RXK Nephew

The Rochester, New York rapper RXK Nephew released about 400 songs in 2021. “Probably more than that,” he says via Zoom. “I was going crazy. Every day.”

Neph’s steady pace of projects, which are often free-flowing raps that straddle earnestness and provocation, share a creative framework with Lil B, an early adopter of the internet’s less polished and more high-volume sensibility. But the music he makes has as much a place in the real world as it does in niche corners of the web. His catalog, which takes the length of an average song to even scroll through, feels more like the type of productivity associated with Lil Wayne and Young Thug early in their careers, when a new flurry of new mixtapes could spell the demise of an upstart hip-hop blog’s servers.

All of which is to say there’s something new going on with RXK Nephew. He even has a hunch as to what it might be. “What’s the poets that go up there on stage and they do their poem and everybody snaps their fingers at them?” he asks. “I’m trying to do shit like that.”

-Rolling Stone