5 Best Rap Albums of February 2025

So much rap music comes out all the time, and especially with frequent surprise releases, it can be hard to keep track of it all. So, as a way to help keep up with all of it, here’s a roundup of the 5 rap albums from February 2025 that stood out to us most. We also probably still missed or haven’t spent enough time with some great February rap albums that aren’t on this list, and we’ve got a list of honorable mentions with more albums at the bottom of this post. What were some of your favorites of last month? Let us know, and read on for the list (unranked, in no particular order).

John Glacier – Like A Ribbon (Young)

UK rapper and producer John Glacier made her 2021 debut full-length SHILOH: Lost for Words when the world was still in lockdown–following a collaborative project with fellow UK rapper Jadasea in 2020, and followed by a project with NYC cloud rap collective Surf Gang in 2023–but now she’s performing for sizable crowds and it’s having an impact on her music. “SHILOH was more of a dampener, so with Like A Ribbon, I wanted to invite new life into people’s perception of me,” she says. “I was thinking ‘how can I interact differently with the crowd?’ and one of the main things was the music I was playing to the crowd.”

Like A Ribbon–an album of material that was rolled out for the past year across a series of EPs–is minimalistic but not clouded in haze the way SHILOH was. It’s quiet but not shy, inviting but not overeager. Even and sometimes especially her most introspective songs, like “Emotions,” “Nevasure,” and “Ocean Steppin’,” are the ones I imagine the most amount of people singing along to. Hard to pin down but easy to like, Like A Ribbon is a melting pot of future garage, UK drill, grime, atmospheric art pop, and more, like a cross between “Paper Planes” era M.I.A. and “Wilhelm Scream” era James Blake. Her Young labelmate Sampha, who played as big a role as James Blake in shaping 2010s future-garage-pop, lends his soaring voice to “Ocean Steppin.’” The album’s other guest is avant-pop oddball Eartheater, who joins Glacier on top of some chopped-up surf guitar on “Money Shows.” Those are two very different but very fitting guests for an album that occupies the space between pop music and the avant-garde the way Like A Ribbon does. It’s subtle, innovative, and also dripping with crowd-pleasing confidence that John Glacier makes look effortless. Now they’re calling her a bitch? You best believe it.

Like A Ribbon by John Glacier

Black Milk & Fat Ray – Food from the Gods (Computer Ugly / Fat Beats)

Black Milk and Fat Ray have been staples of the storied, ever-thriving Detroit rap scene for decades, and they’ve teamed up multiple times over the years. They formed the group B.R. Gunna in the early 2000s, and they released the collaborative album The Set Up in 2008. Fat Ray disappeared for a while after that, while Black Milk remained insanely prolific, and then Ray began making his way back into the public eye in the late 2010s and experienced even more of a resurgence after linking up with Danny Brown’s Bruiser Brigade and taking part in the label’s 2021 takeover, amidst which he released his new album Santa Barbara and guested on multiple other Bruiser Brigade projects that same year. Black Milk produced one of the standout tracks on Santa Barbara (“Dopeman Heaven” ft. Danny Brown), and now the pair have reunited for Food from the Gods, Ray’s first album since Santa Barbara and the duo’s first fully collaborative album since they released The Set Up 17 years earlier. Black Milk’s production is a thrilling mix of jazz, funk, and soul-informed beats that sound nostalgia-inducing and innovative all at once, and Fat Ray’s delivery is as clever, commanding, and charismatic as ever. The 11-song project has an all-Detroit cast of guests (Danny Brown, Guilty Simpson, and Bruiser Wolf), and the whole thing has the kind of regional flavor that’s long made Detroit rap so unique.

Food From the Gods by Black Milk & Fat Ray

Nino Paid – Love Me As I Am (Signal / Columbia)

Maryland rapper Nino Paid clearly likes emo, as evidenced by the guitarpeggio that fuels “Tears In The Hotbox,” the third track on his sophomore album Love Me As I Am, but he isn’t “emo rap.” He’s been grouped in with a movement/subgenre called pain rap, and that suits the 23-year-old’s music perfectly. Not that rappers haven’t rapped about pain for decades, but Love Me As I Am especially leans into melancholy and struggle. One of its biggest songs is called “Play This At My Funeral,” and it feels like a therapy session set to some of the most tear-jerking hip hop instrumentation this side of Eminem’s “Stan.” The bulk of the production on the album pulls from weepy, Take Care-style pianos and slowed-down trap beats, and Nino uses it as a backdrop to process family struggles, a friend’s suicide, and other traumas with a somber, melodic delivery. But it’s not all pessimistic; on “Be Safe,” Nino raps about getting through dark times in a way that’s both self-reflective and motivational. For an album that’s often very depressing, it also gives hope that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

Zelooperz & Real Bad Man – Dear Psilocybin (Real Bad Man)

Detroit rapper Zelooperz is probably best known as a member of Danny Brown’s Bruiser Brigade crew with an erratic flow that has some undeniable similarities to Danny’s own approach to rapping, while Real Bad Man is an LA producer (and visual artist/designer) who has collaborative albums with Boldy James, Smoke DZA, Blu, Kool Keith, Pink Siifu, and others and tends to favor a hazy boom bap production style. It’s not the kind of thing that Zelooperz usually raps over, but Dear Psilocybin proves that he’s an absolute chameleon. The crazed, freaky delivery that he’s usually known for is hardly present on this album at all; instead, he’s calm, cool, and collected, and he still sounds one of one. As you’d probably hope from an album called Dear Psilocybin, the production is psychedelic throughout, and Zelooperz’s lyrical workouts are fittingly trippy. On top of their own synergy, they get the dream blunt rotation of MAVI on the funk-infused “Past Life,” Boldy James on the sinister “Hansel And Gretel,” and a tough verse from The Alchemist to ground things on “In The Wind.”

Larry June, 2 Chainz & The Alchemist – Life Is Beautiful (Freeminded/2 Chainz/ALC/EMPIRE)

Not to get all “when 2 Chainz gets into his introspective bag, turns to jazz and makes a collab album with The Alchemist,” but if you still don’t think he could or would do that, then you probably haven’t heard Rap or Go to the League. The signs were already there, and now, he has literally made a collab album with The Alchemist. It’s also a collab album with Larry June, the West Coast ’90s-style devotee who already has a collab album with The Alchemist, and it’s a treat to hear these three together. If you’ve heard the singles or any of the other zillion albums The Alchemist has produced in the past five years, you can probably picture the smoky, jazzy, laid-back production of this album before you even click play. That doesn’t make the album any less gripping, nor does it fully prepare you for the unique combination of hearing 2 Chainz’s Georgia drawl, Larry’s husky voice, and Alc’s hypnotic soundscapes all at once. For trio that some might call “unpredictable,” it’s pretty amazing how effortlessly natural it all sounds.

Honorable Mentions
Boldy James & Chuck Strangers – Token of Appreciation (Boldy’s third album of 2025)
Brother Ali – Satisfied Soul
Dave East & Ransom – The Final Call
Eem Triplin – Melody of a Memory
Elcamino & 38 Spesh – Martyr’s Prayer III
Dear Derrick & Kool Keith – Galaxy Thot
Reason – I Love You Again
skaiwater – #mia
Smif-n-Wessun – Infinity
Westside Gunn – 12

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