Hip-Hop Lives Here
Hip-Hop Lives Here
“Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?" Tyler Childers, (Hickman Holler Records/RCA)
Tyler Childers does what he wants when he wants, and while he'd like you to buy his music, he probably doesn't care what you think. His last album followed two best-selling country records with an utterly non-commercial deep dive into traditional Appalachian melody.
So it comes as no surprise that on his latest offering, “Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?" the red-headed Kentucky native has something different in mind. Or that he does it with fearless exuberance.
This time Childers has taken eight songs about faith and produced each three different ways. There's the straightforward “Hallelujah Version," featuring his fabulous touring band, the Food Stamps. There's the “Jubilee Version," which dials up the production with boisterous horns, background vocals and over-the-top attitude. And there's the “Joyful Noise Version," an eclectic set that mixes spoken-word samples ranging from Andy Griffith to Thomas Merton with rhythmic, off-the-wall sonic experimentation.
The album is built on a gospel foundation, but Childers' faith is more about love than judgment. Everybody's welcome in his heaven.
The repeat takes give the album a behind-the-curtains feel, offering intriguing glimpses into the creative range of Childers and his band. Still, Childers might've had a more compelling album if he'd made some painful choices.
The Hallelujah versions are generally the best because his band is so sure-footed, though at times the “Jubilee" takes are soaring — on a song called “Angel Band" in particular. A couple of the “Joyful Noise" takes might have worked better in a mix, but including all eight here feels indulgent. The best of them might be the muscular, anthemic jam-session take on “Heart You Been Tendin'," but it would've had more power as a closer if we hadn't already heard the same song twice.
But that brings us back to where we started. Childers probably doesn't care what we think. He's fine going his own way as one of country music's most compelling and unpredictable artists, saying his piece about faith. He'll bring us all along if we care to join him, but he knows where he's headed — and it turns out to be another wild ride.
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Isaiah Rashad does not hide behind metaphors on his latest album, It’s Been Awful. The title alone tells listeners exactly where his head has been. Honesty has always been central to Rashad’s music, from his breakthrough 2016 project The Sun’s Tirade to 2021’s The House Is Burning. Across his career, the Top Dawg Entertainment artist has carved out his own lane with hazy Southern rap, neo soul textures, and deeply personal songwriting that often goes far deeper emotionally than many of his peers.
Rashad’s previous album arrived after a difficult period involving homelessness and rehab, and this new record comes following another painful chapter in his life. Between relapses, fractured family relationships, and the invasion of privacy that followed the leak of a sex tape in 2022, It’s Been Awful feels like the sound of someone confronting everything at once. He wastes no time addressing it on opening track ‘The New Sublime’, where he raps, “Feel afflicted, falling over / Ask me who I’m fucking, I been fucking up.” The song dives into his fears around sobriety, his sister’s incarceration, and the emotional impact these struggles have on the people closest to him.
Themes of addiction and self destruction continue to run through the album. On ‘Same Sh!t’, a track carrying influences from A$AP Rocky and Skepta, Rashad references substance abuse directly with the line, “The pills, the blow, the ‘yac, the top,” while nodding to classic Lil Jon energy. ‘M.O.M’ captures the cycle of temptation and compromise as he tries to resist one vice only to replace it with another. Elsewhere, he speaks openly about the physical damage these habits have caused, admitting, “The doctor say that shit been fucking with my heart / but I can’t barely sleep / chasing money, love and all of the amphetamines.”
The emotional weight deepens on ‘Act Normal’, where Rashad examines generational trauma and learned behaviors passed through family lines, reflecting on “Acquired secrets / Learned to be the best at it.” Then on ‘Do I Look High?’, he strips away any remaining distance between himself and the listener with one of the album’s most vulnerable admissions: “Last time that I told you that I was clean, I was lying / I’m praying that my sister makes it home by Christmas morning.” The album’s brutally detailed storytelling may feel heavy for some listeners, but that raw specificity is exactly what gives the project its emotional power.
Still, It’s Been Awful is not consumed entirely by darkness. Rashad has spoken about music as something healing and transformative, and throughout the album he refuses to let despair completely swallow him. Inspired by artists like Prince and OutKast, the project carries a warm, sun faded atmosphere that softens the pain without hiding it. ‘Supaficial’ glides forward with bright trumpet accents while Rashad casually delivers lines like, “Where you going? You a junkie, you been way outside.” Meanwhile, ‘Happy Hour’ turns emotional exhaustion into something strangely melodic, pairing confessional lyrics with dreamy piano production. At its best, the album feels like Southern rap drifting through late night R&B haze during a summer drive with the windows down.
On ‘Superpwrs’, Rashad sums up the cycle he seems trapped inside, asking, “How I get sober, fucked up, then clean again, I don’t know,” before acknowledging his own disappearing acts from music with, “How you be rapping circles around n****s, but you don’t drop, I don’t know.” His skill has never been the issue. The real obstacle has always been life itself. But with It’s Been Awful, Isaiah Rashad delivers one of his most honest and affecting projects yet, making it impossible to overlook him any longer.
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