finishing touches on an EP for a French Canadian rap group called Absolute and got a few more beats up on the FO's YouTube channel, which you can hear at Frequency Overflow Beats. And just been listening to tons of music and editing the podcast. Just discovering how long it takes to edit a podcast. What about you, Matt? What have you been up to this week?

Just been making beats, producing, trying to expand my knowledge of music producing. Always trying to learn, always on the hunt for some new cool VSTs. The next drum kit that sounds a little bit different than the last, you know. Other than that, musically, I've been listening to a lot of 2026 music, which seems to be a first in the last couple years. I feel like every year I've kind of been listening to older music, but this year's been good. A lot of good releases this year. And yeah.

What about you, G?

I'm pretty much in the same boat. Really have just been working on putting together some beats. There's a couple artists that, one of them, Black and Meondo, had been wanting to get a pack from me. So I've been working on doing some of that and just putting together a couple different beat packs for artists and just listening to a ton, a ton of these albums that have been coming out. Trying to keep up with everything that's coming out. I feel like we're being flooded in a good way right now.

Yeah, 2026 has been a heater so far.

Yeah. Has not stopped since it started.

True. All right, releases coming up next week. We have Central Cee with All Roads Lead Home, Mike Will Made It with Reset. We have a 6WA project from 600 Entertainment, which is Big X the Plug, Rosama, Murder Gang PB, and Young Hood. We can talk about it more next week, but they have this album art that's reminiscent of NWA, but they're calling it 6WA for the 600 Entertainment. Pretty cool. Looking forward to that. Kid Cudi with Have You Been to Heaven at Night EP and Samara Cyn with Detour. That'll be exciting, man. We got some good ones.

Thank you listeners. If you haven't already, give us a like and subscribe on YouTube or if you're listening on Spotify or Apple Music, you can take a second to rate us five stars. Super helpful. You can save the F2F Spotify playlist to follow along with what we're listening to throughout the week. That will be in the description. To get a hold of us, you can email Friday@gmail.com. Our intro and outro music by Lunar G. Find him, prod by lunar.g on Instagram. Podcast edited by me, Jacob from Frequency Overflow. You can find me at Frequency Overflow and join us every week to stay in tune with hip-hop releases from Friday to Friday. Peace.