Isaiah Rashad: "Nelly"

Isaiah Rashad is the least-intense member of the TDE crew surrounding Kendrick Lamar. You might overlook him. He doesn’t have Lamar’s aura, Schoolboy’s erratic intensity, Ab-Soul’s old school devotion, Jay Rock‘s 2Pac growl. He is a Southerner, from Chattanooga instead of L.A., and he sings and raps in a scratchy, pleasing voice that he never lets stray outside of a conversational, three-or-four-note range. He’s unassumingly musical as a rapper, and his 2014 breakout Cilvia Demo took a few moments to sink in as a result. But his tracks are more the than sum of their modest parts, and “Nelly”, a track that debuted last week, reminds us of this. It has a nice, draggy lope to it, a back-phrased snare that leaves a half-breath’s space between the kick and the actual pulse of the beat. Rashad lurks just behind the beat with his singing as well. It doesn’t burn a hole through your headphones, but it is soulful, a precious commodity.

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