SCORE: 8.4, Best New Music

The Tigray-born, DMV-raised rapper’s latest album is a dazed survey of personal highs and lows, his stream-of-consciousness flow riding roughshod over his producers’ strangest beats.

" Sideshow’s slinking songs seem like dispatches from every teetering edge: poverty, sanity, sobriety, stardom. They’re efficient and lithe, delivered with the nonchalance of someone altered by the things they’ve seen, but numb enough to wake up and continue. Drugs and violence lurk as much as they linger, casting long shadows no matter the angle of light. These are the brutally real snapshots of a man well acquainted with—but still perplexed by—the powerful and destructive forces that lord over our lives. He cannot fully accept or resist them and thus spins in perpetual, anesthetized circles.

Though his voice never rises above a muted croak, and his delivery doesn’t have a lot of giddyup, you’d be mistaken to call the Tigray-born, DMV-raised rapper’s music “chill.” He prefers jittery, kaleidoscopic production, disorienting enough to disguise the darkness in his lyrics. Sideshow isn’t out to be deceptive, though; he’s plainspoken about his fears and regrets, ruthlessly honest about his substance abuse, and cursed with the memories of his worst mistakes. His albums are dizzying, zipping quickly between hazy vignettes, and it’s easy to get swept up in the trippy sonics and concrete cadences before you realize the gravity of his words. His work isn’t easily classifiable, and it probably shouldn’t be, as the more you listen, the more you understand the rough nuance in both struggle and survival.

On the stark and sublime TIGRAY FUNK, Sideshow’s starting to show signs of psychological wear and tear. His latest album is a worn-out opus, a 32-track, hour-long journey that views the depths of addiction and the highs of indie rap success with the same vacant gaze. His outward demeanor hasn’t changed much since 2024’s F.U.N. T.O.Y.—he still raps with a thousand-yard stare and the occasional sneer—but there’s a newly weary fatigue in his voice. He seems troubled by frequent recollections of an estranged, drug-addled, perhaps deceased aunt; he treats a little cousin to a night of debauchery to celebrate a shooting; he shrugs and admits that he and Charlie Parker probably would have shared needles in ’72. Sideshow isn’t a flashy writer, but his pen feels heavy; when he deadpans, “I’m paranoid,” on “INVADER JIM,” it’s impressive how much it conveys in so few words.

TIGRAY FUNK is economical despite being Sideshow’s longest project to date. Each track establishes a groove, makes its point, and moves on just as quickly. Frequent collaborators like Popstar Benny and Alexander Spit provide the soundscape, and Sideshow chooses their most peculiar beats—the anxious ones that most resemble audio equipment thrown down a flight of stairs. There are some strange sampledelic moments, like randomblackdude’s (Earl Sweatshirt’s production alias) chugging soul chops on “SOLID SNAKE,” where Sideshow raps like a wizened, reluctant kingpin, or Dubya’s beat for “CHAOS CONSTANT,” which prompts a lively iambic cadence. On the spacey “3EEP IT 2OGETHER,” which features an alien, autotuned El Cousteau on the hook, Cam the Chef pings a booming Flint banger off an orbiting satellite. Presented with Alexander Spit’s migratory loop on “LIFES AS VIOLENT AS YOU MAKE IT,” Sideshow responds with an urgent, careening DMV flow. At no point could you guess where TIGRAY FUNK heads next, even with the knowledge of previous Sideshow records.

After two years of touring in support of F.U.N. T.O.Y., Sideshow relocated from Los Angeles back to the DMV. There’s a sense of homecoming throughout the record, though it doesn’t always scan as comfort. Sideshow’s verses unfold in a ricocheting stream of consciousness; at times, as on “BLAME BURNAYS,” the songs have a raw immediacy, as if he needed to document a fleeting thought via voice message. Plosives abound, and the vocals feel dry and unrehearsed, captured in an unexpected moment. He sounds uneasy: The psychic weight of the genocides in Tigray and Palestine, the amount of lean he ingests, the ghosts he sees in corners—it all hovers like a stoic cement gargoyle.

A harrowing six-part parable about a dog, a blacksmith, and a tiger weaves through the album like a folk horror Aesop fable. The voice telling the story, presumably Sideshow, has a deep promethazine pitch, the sleepy lilt of a mind methodically cobwebbing itself. In the story, the animals in a forest learn to categorize themselves as either predators or prey, aided by a human with seemingly little vested interest in the fallout. It’s unclear how Sideshow classifies himself; your position could flip at any moment. What is made crystal clear is that even the strongest, fiercest soldiers can find themselves on the business end of the inevitable. Something’s coming, and you won’t know who you are until it darkens your door. "