Welcome to Weekend Waves #1. Every week, I’m gonna share some jams I’ve been listening to recently. Some new releases, some old releases, some songs no one’s ever heard of. I’m done feeling like I’m the only one listening to these songs alone in my apartment. I know I’m not the only distinguished music sicko out there, so let’s talk about some jams.
Let’s get into the waves, yo.
Chuck Strangers featuring Evidence – BMOP
New single this weekend from Chuck Strangers— a rapper I knew as a producer for early Pro Era tracks.
13 years after Joey Bada$$ dropped “1999”, Chuck Strangers has grown into his own independent rap entity deserving of as much of the praise Joey gets today.
Pro Era defibrillated an unconscious New York rap scene, a year after ASAP Rocky showed proof of life on “Live.Love.A$AP”.
Chuck Strangers’s evolution from Tribe Called Quest-Karaoke to where he is today on “BMOP”— confidently rapping like he’s the final boss—feels like finding a $20 bill in an old jacket pocket.
Linking with Evidence on the boards to create some headphones on the late-night freezing subway music.
Daylight saving, getting up for work in the AM before the sun rises music.
That get home when it’s dark out, dinner cold in the microwave music.
Evidence on the production, creating the soundtrack of the supervillain’s lair, that cold-weather puffer coat music— maneuvering through the city in a cold wind storm music.
“I’m up late with the working girls / I need that sweet black mother of pearl,” Chuck Strangers proclaims, rapping about his annoyance with unreliable peers who don’t share his work ethic.
At 33, Chuck Strangers is becoming a far greater rapper than I would’ve confidently said 4-5 years ago. His hard work is not going unnoticed.
I hope we’re all getting better at whatever art we’re trying to create.
De La Soul featuring Common, Slick Rick – Yours
After a 7-year legal dispute over ownership of their catalog, De La Soul finally received their masters in 2023.
Their new album “Cabin in the Sky” is the group’s first album since 2016.
Posdnous starts with a message to the youth. The whole album reminds me of A Tribe Called Quest’s 2016 album
“We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service”. Dropped around Trump’s first election win, Tribe felt like the medicine I needed to get down the poison around me.
Like Tribe, De La Soul is here, more legends, to remind us light exists at the end of the tunnel.
Pete Rock on the 1’s and 2’s had me feeling like a child, grinning, anxiously watching the ice cream pour sprinkles on top of my cone, edge of my seat for that Slick Rick “The world is yours” loop.
Slick Rick always reminded me of the Rat from The Fantastic Mr. Fox; cool, street savvy, and has history with all the girls in the neighborhood.
Common comes in and does what Common does. Ted Williams batting average maintained.
Fly Anakin featuring Quelle Chris, $ilkMoney, Fatima – Socks Over the Smoke Detector
Quelle Chris is one of the greatest rappers of all time.
His verses have expanded any boundaries I believed existed for a rapper within 16 bars. Whether it’s his voice inflections, word pronunciations, endless supply of references, slick flow and punches—Quelle Chris, in 2025, sounds like he’s looking around and realizing he may never get all the flowers he deserves but he sees the people who do get those flowers and no longer wants them.
“I told myself keep goin’ / I’m knowin’, I got that moxie
You gotta be cold on ya own / it’s not by proxy
Ya favorite rappers is creeps / sneaky links, and nazis
So I’m glad I’m not on ya top five / I’d rather not be
The weed we circlin’ got necks jerkin’ / night at the Roxy
They try to form around us to copy / niggas epoxy
Rappers be fighting over ice like / we playing hockey
Why build a great body of work / to lose the heartbeat?”
He’s not on this Weekend Waves 3 times by accident. This weekend, in a Fly Anakin posse cut, Quelle Chris rapped one of his best verses, looped into the hook of the song, repeating after every verse.
Despite not dropping an album, Quelle Chris’s fingerprints are all over 2025.
Armand Hammer featuring Quelle Chris – Glue Trap
Armand Hammer’s 2025 “Mercy” album, (produced by The Alchemist) is the type of album I’ll say “deserves a listen”. If you want to hear adults write with the weight of their decisions on their shoulders, peep Armand Hammer.
Billy Woods smokes the first verse, introducing the concept of “Glue Traps”.
“Somе of y’all never got up at the crack of dawn / to go to work for the low / and it shows (Good for you, though)
It’s hard to get out of bed / when there’s glue traps behind the stove
Bulldozers in the olive grove / soldiers switching to civilian clothes”
Life is hard. Everywhere.
On the second verse ELUCID tells a story of a hustler attempting to evade those glue traps with his own unique ability to hold court.
And Quelle Chris comes in, telling his parents he made it, and that white people don’t wash their legs.
I did it, mama / I did it, pops
Your boy done hung his hat a billion spots
Rolling stone, moss don’t touch me / like soap on white folks’ legs when they wash
Just a GOAT performance by Quelle Chris, as promised.
Heems featuring Panda Bear – Star-Crossed
Last year, Heems dropped two great albums, rapping over every type of rap beat he could find, Punjabi, drill, pop—Heems went crazy to prove he deserves to be in bigger rap conversations.
Of course, he landed in the waiting arms of Panda Bear, rapping over a beat from a 70s progressive rock mix played in the background of grainy surfing edits.
Heems has no problem surfing over this 80s middle school educational science VHS beat.
“I caused you hella disappointment/ Annointed you queen, then gave you shit to be annoyed with”
Let’s go Heems, talk that annoying partner shit.
The entire album, “A Hundred Lullabies” is a vibe. Unknown Mortal Orchestra is on here making tracks for 90’s “Smooth radio” stations playing in the dentist’s office [complimentary].
Loving – Bowlly Goes Dancing Drunk into the Future
What is the point of making Weekend Waves if not to push some random jams I love?
Back-to-back breakup songs when I have absolutely zero turmoil in my personal life—but I was born a sad boy and will die one. Winter is my fountain.
Here’s another one for my fellow winter sad boys out there. Stand up, y’all. I see you.
Loving is David Parry and brothers Lucas and Jesse Henderson—a Canadian band whose music feels like you’re being visited by friendly ghosts, like the ones who were kind to Harry Potter, but instead of being trapped inside a British school of witchcraft and wizardry, they’re trapped inside a Canadian hipster’s daydreams—whispering Broadcast demos into your ear.
“Bowlly Goes Dancing Drunk into the Future“, Loving sings about a fading relationship, stripped back instrumental, low-fi psychedelic groove. Honestly sounds like a lost Alchemist beat for Westside Gunn to yell over.
“This morning I awoke/ And read the words
That you wrote
They were different from what you spoke/ They were different from what you spoke
And it was there you declared
All love is unfair
Like most of the songwriters on this playlist, Loving is incredibly honest and vulnerable.
Wombo – Reveal Dusty
One of my favorite albums of the year, Wombo, a punk band, dropped “Danger in Fives”, these short bursts or some rock, some grooves, some songs that would definitely end an episode of Veronica Mars.
This track could’ve been on that Johnny Depp Alice in Wonderland soundtrack right after that Franz Ferdinand song.
This song is the lullaby a cartoon spider sings to the cartoon fly they have caught in their web.
Singer Sydney Chadwick tip-toes her lyrics matching a chilling piano chord over a head-knocking guitar riff.
Please let me know after you listen to this if you’re also randomly saying “rah-veal- dus-teee” under your breath the rest of the day like I am.
Mamalarky – #1 Best of All Time
“#1 Best of All Time” is a single off Mamalarky’s third studio album released this year, “Hex Key“.
Singer Livvy Bennett haunts over a rhythm section jamming crazy style—drummer Dylan Hill and bassist Noor Khan, creating bank robbery escape music.
Noor Khan is the best part of the album as she plucks the hell out of that bass, Livvy Bennett floating above her.
“I’m #1 Best of All Timе
I’m just a girl who’s in her prime
Always running
Keep it coming”
I just want this on record. Written on this date, I love this song from Mamalarky’s album this year. Just need that said before it’s in a background to sell AI services that do worse work than human employees—but they’re way quicker about it. And destructive to the planet Earth. And make, like, only 9 people richer while the rest of lose our jobs to broken calculators.
Gabe ‘Nandez – Shadowstep
As I prepare my best albums of the year article, Gabe Nandez and Preservation’s “Sortilege” feels like an automatic Top 5 write-in.
Gabe ‘Nandez raps like a more slick MF Doom and a more reckless Roc Marciano.
“Shit I used to think was the moviеs / just whack now
Things we used to do / rival things that we nеver did
He got hit with life / in the penitentiary trying to live
She told me she was surprised / my intensity kind of big
Told her / ‘how would you describe what is destiny to a kid?'”
Gabe ‘Nandez is a pendulum swinging back and forth between personal stories of his life and broader life messages, like a Chinese Food place where sometimes the fortune cookie says “Good things take time” and “Shit, I shouldn’t have slept with her”.
Preservation’s beat sounds like a busy Chinese bazaar, Gabe ‘Nandez confidently, dismissively skating through the chaos.
Quelle Chris & Cavaliers – Part of Speech
“Part of Speech” is a track off Cavalier and Quelle Chris’s joint 2023 project “Black Cottonwood.”
Cavalier starts the song frantically bouncing around the beat like the Press Your Luck board. All whammys.
“Personal revolt/ tried to press forward on Yeshua’s remote
Emotin’ choking down steam from/ these loco motives I’m rejoicing at every minor come up like sheesh”‘
Unbelievable cadence here.
Bolts of lightning ricocheting off two parallel conductors.
Cavalier bounces between high-hats and snares, dynamically sprinting through a spiked hallway with the doors caving in, all as he describes trying to escape the lifestyle.
“Out my comfort zone the skin of my teeth
The street callin’ it’s like a curse on both lines
So pardon the beeps / it’s just a fuckin’ part of the speech
Took the quarter pounder / quarterbacked the round up for weeks / ‘Til the outcome was feast amongst famine”
Meanwhile, Quelle is here to talk that shit. As he deserves.
“You not hot/ play ya December we June / play ya position
Start hitting niggas up like pay ya tuition / We can tell you been listening
You tune in /You hot air blowing / you June wind”
My mission for Weekend Wave is to get Quelle Chris into all y’all’s Top 5s.
Thanks for reading Weekend Wave #1. Let me know if I should run this back next week. Or even better, send some jams you’re listening to next week and I’ll tap in and write about it. Hit up ya boy on social media: Facebook. Twitter. Bluesky. Instagram.
Or shoot me an email (I refresh that thing no less than a million times a day) Deadseriousmailbag@gmail.com.
