This past weekend, I was watching the premiere of Rachel Sennott’s new influencer culture HBO comedy I Love LA when I was caught off guard by a name in the credits: Kenneth Blume. If you’ve been tapped out of the Geese phenomenon, you may be thinking, Who the fuck is that? The answer is simple: That’s Kenny Beats. (777 is still good, by the way.) To undergo his transformation from rap production chameleon to acclaimed rock-record producer and film and TV score composer—he also did the music for Alex Russell’s thriller Lurker, which is sort of like if The Talented Mr. Ripley were about a Brockhampton stan—he switched up his name, an extension of the thought process that, to be taken seriously by musical institutions, you have to soften your connection to rap. “I named myself Kenny Beats at 15 years old for MySpace—because my name was Kenny and I made beats—and it kind of just stuck,” he said in an interview over the summer. “And whenever I get a Grammy nomination as Kenny Beats, there’s times where in my heart I’m just like, ‘But my last name is Blume.’”
It’s disheartening that Kenny thinks like that because, hey, man, beats are sick and who cares if some suits on a voting board or in Hollywood don’t think so! I was reminded of that last week when I pulled up with my friend to a show in Williamsburg. There, I saw Chicago’s Semiratruth fiddle around and improvise on top of their 2024 album, The Star of the Story, reminding me of the most surreal moments on collagist classic Red Burns. Then, later in the night, out came Jersey digital crate digger Doris, whose Ultimate Love Songs Collection, 50 tracks of pitch-shifted sampledelia, was one of my go-to albums of last year. During the performance, Doris’ mic was messed up, so all of my attention was on the production and, as he breezed through dozens of one-minute songs, I turned to my friend and said, “I’ve listened to this album so many times and the beats still blow me away.”
All of that had me thinking about the beats I’ve come across lately that have been giving me a similar feeling. These days, that tends to be the stuff coming from the bouyon scene of Guadeloupe and Dominica, where they’re cooking up inhuman keyboard melodies every week, or on the DMV free car circuit, where layers keep getting added to the blown-out foundation set by producers like Dolan Beatz and Cheecho. Below is a roundup of some of my songs from those scenes and beyond.
Lady Binladen: “Blow It”
I can’t front: I’m a little jealous whenever I meet someone from another city who tells me stories of bumping Baton Rouge jig beats at middle school dances. It’s a strain of Deep South rap that, despite being infused into so many regional styles (from Milwaukee lowend to L.A. ratchet music) of the last 15 years, never really made it up to New York. Therefore, I don’t have a lot of nostalgia for Mouse and Level’s “I Bet U Won’t,” but what I do know is that the way it is flipped into a ballistic new-age Chicago drill beat on this Lady Binladen cut is unreal. Armed with clipping drums and a slight touch of the fidgety footwork energy that has swept across the scene—Lil M.U.’s “Top of Cars” is probably the best example of that—it’s extremely dancey while keeping the cutthroat drill intensity intact.
XanGang: “Promiscuous Lover”
I’ve definitely hit a New Edition two-step in the mirror once or twice to XanGang’s “Promiscuous Lover.” It’s the new jack plugg beat buried at the end of the producer’s Love & Cuddles Samples, a collection of snippets he uploaded to SoundCloud to advertise beats he was selling. A long time pillar of plugg, Xan has been teasing this computerized rebirth of new jack swing grooves since “New Jack Story” cut through the scream tour nostalgia of Corey Lingo’s Safe 2 Say back in July. “Promiscuous Lover,” with all the drum machine rolls and knocking snares, might be even better. It’s like if Teddy Riley grew up in the SoundCloud era.
HollyG: “Wa Coco” [ft. Tiitof]
The Travis Scott industrial complex has had me on an anti-beat switch crusade for the last few years, but I’ll drop my beef for “Wa Coco.” Producers Mufasa and Yvng Gucci seamlessly pull off morphing the skittering drums of a somewhat generic UK drill beat into a thudding bouyon rhythm for Guadeloupean trio HollyG to run amok over. Throw in police sirens and bursts of noise that sound like hitting a new high score on an arcade game, and it feels like a beat that just keeps on powering up as it goes on.
KeiyaA: “lateeee”
On Rage Tape, a compilation KeiyaA quietly put out last year under the moniker dj cowriiie, she really flexes her production chops. One minute she’s on an astral-sounding drum’n’bass kick and the next she’s breathing new life into a classic Lil’ Kim verse; it’s a looseness that stood out in comparison to the tight, concision of Forever, Ya Girl. Well, that trying-shit-out ethos carried into the new studio album Hooke’s Law, especially with the way “lateeee” mashes together 808s massive enough for OsamaSon with celestial beams. They should spin this when they open the first strip club on the moon.