With The Hip-Hop Industry In Flux, NYC Drill Is An Unlikely Soundtrack To The COVID-19 Pandemic

Fans of Pop Smoke received some of the first new material showcasing the tragically departed rapper today.

A rising Brooklyn star whose murder this past February cut short what promised to be his breakout year, he appears posthumously on two just-released projects, on Canadian rapper Nav’s Good Intentions album highlight “Run It Up” and alongside Lil Tjay on “Zoo York” off of his State Of Emergency EP.

The latter of these songs, which also features his peer Fivio Foreign, serves as part of a veritable bumper crop of NYC drill, the regional iteration of a hard-edged and oft-violent strain of rap music increasingly bringing the streets to the charts. With thematic and sonic origins coming from Chicago and London, this burgeoning hip-hop form has seen more than a half-dozen mixtape, album, or EP length records emerge from key scene representatives.

A local originator of the style, Brooklyn’s own 22Gz was the first to get something out, with his April 10th mixtape Growth & Development. The following Friday, April 17th, Spanish-language rappers Chucky73 and Fetti031 of the Bronx-centered Sie7etr3 crew dropped an eight-song joint EP. Next up, Fivio Foreign dropped his 800 BC effort on April 24th, with features by Lil Baby and Meek Mill, while Smoove’L put out his own guest-free Boy From Brooklyn on May 1st. And now, after Lil Tjay’s aforementioned State Of Emergency today, we’re due to receive a brand new project entitled One And Only from prime mover Sheff G next Friday, May 15th.

The staggered frequency seems almost organized and intentional, with weekly drops uncannily timed so as not to impede the presumed competition. That latter bit is especially curious, given how fiercely factional and territorial NYC drill gets. Several of its best known acts are seemingly engaged in active rivalries with one another and their sets, evidenced by lyrics that oft employ hyper-insular gang-related jargon.

Often coming from major labels, whether through direct signings or distribution and marketing deals, these releases have largely supplanted what would have likely been key spring albums from comparatively more established stars, in hip-hop or otherwise. The COVID-19 pandemic has the industry shook. Though rappers can sometimes be cagey about release dates even in better times, compared to pop stars or rock bands whose albums come directly tied to potentially lucrative concert tours, it’s evident that known artists who’d been seeding the market with singles have hit the pause button.

Even surefire hitmakers appear to be taking more cautious steps right now. Following his Tik Tok centric hit single “Toosie Slide,” Drake dropped Dark Lane Demo Tapes. Early speculation around the surprise release had some thinking this would be his highly-anticipated follow-up to 2018’s double-LP Scorpion. Instead, it proved to be a collection of unreleased tracks and previously available loosies not entirely unlike last year’s odds-and-sods set Care Package. Boasting a handful of its own drill features, Dark Lane Demo Tapes will assuredly top the Billboard 200 album charts next week, though its success may be relatively short-lived given the nature of the project.

A relatively safe move, the stopgap mixtape approach has been employed during the pandemic by numerous hip-hop artists, for both up-and-comers as well as respected notables including Tory Lanez and Wiz Khalifa. An intentional holdover release to satiate fans until a long-awaited and Metro Boomin produced album, Lil Durk’s Just Cause Y’all Waited 2 arrived today with a corresponding merchandise drop of apparel and accessories designed for further revenue generation and chart-friendly bundling.

While practices like these were already firmly in place before the pandemic, we can expect more rappers to shy away from albums as the quarantines and stay-and-home orders persists, lest they underperform. Some have bucked the trend to secure easy wins on the Billboard 200. But while those placements look nice on paper, the numbers are tellingly troubling. Youngboy NBA’s 38 Baby 2 debuted atop the album chart this week, albeit with only 61% of the first week units generated by his prior No. 1 AI Youngboy 2 just seven months ago. The week before, DaBaby’s Blame It On Baby reached the No. 1 spot with 124,000 units, 15% fewer than his 2019 album Kirk.

For NYC drill artists, some of whom have never released more than an EP’s worth of music before 2020, the pandemic period’s clearer and less competitive release calendar has translated to a surplus that seeks, intentionally or not, to fill a growing demand. Pop Smoke’s untimely death came during the height of his popularity and well ahead of the domestic U.S. quarantines. Many of these recently released projects from his drill peers employ the same U.K.-based producers as his last record Meet The Woo 2, that unmistakable rhythm heard on tracks like Fivio Foreign’s “Wetty” and Lil Tjay’s “Shoot For The Stars”—both courtesy of AXL Beats.

And while few of these projects are making much of an impact on the Billboard 200, they’re undoubtedly developing an audience during these unstable times that could pay off in the mid-term and the long run. Listeners are absorbing this material under quarantine and following these artists’ moves on social media. Once we’re allowed to leave our homes again, NYC drill artists may very well convert those once-captive audiences into eager fans willing to consume whatever they have on deck next.