On Wednesday, Baton Rouge rapper Kevin Gates was released from an Illinois state prison where he’s been incarcerated since April on weapons charges.

Kevin Gates has been one of the most intriguing and enigmatic talents in hip-hop since he emerged out of Louisiana in the mid-2000s. Gates’ music is a compelling mix of trappy Southern hip-hop, rap rock riffs, massive peaking choruses, and emotive bittersweet ballads.

Much has been made of the blurring of the lines between rock, rap, and emo in the last year or so. This trend has been felt mostly in hip-hop, where countless artists like Lil Peep, Lil Uzi Vert, Trippie Redd, even Post Malone, are making music that doesn’t just blend genres, but shatters them entirely.

Kevin Gates, 31, is older than these other artists, there’s less Good Charlotte and more Limp Bizkit in his music. While that statement could seem like a critique not long ago, the new wave of genre-defying hip-hop has refined the super corny era of late 1990s rap rock into something much more fascinating.

Gates’ discography is a wild, diverse collection, including ballads like “Hard For” from 2016’s extremely impressive Islah.

Kevin Gates sings gently to his partner in his syrupy drawl that “You the only one that my dick can get hard for” and it’s somehow not ridiculous… it’s even kind of romantic.

“Really Really”, also off Islah is a triumphant tour de force of rap maximalism. Gates is a master of the hook, his voice thunders above the blaring organs, and “Really Really” is as perfect a chorus that you’ll hear.

Another Gates classic is “2 Phones”, I mean how can you not wil’ out to that chorus?

Or the exultant “I Don’t Get Tired” from 2014’s Luca Brasi 2: Gangsta Grillz.

His latest project, By Any Means 2, released in September while Gates was behind bars and compiled by his wife and manager, was a clear indication that nothing can really stop Gates from leaving his imprint on the game.

By Any Means 2 is vintage Gates. Going from the grimy as fuck “No Love” and “McGyver”, which are Gates’ version of contemporary Bayou-infused Southern rap to R&B ballads like “Beautiful Scars” and “D U Down”.

“Had To” is another of Gates’ massive choruses, sounding like he’s singing from some higher level, his voice has this sense of levitation, bringing the listener up to his level.

For as hard as some of Gates’ more street oriented tracks, like “Had To”, are, his trap ballads make him a truly special and individual artist.

“Fuckin Right” and “D U Down” are pretty explicit, but when Gates sings “That ass is from Houston but that mouth from Chicago” it’s somehow endearingly tender.

And “D U Down” ist some top class buttery R&B.

Gates has a variety of styles, but his lyrical content has massive range as well. From pugnacious bars about serving to sappy, if not ultra-explicit, love songs to rapping about his demons, Gates can do it all.

On “Beautiful Scars” with PnB Rock, Gates raps about his complex interiority:

“In the game going hard, I been misused
Fucked up in the brain, got some issues”

The track is so enjoyable and Gates’ flow so confident that you almost miss the fact that he’s writing about his mental health, a subject he’s been open about before.

In a 2013 interview with HipHopDX, Gates spoke about his battles with depression and using music as an outlet:

“I really deal with depression. I really, really deal with depression. And my only release is making music and getting tattoos. So, I’m not the type of artist that the label has to say, ‘Hey Kevin, you need to be in the studio.’ Nah, you don’t have to tell me that, I’m gonna be there. And I don’t approach things like I’m working on a project.”

It’s clear that Kevin Gates is an artist with unlimited depth, he’s got some issues to work on, both mental and legal, but he’s an invaluable part of modern hip-hop.

Here’s hoping to his long-lasting freedom and some more boundless music.

The streaming age of music has turned the industry on top of its head. Because retail is digital and artists can deliver music directly to the consumer’s ears, we’re starting to see albums classified differently.

Though a studio albums, Drake and Future’s W.A.T.T.B.A  and Drake’s If Your Reading Thus It’s Too Late were considered a “mixtapes”. Similarly, Drizzy’s very next compilation of songs, More Life, was not your traditional album either, but a “playlist”.

Well, Wiz Khalifa’s producer E. Dan, in an interview with BeatStars, expounded on why label heads are not opposed to this trend.

.@WizKhalifa​'s producer E. Dan (@IdlabsMusic) explains how record labels avoid paying producers + how Wiz' loyalty got him beat placements 💯

Exclusive interview with @DJPain1 + @BeatStars 🙌🏽 pic.twitter.com/qAgm430dE5

— BeatStars (@BeatStars) January 2, 2018

According to the the long-time producer, Atlantic Records didn’t compensate him fairly for his six production credits on the Pittsburgh rapper’s 2016 “compilation album” Khalifa.

“They came up with some really clever name that essentially meant… Everyone involved, you’re going to get paid half what you normally do… I’ve seen it happen often over the last few years.”

As Twitter caught wind of the interview, more producers began recounting similar stories.

DJ Burn One wrote that RCA employed similar tactics with A$AP Rocky’s Live. Love. A$AP mixtape. And Metro Boomin, who’s been vocal about Atlantics’s misdealings, tuned added that it’s been happening with labels across the industry and suggested a union be formed in their stead.

RCA got us producers like this on the first rocky album too – ughh I mean mixtape. that’s why it’s not on streaming sites. we gotta eat shit while they tour off our records. https://t.co/KLePuKYe3z

— DJ Burn One (@djburnone) January 3, 2018

If you gonna call out Atlantic then you might as well call out all the labels because they all doing the same thing. Shit cash money was dropping actual albums and wasnt even paying the producers. You can’t just single out one party when all other parties doing the same. https://t.co/YaKPQfOgrn

— Sonny (@SonnyDigital) January 3, 2018

If 2017 has taught us anything it’s in the importance of the producer in hip-hop.

Metro Boomin released four joint studio albums with artist from Big Sean to Gucci Mane last year alone as a DJ/producer — the first feat I’ve seen by a producer ever — which will only open doors for more like him.

This kind of transparency from artist — or producers for that matter — are able to get this kind of recognition due to the digital age’s fast flow of information, and one can only hope that it puts the pressure of labels to do the right thing.

On November 22, 2017 Kanye West released My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, a perfect album of maximalist production, ridiculous brags, and a rolodex of the biggest artists in contemporary music.

It is perhaps Kanye’s greatest work to date. Kanye aesthetes disagree over what is Kanye’s best album, ranking West’s albums has become the subject of debate in and of itself. Some may appreciate the naïveté of College Dropout, the ‘real hip-hop’ artistry of Late Registration, the seminal sadboy record 808’s and Heartbreaks, or the dystopian Yeezus. But Twisted Fantasy is quite simply a flawless record.

It is Kanye’s magnum opus, crafted during a self-imposed exile in Hawaii, working alongside artists and producers inspiring his work and creative process. Kanye is a true post-modern artist, jamming together different aesthetics and styles in collage. His vision is always unified and concrete, but the way he achieves that vision is through a tour of different forms of art.

Only Kanye West could sample The Turles, King Crimson, Gil Scott-Heron, James Brown, and Aphex Twin on one album.

Pusha T said of Kanye’s work in the studio,

“We could easily be working on one song, thinking we’re in a mode, and he’ll hear a sound from someone like [producer] Jeff Bhasker and immediately turn his whole attention to that sound and go through his mental Rolodex to where that sound belongs on his album, and then it goes straight to that song, immediately. Now, mind you, his album is a collage of sounds. It has one consistent theme, but you really have to be some type of weirdo to be able to do that. It’s like turning on the drop of a dime, in a car. A Maybach on a two-lane highway making a fucking U-turn.”

Kanye is indeed some type of weirdo and Twisted Fantasy is the ultimate representation of one of the most fascinating and mercurial artists in modern music.

From the outset of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye weaves his story of contemptuous celebrity, simultaneously anomic and boastful. He’s pissed off by fame and power, but he also wants you to know how that he’s also the greatest, but there’s discontents in being the best.

https://giphy.com/gifs/kanye-west-runaway-rZwXgL8laM4ZG

Kanye raps some of his most poignant bars of his career on “Gorgeous”,

“And what’s a black Beatle anyway, a fucking roach?
I guess that’s why they got me sitting in fucking coach”

This is Kanye at his most Kanye. He’s eloquent, sentimental, and petty all at the same time.

MBDTF is the album that most explains Kanye’s art and his goals with his art. Everything about the album rollout, the production, the features, the accompanying album artwork and short film is meticulously crafted, revealing Ye’s obsessive focus on his work.

There’s the “Runaway” film that Kanye directed with writing help from music video titan Hype Williams.

For the album artwork, Kanye enlisted visual artist George Condo. The pair listened to MBDTF together and Condo came up with a series of five designs. They settled upon the drawing of a Black man (Kanye) being straddled by a white sphinx without arms and a monstrous face as the final artwork for the album.

Condo told Vulture about the sphinx straddling West:

“She’s a kind of fragment, between a sphinx, a phoenix, a haunting ghost, a harpy. And then Kanye is also in some sort of strange 1970s burned-out back room of a Chicago blues club having a beer — so far away from the real Kanye West that it’s just a scream… I was challenging him with the imagery as well. He said, ‘I’m shocked, but I like it, and I gotta go with my gut feeling.'”

Perhaps Kanye’s greatest skill is not his own musical ability, but what he’s able to draw out of the artists he works with. This is the case with Williams and Condo, each artist doing some of the most evocative work of their careers alongside West.

It is also true of the musicians that appear on MBDTF. Never has Pusha T sounded so furious, so spurious, and raw as when he raps over the metronomic keys of “Runaway”.

“Monster” shows Nicki Minaj rapping like she’s never rapped before, or since. This was 2010, Nicki Minaj hadn’t reached the soaring heights of her now illustrious career.

Her verse on “Monster” became a sort of certification, from both Kanye and hip-hop as a whole. (We don’t need to talk about Jay-Z’s verse on “Monster”.)

Has Chris Rock ever been funnier than his monologue at the end of “Blame Game”?

Rick Ross on “Devil In A New Dress” briefly left his own rotund body and became rap royalty in his verse. It is one of the greatest verses in contemporary rap music.

Just recently, Ross spoke at ComplexCon and described going to Kanye with his initial verse for “Devil In A New Dress”, but Ye encouraged him to keep working on it:

“When I recorded that verse for the first time, he came in, heard it and he told me he thought I could do better and he walked out. And then I wrote another one and the second verse I wrote is the one you hear on the album which a lot of people consider one of Rozay best verses. Shout out to Yeezy.”

This is a testament to Kanye’s perfectionism. The fact that he’s able to get so much out of the artists he surrounds himself with, the fact that they’re willing to bend and manipulate their own processes for Kanye, trusting in his vision.

But the ultimate gift of MBDTF is the production. This record sounds like no other hip-hop record ever made.

There’s the apocalyptic maximalism of “POWER”.

The growling production of “Monster”.

The twinkling, haunting keys of “Runaway”.

The throbbing synths of “Hell Of A Life”.

The sprawling “Lost In The World”.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy may not be your favorite Kanye album, but it is unequivocally his best. It is the ultimate representation of post-modern hip-hop, and it displays an artist in full control of his abilities and able to guide those he works alongside to elevate their own art.

Yeezy taught us well.

https://giphy.com/gifs/kanye-west-ballet-piano-YF6TU5kOrl076

Gold chain. Gold teeth. Gold scalp. Just as the slow-motion figure begins to gain focus, the lens snaps to a man sitting in a Tesla Model X, falcon doors ajar, casually talking on a phone one can only assume is not available to everyday people like you and me.

The word ICON flashes across the screen, heavy subwoofers and intricate hi-hats flood your ears complimented by the cry of a soul sample.

At this point, you have no choice, he has your attention.

“Icon” was the single picked to drop alongside Jaden Smith’s debut studio album, SYRE released November 16th and it’s clear why.

Much like the title of the song, the video is a proclamation. Calling yourself a living icon stems from a confidence that doesn’t develop overnight. It’s unapologetic, raw, and self-aggrandizing.

The person you see in the video — decked out in gold, sporting his own clothing line, and rapping his ass off — is not who we were introduced to in the Pursuit of Happiness, The Karate Kid or who rapped alongside Justin Bieber. This may explain why Smith elected to go with his middle name Sryre as the album title instead of Jaden.

When you watch the video for “Icon” you’re looking at someone who has come into their own. While I’m nose-to-the-screen in awe at the development, he’s delivering bars in a manner that suggests I shouldn’t be surprised at all.

As if we should have known this was coming. It’s that confidence, even more so than his rapping ability, that stands out.

Being the son of Will and Jada Smith, a child actor, and coming from money can get you almost anywhere in life, except hip-hop. Privilege doesn’t bode over well in rap. Drake still catches heat for being on a television show in his adolescence. This is why props must be given to Jaden and his freshman effort.

The 17-track, 70 minute-long offering, which took him three years to complete, has already received high praise. Besides cosigns from A$AP Rocky, Logic, Kendrick, and others in the industry, as of yesterday it debuted at number one on iTunes.

WHAT THE FUCK!!!!! pic.twitter.com/K1qaxEg6Gy

— Jaden (@jaden) November 21, 2017

What’s dope about Jaden Smith and what can be taken away from the release and early success of SYRE is that he never stops working.

From dropping his first mixtape at the age of 14 to his joint-mixtape with Daniel D’artist back in 2015, Smith has never compromised his passion in music.

Even his contributions on other artist’s work like Post Malone’s “Lonely” and Rich the Kid’s “Like This” helped lay groundwork to cementing his place in the industry.

From top to bottom the album leaves no stone unturned, Jaden enlists his sister for harmonizations and even inserts spoken word poetry to help convey his emotions.

While he’s till figuring it out — conceptually this body of work was a bit all over the place — what Jaden has done was demand the attention of the hip-hop community. Jaden could easily be dismissed.

While his dad is beloved and has even won a Grammy, Will was never seen as a lyricist enough to be looking for it in Jaden.

There are no certainties in life. Will Smith’s money can only go so far. There are only so many strings to be pulled, eventually you’re going to have to show and prove. Jaden did more than that with SYRE. He’s achieved success not because of his parents, but in spite of them.

At only 19 years old, Jaden Smith has a campaign to reduce the amount of plastic bottles on earth, has his own record label and clothing line, and, despite the risk of completely striking out, dropped an album that is actually pretty fire. Maybe the only limits are in our heads.

People are tuning in to see what Jaden has to say simply because he’s a completely unique figure in modern art.

Jaden Smith earned his spot in hip-hop by taking his chance.

Listen to Syre below.

Barack Obama will officially go down in history as the most swagged out president to ever touch the Oval Office. To prove it, he’s having his portrait done by hip-hop portrait artist Kehinde Wiley.

President Obama really stepped out the box for this one. He and wife Michelle Obama have selected the first ever Black painters to do the presidential portrait. Michelle Obama will have her profile done by Baltimore-based painter Amy Sherald.

Normally, ex-presidents and their First Ladies have their portraits painted by artists commissioned by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

According to tradition, the last eight US presidents have employed 90-year old portrait artist Everett Raymond Kinstler.

But, the Obamas said FOH, Wiley and Sherald are too fire.

Wiley draws inspiration from classical European paintings and adds a touch of African American street culture. His style is unparalleled. The NY-based artist takes oil on canvas to another level.

 Peep Wiley’s version of “The Virgin Martyr Saint Cecilia…”

“The Virgin Martyr Saint Cecilia” 2010 oil on canvas

A post shared by Kehinde Wiley (@kehindewiley) on Jun 1, 2017 at 10:11am PDT

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This Swizz Beatz portrait he did for his Modern Kings Series

Modern Kings Series photographic portrait of culture icon Swizz Beatz. A true champion of the arts. Big thanks to Grey Goose for an amazing project! @therealswizzz #fruitofkings @greygoose #championofthearts #culturalambassador #flybeyond

A post shared by Kehinde Wiley (@kehindewiley) on Jun 28, 2014 at 10:26am PDT

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And Carmelo Anthony looking like he’s about to conquer a kingdom

Modern Kings Series photographic portrait of sports prodigy Carmelo Anthony. A true American icon. Big thanks to Grey Goose for an amazing project! @carmeloanthony #fruitofkings @greygoose #wunderkind #modernkings

A post shared by Kehinde Wiley (@kehindewiley) on Jul 16, 2014 at 10:11am PDT

Amy Sherald, 44, has a unique style. Her depictions of African American women have won her prestigious awards.

Sherald became the first African American and first woman to ever win the National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition.

She was chosen for the $25,000 award from among 2,500 entrants.

Sherald uses grey skin tones to depict the complexion of African Americans

New work @ Monique Meloche LES March 3 -5, 2017 #armoryweek 2 Rivington St. New York, New York

A post shared by Amy Sherald (@asherald) on Mar 1, 2017 at 8:00am PST

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Her work speaks to you, it’s like every portrait tells a story

New works @ Monique Meloche LES March 3-5 2017 #armoryweek 2 Rivington St. NY, NY

A post shared by Amy Sherald (@asherald) on Mar 1, 2017 at 7:57am PST

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Peep this oil and canvas

[Work in progress] #studio #art #goaldigger #oiloncanvas #painter #color #summer #beautiful #babes

A post shared by Amy Sherald (@asherald) on Mar 10, 2015 at 11:31am PDT

The Obamas’ portraits are definitely going to bring a lot of well-deserved attention for both artists. They will be unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC next year.

Shoutouts to Michelle and Barack for going against the grain. Your individuality will forever be imprinted in the minds of people everywhere.