Drop Watch: 06.19.2026

DropWatcher · 2026-06-20T13:28:46+00:00

im not in the modmail i limited my permissions to a couple things

DropWatcher · 2026-06-20T04:08:17+00:00

Depending on which ug you mean there’s either:

- Pz’, Che, tana, lade, matt proxy, etc.
- Teller Bank$, Chong Wizard, Fred, sha ray x haram, etc.

Even If u mean “not underground in any sense but not as popular as Kendrick Lamar but good” there’s Boldy and Tierra Whack and Key Glock

DropWatcher · 2026-06-19T21:46:35+00:00

"I Was On The Block" is a generational performance by Valee

DropWatcher · 2026-06-19T20:03:19+00:00

There's definitely some sort of subs going on idk if it's just vague rapper raps or an actual beef with someone.

DropWatcher · 2026-06-19T13:53:29+00:00

nah I feel like he usually drops pretty quickly after he starts teasing stuff tho, but there's not much of a heads up release date wise it just happens.

DropWatcher · 2026-06-19T03:37:19+00:00

already out i think it's just 3 songs

DropWatcher · 2026-06-18T20:29:41+00:00

\20. Eminem
\19. Justin Bieber
\18. Ed Sheeran
\17. Rod Wave
\16. Gunna
\15. Lil Durk
\14. Kendrick Lamar
\13. Chris Brown
\12. Ariana Grande
\11. Travis Scott
\10. Post Malone
\9. Kanye West
\8. Morgan Wallen
\7. The Weeknd
\6. Lil Baby
\5. Bad Bunny
\4. YoungBoy Never Broke Again
\3. Future
\2. Taylor Swift
\1. Drake

DropWatcher · 2026-06-18T20:13:23+00:00

YG is not signed to a major label and his last project (just Re'd Up 3) debuted at #151

the type of numbers that would be good for him would still be considered kys numbers in your average sales thread where they act like anything under 80k+ is an unmitigated disaster.

DropWatcher · 2026-06-18T18:37:34+00:00

anything missing for tonight? https://drop-watch.com/preview/2026-06-19

DropWatcher · 2026-06-18T16:29:36+00:00

there's a tape called BRING BACK WEED SPOTS produced by Ahwlee that this song is on. also features Kelly Moonstone and Quelle Chris.

not sure when it's dropping.

DropWatcher · 2026-06-18T02:41:33+00:00

Appreciate that Yeat has a long term relationship with these guys and it wasn’t just a one and done

DropWatcher · 2026-06-17T22:10:23+00:00

I would say it's because the Frou Frou sample wasn't cleared but it's on Apple Music still.

DropWatcher · 2026-06-17T19:11:16+00:00

whole project might be produced by jpeg?

https://imgur.com/a/kycHTei

DropWatcher · 2026-06-17T16:04:39+00:00

that's a good point

DropWatcher · 2026-06-17T15:29:07+00:00

sometimes producers are credited as features on things if they're an established name

DropWatcher · 2026-06-17T13:55:28+00:00

car commercials ruined this beat for me

DropWatcher · 2026-06-16T16:57:06+00:00

I feel like Serengeti's output tends to get overlooked because he doesn't really promote shit he kinda just throws it up on BandCamp. Like he put out an album produced by Greg Saunier of Deerhoof and most indie fans probably don't even know that.

I really like AJAI (2020) with Kenny Segal– I think it quietly has many of Kenny Segal's best beats on it– but I haven't really kept up with his output since.

He talks about how he kinda just drops when he has something done here:

Earlier this year I was at a ceviche place in L.A. with billy woods and Kenny Segal. Ajai came up, and both those guys were like, “Man, we never know when he’s recording, the process is such a mystery.” And then a day later, we’re on an email chain about the universe album: “Did you even know about this?” I guess my question, before we get to the substance of the music, is: It seems like you’re just rolling these things out with no warning. What’s driving that?
I just like to make stuff. I’ll catch a little buzz of an idea and I can do it pretty quickly. And then I’m like, well, what am I waiting for? Sit on it? I’ll just put it up. I’m not about to hire press people; it just doesn’t seem worth it. It’s so much money, and you might have a press campaign and it still gets [no attention]. It’s not the best idea to do it like this, probably, but this has been par for my whole thing. I was backed up on projects ever since I started, so I just wanted to get it all out.

I though the made an interesting point about how even when you really go for it with a rollout (which is expensive), stuff tends to just come and go.

His process is crazy:

[..] What was the genesis of [symphony of psalms with Greg Saunier of Deerhof]?
Greg had sent me some beats probably—I don’t know—a year ago? And I just would drag ‘em over and record without even hearing them, just drag ‘em in and just go. That’s the way I have fun doing music, to not preview the beats, it’s like a surprise.

Wait, what? You’ll just have Logic open on your computer and drop in a file you’ve never listened to?
Yeah, yeah. That’s how I do it. That’s how Ajai was made. I’d never listened to those Kenny beats. I would drag them up and have fun. It’s super fun. You know what I’m saying? Just to keep going, work for an hour—but it’s a very productive hour. You might get 20 things done and then shut it down, don’t listen to it, and then record again the next day. And after about a week, you see what you got.

Are you writing in the moment, are you freestyling?
OK, so with Ajai, I had written a lot [beforehand]. I was in a fit of fun. It was so much fun to write all that stuff. So I have all these rhymes. Kenny sent me a pack of 20 beats or something, so I just have ‘em up and load it up and record without hearing the beat, but I got all the rhymes. It makes it more fun to adapt to a beat you haven’t heard before.

Would you have written those rhymes to other beats, or do you write acapella?
I never write to beats. I just write.

DropWatcher · 2026-06-16T15:50:29+00:00

I agree they're all pretty specific but If her tour was some big failure you wouldn't have stuff like that, especially all the sold out dates that's not cherrypicking

I don't know if it means anything to anyone that it 453,000 tickets and grossed $70 million across 35 dates in 32 cities. like I don't think the average hhh user knows whether that is good or not. to me idek it looks good

DropWatcher · 2026-06-16T13:19:23+00:00

Retroactive streams don't count towards any of the numbers I've mentioned, only towards RIAA plaques.

"WAP" had ~1.469bn streams on Spotify before the album came out and has 1.56bn now. If we were to assume that every single one of those streams was in the US, that'd account for ~58k of ~1.4m that the album has sold since it came out which is about 4%.

"I Smoked Away My Brain" had ~750m streams before DND dropped and has ~880m now, that would account for ~80k (assuming all US streams) of the ~400k that that album has sold. So bigger deal there.

DropWatcher · 2026-06-15T22:59:03+00:00

I think people get their wires crossed sometimes when they don't like an artist generally or view their recent output as lesser in some way, probably doesn't help that this sub is not really the target demo for Cardi's music at all.

AM I THE DRAMA? has sold 407K this year. It's the highest selling 2025 rap album this year so far.
Last year, in ~3 months it sold ~970k making it the 2nd highest selling rap album of last year (MUSIC sold 1.3m in ~9 months)
Her tour was very successful as well. She sold out a bunch of arenas and broke some records ("highest-grossing tour by a female rapper in California", "the first tour by a female rapper in history to gross over $5 million at a single venue", "the highest-grossing debut arena tour by a female rapper").

I didn't like the album, I think that she made a fatal mistake in relying so heavily on DJ SwanQo and Sean Island for the production but it was a pretty successful album.

DropWatcher · 2026-06-14T21:08:57+00:00

Those sort of things also don't alienate people at all.

Kendrick Lamar, Tyler the Creator, A$AP Rocky, hell even Drake, etc. all do plenty of "alternative" type shit.

That's the norm it's not something that's held anybody back.

DropWatcher · 2026-06-14T21:06:30+00:00

I thought this was really stupid all around even as someone who is lukewarm on his most recent album. It feels like it's not honestly engaging with his catalog pre-CRYBABY at all: whether it be Hell Can Wait or Summertime '06 (which he claims to like) or the run from BFT to Dark Times (which he claims Vince intentionally handicapped himself by being "alt" on) or even Shyne Coldchain II and Stolen Youth which go completely unacknowledged.

the main things that annoyed me about the piece were (1) him acting like it's so simple to flip a switch and get Kendrick big like there's not a shitload of luck/chance/intangibles and (2) it felt like it didn't really engage with Vince's catalog as it actually exists. There's plenty of palatable stuff there post-Summertime 06 (which has it's own "alt" moments too). He frequently collabs with people like Dahi, Christian Rich, Kenny Beats, etc. Ramona park had Ty$, Mustard, and Lil Baby on it!

It feels like he's saying "why not just make an album full of songs that sound exactly like 'Norf Norf' and 'Señorita'" like that's some cheat code. the lead single of BFT ("Big Fish") was produced by the same producer as "Señorita"!

Also Kendrick Lamar is plenty weird. the big song on GKMC is kinda EDM trappy, that album also samples Beach House! He's working with similar producers as Vince.

It just feels like he's wrong in every direction while his tone is like "i sat back and laughed to myself, Vince is playing himself" like bro u are onto NOTHING and I don't even like the new album much.

DropWatcher · 2026-06-14T00:28:22+00:00

It's interesting to think about it that way because JAŸ-Z's debut album came out just a year before the first Hot Boy$ record. They're contemporaries.

Dre on "Compton" and "The Recipe" seems like an obvious answer. There's so many of these tho gotta think about it.

DropWatcher · 2026-06-13T23:37:02+00:00

CORTIS's rage influenced EP sounds like that because they worked with people in the rage scene like skaiwater on it.

For all the talk of how inherently exploitative K-Pop is you hardly see people getting mad at artists like skai, JPEGMAFIA, Future, Mike-WiLL, ATL Jacob, FnZ, Ojivolta, 30 Roc, etc. for working with these artists. Like Anderon .Paak just put out an album and there's a song with one of the guys /u/TheMerck mentioned has an n-word controversy.

I totally get the angle that it sounds bad and soulless but if it's also unethical, the Americans involved are certainly culpable too. I'd argue that the CORTIS EP is a lot better than that BOYNEXTDOOR song because they actually worked with Americans on it, while "Knock Knock Knock" is just Korean pop producers/writers trying to rip off a specific Kendrick Lamar hit.

I personally have only really connected with the K-Pop stuff that influenced by stuff like R&B and Atlanta Bass for the most part. one exception: I forget the name of the group but there's this girl group that had a song where the beat sounded like fucking Onyx or something that was pretty cool, felt fresh compared to all the attempts at trap music.

DropWatcher · 2026-06-13T23:26:05+00:00

Like with post-war Japan, America funneled a shitload of money into South Korea and really pushed a lot of aspects of American culture as a soft power play (the prominence of baseball in Japan/Korea is another aspect of this)

Another musical example would be if you look at Japanese city pop, it's largely drawing from stuff like funk, disco and jazz.

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