Many of the game-changing Atlanta rappers who’ve emerged in a post-Gucci Mane world have traced a similar career arc: Future, Young Thug, and 21 Savage each stood out as distinctive voices, with unpredictable flows and endless mixtape tracklists that gradually distilled into a more chart-friendly container over time. Atlanta’s younger generation, from Lil Baby to Lil Keed, owe their existence to the experimentation of their elders, but many of the city’s newer stars have adapted to a mainstream pop vernacular more quickly. Young Nudy stands out in this regard: He’s remained singularly committed to himself, uninterested in making playlist-baiting earworms, and frequently eschewing features where other rising artists thirst for them.
Between more chart-oriented, guest-focused albums like Sli’merre and Dr. EV4L, he’s stood alone on projects like Anyways and Faded in the Booth. In an era when artists so often speak of hip-hop as a stepping stone to larger stardom, Nudy looks more like a rapper’s rapper, primarily a lyricist and vocalist, despite existing in a subgenre that’s frequently misconstrued as somehow anti-lyrical or “post verbal.” While other rappers are thinking in singles and playlists, Nudy still paints in bars and mixtapes. His delivery is more like a palette or moodboard than a clear transmission, a spectrum of emotions that come through in the way he compresses, stretches, and shapes his words.
At times his voice is incredibly directed and driven, at others closer to what skeptics might decry as mumbling. But that occasionally more restrained, less enunciated register gives him a kind of mystique: a quiet crooner with a hat tipped down low. He regularly credits 21 Savage as a formative stylistic influence, and there’s an obvious lineage, but Nudy’s bars are considerably more dense, and the sometimes quieter register forces you to pay attention. Tracks like “Battlefield” and “Bodies on Bodies” showcase his talent for intricate, tightly packed bars, delivering multiple mini-rhymes within a single rhyme in a ping-ponging, sing-song flow. He’s precise and loose at the same time, unloading words composed to piggyback off one another yet energized and organic enough to feel improvised.
Nudy is the kind of rapper who benefits from close collaboration with regular producers—he needs artists who know him and trust his instincts, rather than skewing to formulas or presets. The beats on Rich Shooter are largely supplied by Pi’erre Bourne and Coupe, but the circle also includes frequent collaborators 20Rocket and Mojo Krazy, as well as jetsonmade, the beatmaker behind the familiar drum patterns of most of DaBaby’s hits. Though Pi’erre Bourne has become an auteur in his own right, he and Nudy are a perfectly matched team, both with a sound that’s boundary-pushing but still accessible. Bourne’s beats are like subtle ensembles, an automated backing band that enhances the ambience but never overwhelms it. The Future-assisted “Trap Shit” is built around a wiry high-pitched synth line, but beneath it lie inscrutable layers of feedback and noise, cradling the beat like barbed wire.
Coupe-produced tracks like “How They Label Me” and “Bodies on Bodies” weave in gentle strums and background riffs, but the guitar gives Nudy’s aching verses a gentle bluesy flavor rather than pushing them into rap-rock territory. Though the lyrics are often dark and painful, Nudy’s voice has a lightness that’s augmented by his fondness for softer instrumental elements, which at times almost approach indie pop, like the gliding synths of “I Can’t Change” and gentle keys and clean guitar line of “Addicted.” Though he takes shades of horrorcore from 21 Savage as well, Nudy is more than capable of sillier modes. “How I Eat” sees him slide into a squeaky, helium-addled flow, while “Green Bean” has a vaguely chiptune-like beat.
Nudy’s fond of contrasts and subtly ironic juxtapositions, like “We Do Not Give Up,” which jolts you to attention with a round of machine gun fire before breaking off into a Future-like tropical pop number that’s nonetheless a heavy story of beef turned violent and comrades locked up. The album’s features are evenly split between Nudy’s ATL elders—Peewee Longway, Gucci Mane, Future—and his own peers he wants to put on, like 21 Lil Harold, 2FeetBino, Cristo4L, and 4L Quan. Listen to a run of Nudy’s solo tracks and you’ll become accustomed to residing in his universe; the guest appearances remind you how unique and uncanny he is, an aerosol-huffing space alien compared to the deeper and more classical drawls of Peewee and Gucci. As the title of “Can’t Clone Me” puts it bluntly, while Young Nudy might share stylistic DNA with the godfathers of Atlanta trap, he’s a true original, evolving too quickly to ever copy.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.
