Fifteen years ago, Rod Wave probably wouldn’t have been a rapper. Like so many new artists coming out of the Deep South, the Floridian mostly croons about his pain and inner demons in two-minute ballads featuring Instagram caption-worthy one-liners like “Heart been broke so many times, I don’t know what to believe.”
As far as singing rappers go, Rod Wave is much more Kevin Gates, say, Young Thug. Rod grew up on Gates’ tender street rap, and paid tribute to his idol in a recent interview: “You made me understand people like us could actually go far, people like us could actually do it in the game. Just the fact that you could take your pain and turn up with it.” Rod Wave’s Ghetto Gospel is very much in the mold of the Baton Rouge star’s music; Gates even executive-produced it.
Like YoungBoy Never Broke Again, JayDaYoungan, and other Southern rappers belting about their struggles, Rod Wave was amassing millions of plays on YouTube even before Kevin Gates’ involvement. The sound of Ghetto Gospel—bloodletting over somber pianos and country guitars—isn’t far off from earlier singles like “Popular Loner” and “Heart 4 Sale.”But his storytelling has a new clarity, and his voice has developed so much range that I’m surprised he hasn’t already recorded an NPR Tiny Desk. The heaviest single on the album is “Close Enough to Hurt,” touching on the PTSD that he’s mentioned on-record before. On “Poison,” he digs deep to tell tales of the terrors that keep him up at night. “Late at night, I been roaming, I ain’t getting no sleep/It’s hard to stay focused when that pain running deep,” he wails.
Ghetto Gospel features two Gates collaborations. These moments feel like Gates passing the torch in real time, as Rod Wave howls like he’s stuck in the begging-for-love-in-the-rain era of ’90s R&B: “When I think about my past, that shit give me chills.” Compared with Gates, Rod’s hooks are glossy, but he can also strip his music down, like the drumless, acoustic guitar-heavy “Chip on my Shoulder,” that sounds like his street spin on a country-pop record.
Rod is at the forefront of an unofficial subgenre of rap called “pain music,” and it’s been developing since the days of Boosie and Webbie. Artists working in this vein have also found a way to integrate country and pop sounds into their hip-hop in a way that’s considerably less performative than that song about horses. What’s next is a superstar. Numbers-wise the answer is YoungBoy Never Broke Again, though legal troubles will always hold him back. And Kevin Gates is now a thirty-something that’s sliding into a Gucci Mane-like role. Rod Wave may or may not be that person. If Ghetto Gospel makes anything clear, it’s that nobody sings about their pain like him.
