For Your Year-End Music List Consideration: Some of Our Favorite Songs From an Unprecedented Roller Coaster of A Year
Even in a tumultuous, tragedy-filled year like 2020, music can offer an escape, a tonic, or a new perspective. In 2020, Audible Treats clients brought us breezy summer jams, glistening rider’s anthems, and boisterous street stories, but they also confronted weighty topics like depression, poverty, and systemic racism. Below, see a list of some of our favorite tracks, coming from all over the rap map.
Play them loud!
xoxo,
The Audible Treats Team: Michelle, Gavin, Andrea, Dan, Erin, Kerry, Kevin, Ari, & Destiny
The Songs:
Founded by Taz Taylor, Internet Money is one of music’s premier hitmaking collectives, and in 2020, they scored a hit as big as any they produced for Juice WRLD or Lil Tecca. Produced by Nick Mira, Alec Wigdahl, ETrou, Pharaoh Vice, and Taz Taylor, “Lemonade” is an effortlessly chill summer jam, carried by Don Toliver’s booming hook. The song was one of the year’s biggest songs, spending 5 weeks in the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 (with a peak of #6 so far), peaking at #1 on Spotify’s US Top 50, and generating over 500 million streams across platforms. The producer/artist collective released a remix to the song featuring Roddy Ricch, with more remixes on the way.
A master of nimble melodies and visceral bars, Sleepy Hallow is the secret weapon of the Brooklyn drill scene. His biggest hit to-date, “Deep End Freestyle,” gets its power from Sleepy’s charisma and the haunting beat from Great John, with a ghostly vocal from Fousheé, who grimly intones “I don’t think you want to go off the deep end.” The song caught fire on TikTok (515k video creations), whose users latched onto the entrancing interplay between Sleepy’s forceful lyrics and Fousheé’s haunting hook and propelled the song to #80 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Long beloved in the streets, Lil Durk made the leap to mainstream stardom in 2020. “3 Headed Goat,” a percolating street anthem produced by Cicero and Aviator Keyz, was a major reason why. The track is anchored by a soaring hook from Lil Baby, a hot-headed verse from Polo G, and an impressive style-switching verse from Durkio himself. The centerpiece of his Billboard Top 5 album Just Cause Y’All Waited 2, “3 Headed Goat” spent 16 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #43.
A master of wordplay who perfectly modulates his delivery to suit his meaning, L.A. native REASON only speaks the truth. There are many highlights from the Top Dawg Ent. signee’s album New Beginnings, but “Sauce,” which sees him going toe-to-toe with fellow SoCal wordsmith Vince Staples over a minimal beat defined by two-chord jazz piano and crisp handclaps is the best example of REASON’s pure rap talent.
REASON’s best line: “Treat a queen like a queen, don’t give a b*tch shit/New whip, sh*t crawl like insects”
Vince’s best line: “With my dawgs on the stick like a bomb suite/Cooking up, better duck like a confit.”
03 Greedo continued to make his mark from behind bars in 2020, releasing more highlights from his prolific pre-prison period of creativity. Produced by Ron-RonTheProducer, a frequent Greedo collaborator, “Bands In The Basement” pairs Greedo with Chief Keef, another experimenter who blurs the lines between singing and rapping, creating a simmering, percolating slice of West Coast rap packed with mantra-like melodies and hypnotic hooks.
Gone far too soon, King Von will be remembered for his animated delivery and peerless mastery of street narratives. Both qualities are out in full force on “Took Her To The O,” a frenetic, Chopsquad DJ-produced account of an unfortunate encounter in Chicago’s O’Block. With over 36 million views on its music video, “Took her To The O” inspires vigorous head-nodding along with Von’s gripping delivery and shameful laughs at Von’s pitch black humor.
Long Live King Von, one of his generation’s most-talented rappers.
Young Dolph carved his own path to the top of the game, using his entrepreneurial skills to build one of rap’s most powerful indie labels. He scored his biggest radio hit yet with “RNB,” a collaboration with Megan Thee Stallion, which peaked at #8 on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart. A propulsive rider’s anthem produced by Juicy J and informed by the sounds of Dolph’s native Memphis, the song finds Dolph and Megan trading bars about their luxurious lives. The two rap titans are two sides of the same coin, each of them looking for an equal partner to help them build their burgeoning empires.
A misanthropic introvert with expert pop instincts, Florida rapper $NOT is quickly becoming one of his generation’s defining voices. The 22-year-old artist digs deep into what makes him retreat inside his tightly-wrapped hoodie on “Revenge.” The Eem Triplin-produced track finds a broken-hearted $NOT picking at his scabs, suffering from the wounds caused by 1000 betrayals: “Sometimes I can really be f*cked up/Ain’t nothing much to say but ‘hey, goodbye’/Everybody wanna tell the truth, but lie/I can see these n****s right through my eyes.” The gently melodic single got the video treatment from Cole Bennett, who premiered it on his Lyrical Lemonade channel (6 million views).
SoundCloud veteran Smokepurpp used 2020 to sharpen his pen, expand his sound, and embrace his Florida roots. Produced by Earl On The Beat, the man behind hits like City Girls’ “Act Up” and Lil Yachty’s “Oprah’s Bank Account,” “Tide Pen” is a flute-laden trap head-nodder, as Purpp and guest rapper Jack Harlow trade bars about their luck with the ladies. The song boasts a zany animated video, which hurdles from one striking image to the next as the two rappers strut their stuff.
After a years-long legal ordeal in which his rap lyrics were used against him in the courtroom, Drakeo The Ruler is finally free. He made his racist accusers look silly with his album Thank You For Using GTL, in which he rapped about crashing foreign cars and running up checks through a prison phone–boasts that could not feasibly be taken literally coming from the then-incarcerated artist. The L.A. rapper delivered his thesis statement and dismantled the D.A.’s argument on “Fictional,” the album’s closing track: “It might sound real, but it’s fictional/I love that my imagination gets to you.”
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Brassy and fearless, Mulatto forced her way into the mainstream in 2020, becoming one of only two female artists on XXL’s Freshman list. Her rise to prominence started with “B*tch From Da Souf,” a thumping, sex-positive crunk-era throwback, bolstered by a remix featuring Trina and Saweetie. Packed with memorable lines that you can’t repeat in front of your mom, “B*tch From The Souf” became the Atlanta artist’s first RIAA-certified Gold record.
With an attitude that ranges from curmudgeon to supervillain, Comethazine is one of rap’s most reliable purveyors of bite-sized bangers. A highlight from his Bawskee 4 project, “Derek Jeter” finds the 22-year-old rapper snarling atop booming kick drums and ominous brass fanfares, keeping the same rhyme scheme for the song’s 93-second runtime: “Single life for me cause I chose to be a cheater/Dolo when I slide, I pull up just me and my heater.”
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