Arts Vanity: A Partial Corrective to CrimArts’ Rap Oversight

“Really? No one for Music? Not even [insert rap pitch that will, statistically speaking, remain neglected]? Okay. If you change your mind, look out for my email!”

If you attended any CrimArts pitch meetings this year, you almost certainly heard me issue this plea for music — especially rap and hip-hop — coverage more than once. Shamelessly, I delivered it faithfully, regardless of outcome.

Let the record show, however, that this commitment was not one without cause: Over the course of 2025, I pitched out 53 rap and rap-adjacent articles, of which only three were picked up. Resulting in a less than 6% success rate, this gap, if nothing else, offered consistent rejection therapy (effective, if unintentional).

How come CrimArts writers don’t gravitate toward rap coverage? I have been plagued by this question all year! Rap and hip-hop, after all, regularly rank among the most-listened-to genres in the United States, oftentimes sitting comfortably in the number one slot. This sector of music has been doing extremely well by nearly every metric, everywhere — that is, except the one place I, Melina Fonseca, was appointed responsible to advocate for it.

While I may have my theories of why that is — none of which implicate myself, of course — my last contribution as Music Exec is to reconcile the absence of rap coverage by resolving it internally. Below are three pitches I felt were worth seeing through, actualized at a deliberately modest scale (a direct result of this finals season’s essay fatigue).

‘Jonatan’ Album Review: Devotion With Its Teeth Showing

4 Stars

Nominally a rap album, “Jonatan” rarely behaves like one. What follows instead is a project that treats rap as a loose scaffolding for something more inward and expansive — a record preoccupied with love and faith, and with what remains once novelty wears off.

The album’s strengths are most apparent on standouts like “Babyface Maniacs” and “Teenage Symphonies 4 God (God Will Only),” where Yung Lean balances chaos and vulnerability with careful intention. The former culminates in a striking string outro that reframes violence and devotion as two sides of the same desperation; the latter offers one of the album’s clearest emotional admissions, quietly wrestling with faith, regret, and the fear of remaining unchanged.

Elsewhere, “Jonatan” occasionally falters, if only briefly. “Changes” initially lands as an oddly-timed, absurd manifesto before redeeming itself in its final bridge and chorus. It ultimately offers a pleasantly unexpected melodic turn in which a swelling, choric backing is swiftly replaced by a driving electric guitar strum. Moreover, Yung Lean’s vocals are frequently askew, as if slightly out of phase with the music around him; their charm and sincerity, however, compensate where precision never quite arrives. The record is also rich with interpolation — ABBA, “Mr. Blue Sky,” The Rolling Stones, to name a few — with many effective and thoughtfully transformed; despite that, their sheer volume occasionally results in a reference fatigue that begins to weigh on the project. “Jonatan” is strongest when these allusions feel absorbed rather than paraded.

By the time the album circles back to its opening motif, “Jonatan” has revealed itself not as a bid for reinvention, but as an expression of endurance.

‘Molly And Her Week Of Wonders’ Album Review: Molly Santana Unfortunately Saves Her Best For Last

3.5 Stars

“Molly And Her Week Of Wonders” announces itself with absolute certainty. Built on overdriven, occasionally cybernetic trap production and anchored by Molly Santana’s deep, grounded vocals, the album offers a compelling counterpoint to music made by male artists in her genre. For example, where Playboi Carti’s higher-pitched delivery functions independently of the beat, Santana stays planted inside of it, letting distortion-heavy bass provide the record’s center of gravity.

Throughout the project, she is ambitious, assured of her worth, and uninterested in softening her edges for approval. That confidence, however, becomes both the album’s strength and its limitation. Themes of self-determination, outperforming others, and material payoff recur with such frequency that the album’s cohesion reads less as deliberate and more as underdeveloped. This is especially disappointing because Santana proves she is capable of more specificity and vulnerability on standouts like “Globe” and “I Know,” where the emotional stakes deepen.

Curiously, the project is at its most exciting in its closing moments. Again and again, tracks save their boldest ideas for the outro: “Unstoppable,” “Been Did That,” “Acting Nice,” “Set Up,” and “Weekend” all resolve late, experimenting with beat enhancement, orchestral instrumentation, or synth just as they end. These moments hint at an artist willing to take risks — risks that, if sustained across full tracks and a more carefully paced tracklist, could elevate the album’s impact. As it stands, “Molly And Her Week Of Wonders” is a confident, compelling project that gestures toward greatness, even if it hasn’t fully learned how to linger there yet.

‘Live Laugh Love’ Album Review: The Weight of Staying Put

4.5 Stars

“Live Laugh Love” understands that presence requires ritual — a way in, a way out, and the discipline to respect both. Monologues, sound bites, and ambient noise mark these thresholds with purpose, like stumbling onto a radio station mid-broadcast or clumsily flipping a vinyl record. It is a way of intentionally severing ties with casual listening, demanding an active presence instead.

In its practice, Earl Sweatshirt leans into a recognizable structure — looped tracks, dense verses, and subtle distortions — but his control over it is what distinguishes the record. His use of underground samples and carefully placed interpolations never reads as borrowed; rather, bells from Gerhard Heinz’s “The Red Light District,” a reimagining of A$AP Rocky’s “F**kin’ Problems,” and echoes of Outkast or Erykah Badu are refashioned completely. This production remains dreamy and hypnotic, enhancing his lyricism instead of competing with it.

The crux that Sweatshirt’s writing often addresses in “Live Laugh Love” is his tension with adulthood — not as a revelation, but as an ongoing reckoning with who he was, who he is, and who he will be responsible for becoming. Sweatshirt frequently returns to questions of lineage and accountability, especially through fatherhood, where the past presses hardest against the future.

On “exhaust,” “Give my baby my daddy last name and his likeness” lands as the album’s thesis: an acknowledgment of inherited weakness — though he recurrently makes a commitment to mend it. Across the record, and especially in “Heavy Metal aka ejecto seato!,” this growth is rendered as release — of grudges, of illusions, of earlier selves — until songs slow, reverse, or conclude with a confronting monologue. What remains is an album that doesn’t chase closure so much as practice it, again and again.

—If you’d like to improve her sub-6% success rate and pick up a rap pitch, please CC outgoing Music Executive and incoming Arts Chair Melina Fonseca at [email protected] so she can eagerly claim it for proofs — she’s been waiting all year.