Dylan’s Favorite Independent Rap Projects of 2024
Twenty great hip-hop joints from off the beaten path
The last few years of rap coverage and conversation have been dominated by numbers. Social media discourse is generally guided by first-week sales, projections, rumors, beef, and controversy—anything but the music that’s supposed to be at its core. I feel similarly sour about lists, which often dredge up more words about rankings and placements than they do about the songs. One of my few favorite things about list season is sidestepping those conversations entirely and putting the emphasis back where it belongs.
You don’t need me to tell you that rap music had an incredible 2024. There were many quality albums and songs, big and small. But using up any of my end-of-year list to highlight the big ones that every other list has already covered seems bleak and unnecessary. Instead, I wanna highlight what’s happening on the independent side. While there are a few bigger names on this list, every project I’ve chosen is certified indie, meaning they’re not attached in any way to corporate labels like Universal or Atlantic. Many of them were released through boutique labels, crafty distribution deals, or uploaded and distributed solo to platforms like Bandcamp.
I’m most interested in the rap music that flew under the radar this year, by artists who were unafraid to get a little weird and experimental or to dive fully into the sounds and tics of a particular scene. Jersey club, Atlanta trap, Milwaukee low-end, East Coast-indebted lo-fi, Bay Area swag rap, and more are represented here (two of the releases on this list are more akin to dance albums than rap albums, but I included it here because it's that good and because I feel like it). These are my favorite indie rap records of 2024, presented in alphabetical order.
’89 the Brainchild: Night Lives
New Jersey rapper ’89 the Brainchild is here to take you for a ride through the tri-state area’s bustling nightlife. Rap, hardcore, jungle, soul, club, footwork, and synth-pop collide in a cloud of empty Modelo cans, cigarette smoke, and warm, hazy moments. Just don’t forget to get off at your stop.
Best Songs: “Get a Bag,” “All My Opps Wants This Dick,” “Guestlist @ Mi Sabor”
Anysia Kym: Truest
After years of producing for kindred spirits like Mike, Semiratruth, and Jadasea, New York beatmaker and multiinstrumentalist Anysia Kym centers herself on Truest. There’s something alluring about how her vocals, soft and topaz as a fall leaf caught in an updraft, clash with the sticky, punishing beats she surrounds them with.
Best Songs: “Selfish Freestyle,” “In Doubt,” “Amplitude”
Blackchai x August Fanon: Otherwise A Blur
New York rapper Blackchai and producer August Fanon bring a whirlwind of thoughts and sounds together to create a piece of East Coast hip-hop that’s frenetic and Ginsu-sharp. Read my profile on chai from last month for some insight on one of the most fearsome rap projects of the year.
Best Songs: “Dissonant Strains,” “War Rations,” “Planetary Devastation”
Cavalier: Different Type Time
On “Doodoo Damien,” a standout from this year’s Different Type Time, New Orleans-via-Brooklyn rapper Cavalier says, “You leave my biopic liable to shoot.” After taking in an album this expansive, soulful, and packed wall-to-wall with S-rank rapping, it does feel like walking out of a long but satisfying movie, dazed and ready to run it back.
Best Songs: “Custard Spoon,” “Doodoo Damien,” “Think About It”
Demiyaa: Bonnie & Clyde
Atlanta up-and-comer Demiyaa kicks shit over 808s and soul samples with a voice that sounds like Flo Milli on Zoloft. Though this project originally dropped in September, I first heard it about a week ago and haven’t been able to put it down since.
Best Songs: “Ik I Look Good,” “Call Me Miya,” “French Tips”
FearDorian: FearDorian
Feardorian is the intersection where amber-hued Midwest emo, Atlanta trap, and Milwaukee low-end collide. A Dog’s Chance, the rapper-producer’s album with Connecticut rapper Polo Perks and Milwaukee goon rapper savant AyooLii, is more fun and colorful, but his self-titled debut Feardorian is a more cutting and complete thought. The plain directness of his raps is the perfect compliment to the beats, which shimmer, shatter, and thump with the manic anxiety of your late teens.
Best Songs: “Acrid Taste,” “Raining in Brooklyn,” “Run Dry”
Gum.mp3: Black Life, Red Planet
Virginia producer and DJ Gum.mp3 has spent the 2020s giving jungle, house, and synthwave music a perky modern facelift—his albums feel like they should come with a silk button-down and Kapital bell-bottom pants. His latest project Black Life, Red Planet takes that mindset intergalactic, a daydream of what the funk might feel like on the surface of Mars. Try to not fall into its grooves, as steady and dusty as the treads on the Mars Rover’s wheels.
Best Songs: “Spacey,” “Compression,” “Deimos”
Kjade: The Sound That Trees Make
One of the best parts of being deep in the indie rap trenches is stumbling onto an artist who radiates supreme Next Up energy. Arizona rapper kJade (the k is silent—it’s pronounced “Jade”) was that for me in 2024. No rap debut sounded as assured or soulful as The Sound That Trees Make, a collection that charts a hero’s journey through the mind of a 20-something Black woman figuring it all out. Backed by minimal loops and lush slappers produced by Esteban, Trees is an album to live with and get lost in.
Best Songs: “Sankofa,” “More Fruit,” “Innr Child”
Klwn Cat x Sunmundi: Lived and Born
California producer Klwn Cat and New York rapper Sunmundi’s collaborative debut Lived and Born isn’t necessarily an album about reincarnation, but you’ll think about it a lot while you listen to it. As a writer, Sunmundi is constantly shedding skin in tha Ka or Navy Blue sense, but his delivery is more frantic and word-drunk, rebuilding himself in towering eldritch form. Klwn Cat matches him with a suite of grandly spacious beats that wouldn’t sound out of place in an Ingmar Bergman film or a level of Left 4 Dead. Lived is the kind of album that draws the impurities to the surface so the real healing process can begin.
Best Songs: “Capitulation,” “Answering the Call,” “Harbingers”
Mavi: Shadowbox
Listening to Mavi can feel like counting the rings on a tree or studying a hollowed-out cocoon. There’s history, trauma, and sauce in the North Carolina rapper’s every project, and those personal elements have never been distilled as expertly as they are on his third studio album. What starts out as a plummet to a rock bottom of addiction and deteriorating mental health becomes a slow crawl back to sanity. Watching Mavi and an audience in Boston find joy in the sadness of this album back in September is an experience I’ll never forget.
Best Songs: “I Did,” “Tether,” “Too Much to Zelle”
Myaap x Nedarb: Yop!
Of all the amped-up firestarters coming out of the Milwaukee rap scene, Myaap has been a consistent favorite for a while. Her voice, sweet and malleable as a Twizzler strand, is the perfect foil for Canadian producer Nedarb’s eardrum-shattering beats, and that chemistry clicks fully on their EP Yop! The project is just under 15 minutes, but packs a ton of heat into a candy-colored tornado of Milwaukee jerk drum claps, expertly flipped samples, and crisp shit-talk.
Best Songs: “Can’t Shame Me,” “It’s Up,” “MLK”
Ms. Boogie: The Breakdown
We should be grateful we even got another Ms. Boogie album. The Brooklyn rapper and dancer underwent some massive life changes in the seven years since her last release, Jesus Loves Me Too. The Breakdown is her first album since transitioning, and leaves no stone unturned as she sifts through every memory, every relationship, and every NDA over a bed of aqueous post-drill production. Much like Boogie herself, The Breakdown is a totem of old and new New York, in all its grime and charm.
Best Songs: “Clipped,” “Dazed & Confused,” “H20”
Nahreally x the Expert: Blip
One of the things that initially drew me to indie rap was this sense that for many artists, it was important to cut loose and have fun sometimes. With Blip, New Jersey-via-Massachusetts rapper-producer Nahreally and Irish producer The Expert find the playful in the mundane—everything from the aging process to navigating social faux pas to the simple pleasures of bubble wrap. There are flashes of Prince Paul and RZA in Expert’s proggy beats, and Nahreally’s vocal tone is reminiscent of the late Minnesota rapper Eyedea, but Blip channels those influences into something fresher. Life is so much easier when you take it less seriously.
Best Songs: “Smarter Than I Am,” “Read the Room,” “So It Goes”
Nolan the Ninja: I’d Rather Not
Detroit rapper-producer Nolan the Ninja has been trading in beats, lo-fi loops, and rhymes for the better part of a decade, and he’s lasted long enough to see the indie pendulum come back around to his traditional style. Being early to the curve can be discouraging, but that’s part of what makes I’d Rather Not, his eighth studio album, feel like such a hard-earned victory. He stuck to his convictions and sounds rejuvenated rapping over sludgy beats from himself and a handful of indie rap’s finest, ultimately transitioning from hardened battle raps to cocksure lifestyle rap. It’s a shift that indicates you’re comfortable cruising in your own lane.
Best Songs: “Kinsugi,” “Mukbang,” “Grams”
Noveliss x Hir-O: Cyberpunk Rhapsody
I learned earlier this year that Detroit rapper Noveliss almost hung his mic up in 2022 before making this year’s Cyberpunk Rhapsody. He’s been an indie stalwart since his time as a member of the group Clear Soul Forces, and has been dropping projects influenced by games, anime, and samurai films since 2016. But Rhapsody, produced entirely by longtime collaborator (and the person who convinced Noveliss not to retire) Hir-O, is a bigger production in nearly every way. The beats are grander and harder-hitting; the guests, like indie legends Blu from Cali and Elzhi from Detroit, are elite. And as a writer and rapper, Noveliss digs deep, turning his life and fantasies into a space opera with a pull stronger than any tractor beam.
Best Songs: “Coffee In Switzerland,” “Hyper Combo,” “Jobu Topaki”
Phiik & Lungs: Carrot Season
Long Island rap duo Phiik & Lungs have songs that are more detailed than some people’s entire albums. Their syllable-dense rhymes drill through any beat they rap over with diamond-cutter sharpness and keep going until they reach the bedrock. While they made their name (and frequently go viral for) flowing over drumless loops, this year’s Carrot Season is a stark reminder they can play nice with the drums, too. Producer Olasegun’s beats whirr and click with clockwork precision, and it’s nothing short of marvelous to hear these two pull off death-defying feats of language in the nooks and crannies.
Best Songs: “Gazpacho,” “Uninvolved,” “Shorty Broke My Heart at an Usher Concert in Winnipeg”
Quadry: Ask a Magnolia
Coming-of-age stories don’t necessarily have to be corny. Baton Rouge rapper Quadry’s Ask A Magnolia is as distinct and immersive as they come. He knows not only how to build a scene, but take you through it in detail, to the point where you can smell the freshly opened Sprite and feel the graduation gown sticking to your clothes. I’ve returned to the 52-second video for early single “I’m Wrong?”—where he’s running through a suburban neighborhood in a suit, American flag painted on his face—a lot this year. It’s a microcosm of the dizzyingly elaborate worlds he creates.
Best Songs: “Davonte 2003,” “Nigga You Crazy,” “I’m Wrong?”
Semiratruth: The Star of the Story
Space is clearly the place for Chicago-born rapper-producer Semiratruth. An artist as inspired by Sun Ra as they are MF DOOM, they’ve looked upward and outward for inspiration since the days of “We Interrupt This Broadcast.” But none of their songs or projects have ventured as far out into the unknown as The Star of the Story, which is more of a soupy digital ambient mix than a traditional rap album. It may not always be perceptible, but there’s no denying the sparkle of the brightest star in the sky.
Best Songs: “Humpty,” “The Story,” “ShakeYaButt (Bonus)”
Vayda: Vaytrix
Give Georgia rapper Vayda any kind of beat—sped-up synthpop, sample-based 808 thumpers—and she’s gonna flow over it ’til the wheels fall off. “Effortless” is the word that comes to mind when I think of her, the kind of skill and nonchalance that people mistake for carefree but is deeply, meticulously arranged. Vaytrix is yet another blissful collection of swag raps and missed connections set to some of the prettiest and most punishing beats I heard all year.
Best Songs: “Skyy,” “Tahiti,” “Who R U”
ZayAllCaps: iMessage Platinum: Hosted by autotuneKaraoke
Some artists like to keep you guessing, but California rapper-producer ZayAllCaps pulls so many disparate references into his music, it’d be hard to know where to start. Are you a fan of Trap-a-holics mixtape drops? Bay Area swag raps? Shards of drum & bass and plugg-adjacent sounds that would make 454 and PinkPantheress blush? Zay combines them all on iMessage Platinum, a jubilant mix that only a true student of the game would even think to bring together.
Best Songs: “Phineas,” “Orange Indica,” “360Jeezy”
