Every Friday, The FADER's writers dive into the most exciting new projects released that week. Today, read our thoughts on Bas' We Only Talk About Real Shit When We’re Fucked Up, YTB Fatt's Foxes Only, Wishy's Paradise EP, and more.
Bas, We Only Talk About Real Shit When We’re Fucked Up
Five years after Milky Way dropped in 2018, Bas’ has released another meticulously groovy and deceptively evocative album, We Only Talk About Real Shit When We’re Fucked Up. Paris-born, NYC-raised and of Sudanese descent, Bas’ latest 17 tracks relish in savory musical fusion, kit samples varying from sabar drum to trap beat triplets, and collaborations including J. Cole, A$AP Ferg, Adekunle Gold, and Amaarae, among others. The album comes off the heels of a 5-song prerelease, including “Khartoum,” where Bas speaks about the ongoing conflict in Sudan. — Lila Dubois
Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music
YTB Fatt, Foxes Only
West Memphis rapper YTB Fatt has quietly put together one of the most impressive years in rap in 2023. Proving that the grind never stops, today he drops the follow-up to his debut mixtapeWho Is Fatt. Foxes Only is a hard-earned victory lap, with Fatt reflecting on the way his life has changed for the better as well as important figures from his old life, building the opening track around a phone call with his grandmother in which he also describes losing an aunt to fentanyl. With one foot out in rap superstardom, Fatt pulls in collaborators and newfound peers Lil Yachty, BabyDrill, and GloRilla, and one foot still in the game, Foxes Only catches a rising artist in transition. — David Renshaw
Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music
Wishy, Paradise EP
It’s December now, the days are short, the darkness is all-encompassing, and life sucks, but Wishy’s new hazy, noisy, jangly, dream-pop-inspired EP Paradise is the serotonin rush you need to take you out of that winter funk. “Paradise” is drenched with a Drop Nineteens-esque wistfulness, while “Donut” melds the power-pop fuzziness of Pity Sex with the zeal of Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Blast Paradise through your speakers in your kitchen as you dance through it, SAD lamp on the counter. — Cady Siregar
Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music
10kdunkin, Mr. Talk On Da Beat Low EP
One of plugg music's patron saints returns with seven tracks of breezy '90s R&B-indebted beats and transcendent flexing. Frequent collaborator Tony Shhnow shows up on "D Will," an impossibly smooth showcase of the chemistry the rappers have displayed together for years, while the breakout feature belongs to Tezzus on "Lot On My Mind." Somewhere between Playboi Carti and Lil Durk, Tezzus brings a livewire energy to a collection of otherwise easy-going tracks. — Jordan Darville
Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music
Varg²™ & RXKNephew, LD50 Vol. 1 EP
In September 2022, RXKNephew tweeted, “100 likes on this tweet and I will search drain gang and bump 10 songs.” 2,000 likes later, one can assume he did just that. Today, we move one step closer to a meeting of the minds of Neph and Bladee with the release of LD50 VOL. 1, a cold-weather collab from the Rochester rapper and the Swedish producer Varg2TM (a close Draing Gang affiliate). It’s a ridiculously fun affair, with Neph sounding as gleefully unhinged as ever atop beats that could sneak themselves into a mid-aughts rave if they had a mind to. Standing on each other’s shoulders other like three kids in a trench coat, LD50’s songs rise to the height of a respectable album despite their collective 11-minute run time, with each track stronger (and a little longer) than the last. Closing track “Girl I Got Girl (Fortnite E Pill mix)” is the project’s clear standout, containing world-beating bars such as “Pop E pills like jelly beans / I was abandoned like Joe Dirt / Hit with a belt more times than Pootie Tang / I fight gorillas like Pootie Tang dad” riding a throbbing techno instrumental. — Raphael Helfand
Hear it: Spotify
Keiji Haino & Guru Moe, Drums & Octobass
71-year-old Japanese experimental music legend Keiji Haino and Norwegian genre bender Guru Moe tag team a three-track horror show of an album. With Haino on clangorous percussion, Moe on creaking octobass (an even bigger acoustic bass that traditionally plays an octave below a normal bass’s lower limit), and both contributing moans that fall somewhere between detuned lullabies and death rattles, their apparently improvised compositions — “flower which is orange and very strong-willed,” “flower which is pink, small and resistant,” and “flower which is a small river, which is a yellow sparrow” — feel engineered to exact maximum nerve pain, keeping the listener in a perpetual state of uncertainty as to what fresh terror will arrive next. Enjoy! — Raphael Helfand
Hear it: Bandcamp
Other projects out today you should listen to
ammar, WHAT’S BEHIND BLUE SKIES
Dais Records x Retrospekt, DAIS223
DāM - FunK, DāM - FunK Presents the Music of Grand Theft Auto Online (Original Score)
Elephant Gym, World
Graham Hunt, Try Not To Laugh
Gucci Mane and B.G, Choppas and Bricks
Izzy Spears, M*A*D EP
Laura Karpman, Elena Pinderhughes & Patrice Rushen, American Fiction (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Lil Reese, Ask About Me
Lindasson, Flawless
Miu Haiti, Unphased
the NAIT SIRK, STAGNANT EP
No Guidnce, Unplugged EP
박혜진 Park Hye Jin, Sail the Seven Seas
Ridgeway, Wall of Stars
Siamese Goldfish, Portrait of Oranges
Small Isles, Everything on Memory EP
Tati au Miel, Carousel EP
Various Artists, Now That’s What I Call Bootlegs Vol. 10
Valee and Top $ide, CAR TOONS
Zeinapur, Only Love Remains