A rapper, a streamer, and a leaker step right into a car. Who’s sitting behind the wheel?
OsamaSon might 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 12 months compelled a number of delays for his extremely anticipated third album, Leap Out. Osama’s followers spent 2024 begging for official variations of songs meant to remain personal, songs that might’ve gone on the album if solely leakers hadn’t already launched them. Final summer time, Osama pulled up on Kick streamer BruceDropEmOff for a livestream and witnessed a music leak in actual time. Simply three weeks earlier, he’d had 400 songs leaked in a single go. And it’s not for no motive: After breaking out with two back-to-back initiatives, 2023’s Osama Season and Flex Musix, the South Carolina rapper has turn into 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 The affect manifests in his music, in outdated visualizers, and cowl artwork; some have even in contrast their ’match pics.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 method 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 progressively nudged previous the edge. On Leap Out, his sound is as distinct because it’s ever been, leading to a few of his most bone-shattering work to this point. 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 file. 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 speculated 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 can really feel the music greater than you can hear it. Is it jarring? Certain, possibly. However all I bear in mind considering again then was, “What music was that man enjoying?” A significant architect behind this sound and Leap Out’s general 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 music with that “okay is the toughest” tag on it (Glokk40spaz, xaviersobased, fakemink, YhapoJJ); final 12 months, he executive-produced Nettspend’s BAD ASS F*CKING KID. Inevitable is an understatement. On lead single “The Complete World Is Free,” okay presents Osama with the brightest, most forward-thinking piece in his catalog: A feverish, polychromatic Skrillex flip utterly submerged by volcanic percussion.
