A rapper, a streamer, and a leaker step right into a automobile. Who’s sitting behind the wheel?
OsamaSon may in all probability let you know. En path to the largest launch of his younger profession, the 21-year-old spitfire has been driving shotgun. The quantity of his music that’s leaked up to now yr pressured a number of delays for his extremely anticipated third album, Bounce Out. Osama’s followers spent 2024 begging for official variations of songs meant to remain non-public, songs that may’ve gone on the album if solely leakers hadn’t already launched them. Final summer season, Osama pulled up on Kick streamer BruceDropEmOff for a livestream and witnessed a track leak in actual time. Simply three weeks earlier, he’d had 400 songs leaked in a single go. And it’s not for no purpose: After breaking out with two back-to-back initiatives, 2023’s Osama Season and Flex Musix, the South Carolina rapper has turn out to be the figurehead of post-COVID SoundCloud—a high-octane, 808-driven destructionist. Songs like “Trenches” are the explanation why iPhones include headphone warnings; the onslaught of bass paired with OsamaSon’s strained, exigent punch-ins are a match made in hell (that’s a praise).
Since rising two summers in the past, Osama’s not-so-discreet adulation for Playboi Carti has been a topic of scrutiny. The affect manifests in his music, in outdated visualizers, and cowl artwork; some have even in contrast their ’match pics. However in the identical approach that Money Carti as soon as used Chief Keef’s sound as a launchpad, Osama melds his favourite rapper’s early echoic staccato into one thing extra corrosive. There’s a skinny line between mimicry and reinvention, and OsamaSon has step by step nudged previous the brink. On Bounce Out, his sound is as distinct because it’s ever been, leading to a few of his most bone-shattering work thus far. At 18 tracks, the album can at occasions really feel exhausting, however its torrential downpour of synths and 808s is in the end rewarding.
Carnage propagates in each crevice of this report. The seismic jolt of “Idiot,” the demented showmanship of “Spherical of Applause”; it’s all brazen by design. If the drums sound like they’re suffocating the combination, it’s as a result of they’re purported to. When the beats crackle on “GTFO the Room” or “Mufasa,” I really feel like a child in Florida once more, watching SUVs slide by with audio system so loud you could possibly really feel the music greater than you could possibly hear it. Is it jarring? Certain, possibly. However all I bear in mind considering again then was, “What track was that man enjoying?” A significant architect behind this sound and Bounce Out’s total chaos is Charlotte-born beatsmith okay, the album’s govt producer, who’s credited on 15 tracks. Virtually each rapper born after 9/11 has a track with that “okay is the toughest” tag on it (Glokk40spaz, xaviersobased, fakemink, YhapoJJ); final yr, he executive-produced Nettspend’s BAD ASS F*CKING KID. Inevitable is an understatement. On lead single “The Entire World Is Free,” okay presents Osama with the brightest, most forward-thinking piece in his catalog: A feverish, polychromatic Skrillex flip fully submerged by volcanic percussion.
