psykotic

I was in for a rude awakening when I went to a Che show in Brooklyn a couple weeks ago. I observed from the venue’s balcony as the Atlanta rapper strutted onstage, pleading for mosh pits and making devil horns with his fingers. “Open that shit up!” Che snarled, over and over again. He was so hellbent on manufacturing the destruction his music encouraged that it soon became obvious he was barely even rapping his songs. After a while it felt awkward, almost like the crowd was meant to perform for him. And listen, I get it: The bloodcurdling shrieks and 808 avalanches are meant to inspire group catharsis. Everybody who makes “rage” rap performs with this in mind. But all I could think was, Damn, when is my generation gonna move on from biting Carti?

If there’s anyone who can propel rage in a new direction, it’s OsamaSon. The South Carolina rapper has already inspired copycats of his own. But engaging with the scene necessarily means brushing past whichever version of Playboi Carti its leaders are currently modeling themselves after—Osama included. No matter how effective the execution, this process is getting monotonous. There’s a beauty and a curiosity in dissecting references that feel distant. That feeling is extremely rare in rage rap—everything sprouts from low-hanging fruit: Rolling Loud clips, Hot Topic merch, Opium archive pages. So when Osama dropped Jump Out in January, the way he was evolving got me out of my seat: He sustained his melodies with a puerile, sing-songy twang; his cyborgian cadence departed from Carti’s alien lilt; his beats were at times sludgier and more neurotic. On his new record, psykotic, OsamaSon doesn’t lean any further into the orbit of his lodestar, but he isn’t leaving it either.

It’s a frustrating dynamic for a release that arrives at the apex of his career so far. Instead of affirming OsamaSon as a unique entity in his own lane, psykotic refurbishes his comfort zone. “Whats Happening” is immediately one of the hardest tracks in O’s catalog, its choppy synth lurch reminiscent of Osama Season’s 8-bit churn. At its core are hypercompressed murmurs from Gucci Mane’s “Shirt Off,” punctuated by Osama’s screwfaced chirrups. Central to the track, though, is a hook familiar enough to send shockwaves: “I take my shirt off and all the hoes stop breathin’.” For a moment as cool as this to also be potentially inspired by Whole Lotta Red is deflating. I almost wanna wipe that album from my memory just so I can experience this with rose-tinted glasses.

I first heard psykotic on CD—the label was so scared of leaks they refused to send a digital stream–and the earbuds and Walkman I received with it were barely built for the muggy distortion baked into the production. Ten seconds into the intro’s wormhole of clipping tumult, I honestly thought producer Warren Hunter broke the Walkman. The lowend claps crammed into its rhythmic nexus are the only sounds that made it out alive. Hunter also helms “FMJ” and “Get away,” tracks whose clumps of 808 fuzz land like brass knuckles to the spleen. If production like this wasn’t all over Ken Carson’s More Chaos, it’d hit even harder, but then again, he and Osama have been swapping similar beats from the same producers since 2023. All the more reason to pivot in a new direction. Not all beats here are weapons of mass destruction, though: producer ok’s breezy Pi’erre Bourne replica, “She woke Up,” is disappointing; Rok and Gyro’s synth-encrusted utopia, “yea i kno” is staggering.

Vocal dynamism is what gives psykotic its style. OsamaSon’s accounts of moving bricks and letting bullets fly have never seemed believable, but the way he contorts his pitch and manipulates the cracks in his voice turns his role-playing into must-see TV. He’s been honing that pitched-down croak on “Maag Dump” since last year’s face-scrunching “just score it.” When his voice is pitched up, like on “Function” or “Gintama,” he sounds so geeked up he might pop. Osama is at his most earnest when he yearns for private affection on “In It” and “Get away,” the latter spotlighting him at his most despondent. Rap-singing a hook that’s more Chino Moreno than Jordan Carter, he’s never sounded this honest: “I know it’s all yours/You never called for it/Sometimes I feel like that you didn’t wanna walk for it/Didn’t wanna crawl for it/I put in my all for it.”

As a record, psykotic mostly accomplishes what it sets out to do, and yet it’s hard to shake my cynicism. At its peak—thinking of “Habits,” “Addicted,” and that run from “In It” to “Whats Happening”—it’s fevered and galvanic, like how it feels to be so fried you can’t tell if you’re scared shitless or having the time of your life. But OsamaSon and his collaborators seem determined to route that turbulent energy… right back to his starting point. On “FMJ,” Osama’s stone-cold, dreary-eyed drone holds firm in the face of 808 torrents and synth trills. What follows is a surprise verse from Che, who’s been rapping like he just rediscovered “JumpOutTheHouse” and can’t get it out of his head. His Auto-Tuned yelps, meant to feel exhilarating, instead feel laborious, especially when you know he’s talented enough to cultivate something original. In a sudden shift mid-verse, Che swaps his WLR impression for a stoic, guttural warble that lasts no more than three seconds. “I was with Lil O/We got O’s/Smokin’ buku bitches,” he intones, briefly treading a new path before retreating back to safety. On paper, the line means nothing, but its delivery suggests salvation from déjà vu. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking.

The new artists of our time should be taking pride in subverting the formulas of their predecessors. Kill your fucking idols! Remember when Young Thug wanted to one-up his GOAT Lil Wayne so bad that he tried to drop Tha Carter VI before him? What resulted from that turned out to be more subversive and more iconic than anything Weezy has dropped since. Someone let the kids know they’re just as capable of pulling that off.