This article has been handpicked from the Okayplayer editorial archives and included in our Hip Hop 50 collection as a noteworthy inclusion to the genre's rich and diverse narrative. The article has ...

Since it first trickled over from Chicago in the mid-2010s, drill has grown in unimaginable ways. Starting as a niche South London sound, with its eerie, 808s-loaded beats and just as if not more ...

I’m sitting in the basement of a low-rise corner building in Bushwick with 23-year-old rapper/producer Cash Cobain, and it’s finally time to throw on the Spice Girls. The basement is a converted ...

Marked by no-frills rapping and nightmarish production, Chicago drill music traveled around the globe at the speed of the internet throughout the last decade. Eventually, Brooklyn rappers tried on the ...

The English rapper Slowthai grew up listening to American musicians. “Rappers coming from Memphis, SpaceGhostPurrp, Raider Klan, even Elliott Smith,” says the 26-year-old, born Tyron Frampton, ticking ...

The sound of drill is the brazen brrrrrap of street-level rap over the past decade. It’s the unsettling, aestheticized sound of gunplay evoked by spraying hi-hats, double-tapped rhyme blasts, and a ...

The early sounds of Chicago drill felt like a bit of controlled chaos, at least compared to what was to come. L’A Capone and RondoNumbaNine’s “Play for Keeps” marked a trend of young rappers bringing ...