First & Fifteenth is a column by the Los Angeles-based critic Paul Thompson, who reviews new and notable rap music twice a month for Audiomack World.

Talibando — WAR LORD

Setting aside the improbability of it taking this long for a rapper to be named “Talibando,” the Detroit native represents a more important kind of long-delayed, yet ultimately inevitable endpoint: that of the modern Michigan rapper who infuses the sly, off-kilter raps that have been spilling out of the state with the rhythmic rigor of his hometown’s dance music traditions.

This is not to say that Talibando is rapping over techno beats—he isn’t—but rather that he has taken the deadpan, high-comic sensibility that has of late been used in styles that careen over the ends of bars and locked it deep into the pockets of his tracks. The result is that he’s able to animate you, to dangle your shoulders like a marionette forced to learn all the good surf-n-turf spots up and down 7 Mile. This tension-release balance is extended to and accentuated by WAR LORD’s sequencing. The opening suite of “Birds Talking,” the title track, and “Chitlins” ends in thundering catharsis; the reflective “Soul Bleed” seems, at every moment, ready to tip fully into soft-focus introspection or to shimmy out of the baggage and keep it moving.

Many of the beats are dotted, as has become common in Michigan right now and even more so in Los Angeles’ sister scene, with little digital stabs that recall turn-of-the-century Cash Money, an influence Talibando has namechecked. Where he stands out from his peers is his ability to evoke that label’s vocalists in seeming, at once, to be operating within a firmly established lineage and inventing things—language, scenarios, little jabs of melody—on the spot.

In addition to its insights into Talibando’s psyche, which are often so unassuming that they are effectively hidden in plain sight, WAR LORD functions as a compendium of Michigan’s most fascinating rappers of the moment. Talibando taps Babyface Ray for the breathless “Swim Team” and BabyTron for “Make the Money”; elsewhere he digs past the headliners by enlisting Samuel Shabazz (“Top of the Morning”) and Prince Jefe (“LAX”). The masterstroke, though, is pairing the red-hot Veeze with Chicago’s Lucki on “Millions,” where all three rappers sound so transparent that they might, by the end of the song, simply disappear.

CEO Trayle & BabyDrill — “Brody Trippin”

Over the past couple of years, when I’ve urged friends to listen to CEO Trayle—something I do with surprising frequency—I encourage them to do so without looking up where he’s from. When you do learn the hard biography (an adolescent move from the Bronx to Alabama, a subsequent one to Atlanta), it merely confirms the sense one gets from listening to his music: that of a heavy anchor dropping slowly to the ocean floor.

Trayle’s work, which is best distilled on last fall’s deceptively heterogenous HH5, is like a hyper-poised counterpoint to Lucki’s, airy and atmospheric and yet entirely lucid. BabyDrill, by contrast, is an Atlanta native who’s best when locked into brash, maximalist production. “Brody Trippin” sets these textures against one another over an impossibly punishing low end; the invocation of “Covid masks” on grainy surveillance tape is the baseline for detail.

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Talibando & CEO Trayle: First & Fifteenth