Despite the ebbs and flows of societies rising and falling with time, there has never been a down period for Bay Area rappers and hip-hop producers at-large. Somehow, with the passing of each Gregorian calendar year, this region continues to amass a new archive of sound and game. These past 12 months were no different. In fact, it may have been one of the best years in recent memory—not just for Bay Area-based rap artists, but for the rap genre from coast to coast.
After hours and hours, if not literal weeks and months, of consuming newly released rap albums and attending shows and events (special shout-out to the MOOVIE! 2: THE YEEQUEL function that took place in Frisco earlier this year that felt like a giant Bay Area hip-hop reunion), I’ve drawn my own personal conclusions about which albums and emcees deserved to be crowned for their achievements dating back to January. To be sure, there are more names to be heard and appreciated, and certainly, many have been overlooked. But for now, at this moment, here are my 10 favorite Bay Area hip-hop albums from 2024 as the year soon approaches an end.
Here’s a playlist for your Bay Area holiday party.
LARUSSELL & HIT-BOY, RENT DUE
There’s no other rapper in the entirety of America—let alone the Bay Area—who is generating as much volume and wattage as LaRussell right now. He literally built The Pergola, a stage in the backyard of his family’s home in North Vallejo where artists like Snoop Dogg and Juvenile have flown in to perform, and his own work has earned ample national acclaim, including an ever-coveted NPR Tiny Desk appearance. I’ve been a fan of the Vallejo-certified star since 2021, when I first saw him perform live as an opening act for Grand Nationxl at Oakland’s intimate venue, The New Parish. Back then, he was a highly passionate, relatively unknown emcee who caught my attention. I interviewed him a few months later for one of his earliest profiles in East Bay Express (which he later celebrated with a song appropriately titled “East Bay Express” on his 2022 project, Champagne Gummies.)
Admittedly, 2021-’22 was a golden run for LaRuss, during which he released a treasury’s worth of gems—Marlin 7; Cook Together, Eat Together; It’ll All Make Sense When It’s Done; Zaps & Alpines; Days Like This; Omaha; ‘96 BULLS; plus eight other albums. But 2024 came close, with the Valley Joe heavyweight releasing five full-length projects in the single calendar year. Among them, Majorly Independent (a fiery collab with Bay Area legend-in-the-making P-Lo) and Live from the 206 (an album that was recorded on tour in Seattle, featuring jazzy production from a coterie of talent including Hokage Simon, Tope, and Jake One) are standouts from his long-running list of output.
But my favorite among his 2024 output is Rent Due, a slappaholic LP received in a favorable spotlight by outlets like Forbes that he made with Hit-Boy, a Southern California producer acclaimed for his own slew of alliances with notable hip-hop Hall of Famers like Nas. The music is upbeat, funky, positive, and aspirational—as is everything else LaRussell does.
BROOKFIELD DUECE, FOREAL TAPE
After taking a hiatus, Deep East Oakland fixture Brookfield Duece returns with bangers in Foreal Tape. From beginning to end, the album showcases Duece’s growth and polish as an established rapper and creative A&R who co-manages his cousin Damian Lillard’s record label, Front Page Music. More than any other project on this list, Foreal Tape brings together an eclectic roster of talent, including Berkeley’s Rexx Life Raj, Sacramento’s Nate Curry, Vallejo’s Scando The Darklord, and New York City’s Sy Ari Da Kid. Compared to his previous discography, Duece veers further into his playerish side with smooth hooks, silky vocals, and soulful samples that border on R&B at times. Despite living in an era of music that comes and goes by the millisecond—with entire albums quickly emerging and disappearing into the internet’s shrouded ether within days—Duece’s past two years in the studio reveal an evolution and experimentation that isn’t always common with today’s artists, but is heavily appreciated when received by my headphones. Since his initial drop, he’s released a Deluxe version. And it has kept me coming back for months.
SEIJI ODA, A GENTLE GIGG…
Perhaps the most viral Bay Area single on this roundup, Seiji Oda’s a gentle gigg… marked the apex of hyphy’s immortality—and pliability—in 2024 by capturing the attention of everyone from the previously mentioned LaRussell to TDE’s SZA and beyond. Though it’s more of an EP than an entire album, the release includes a few other worthwhile tracks past its titular song, and can honestly stand against most full-length rap projects of this time, pound-for-pound. For those who aren’t yet familiar, Seiji is an Oakland-bred philosopher, mixing his Japanese-inspired sense of tranquility and inward reflection with a loudly vibrant East Bay spirit and upbringing. The result is a rapper unlike any other, which can be felt in everything from how he playfully juxtaposes koi fish with sideshows in his music videos to how he spreads love on the mic with gentle confessions of finding connection and meaning from a rooftop.
CHEZI, WELCOME TO ATLANTIS 2
It was a breakout year for Chezi, San Francisco’s slick talking word hustler. In addition to dropping his noteworthy EP, Gotham City—a masterclass on Bay Area mobb music with appearances from regional heavy hitters like Larry June, Kool John, Kamaiyah, and QuakeBeatz—Chezi also released Welcome to Atlantis 2. Summoning mixtape-era Gucci Mane hypnotism and Lil B weirdness, the Hunters Point spitter musters his best, wackiest bars for the sequel in his ongoing series of oceanic-themed, Atlantis-dripped lyricism. On the titular track “Atlantis,” he brags about being a “shark king ruler of the underworld” over a remixed version of aquatic ambiance instrumentals from 1996’s Donkey Kong Country (any Super Nintendo Entertainment System-inspired music will elicit my careful attention as a listener.) Other tracks, most notably “Alice the Mermaid” and “Megalodon (Keep Swimming),” don’t back down from the wavy undersea vibes, allowing for one of this year’s more interestingly conceptual rap performances out of the Bay, with Chezi emerging from the frigid waters like Aquaman rocking an icy chain.
NIMSINS, BURY MY HEART IN EAST OAKLAND
Among the most heavily slept-on hip-hop purists in the Bay Area, if not the entire West Coast, Nimsins delivers a deeply meditative reflection about living in Oakland with his sixth solo release, Bury My Heart In East Oakland. As the title suggests, the rapper weighs in on life and death while navigating complex issues of criminality, violence, and aggressive media labels placed on him as a 28-year-old Black man and father. Importantly, the album operates as a form of healing and social criticism, rather than providing the fictitious accounts of kingpin glory and condemnation of imagined opps and foes that tend to saturate contemporary rap charts. With his trademark lo-fi minimalism—supplied entirely by the hypogeal producer, jooneyor—Nim floats and glides over gentle flutes, slow drums, and stripped-down bass lines while observing survival and hunger on the socially neglected fringes of the East Bay. Open-hearted tracks like “Free” and “My Cuzzin Need Some Food” provide genuine in-depth commentary about living in East Oakland in ways that a newscaster never could. At under 90 seconds each, these tracks pack a seminar’s worth of poetry into a tight, rhythmically gentle space.
KAMAIYAH, FIGURING OUT MY EMOTIONS
Seductive ballads are the main course in this sizzling project from East Oakland veteran Kamaiyah. Make no mistake: any time she puts out music, I’ll be there to receive it. And her most recent collection of songs doesn’t underdeliver. A consummate pro at this stage of her career, she doesn’t swerve away from her strengths, providing silken melodies, velvety backdrops with gritty undertones, and unapologetic tales of romantic conquests. Much like her previous albums, she keeps it player. But at the same time, Figuring Out My Emotions invites more vulnerability than ever, with the rapper spending equal amounts of time as chaser and desirer on songs like “Be Mine” and “Link Wit Me.” Tracks like “One & Only” question the meaning of true love, while later cuts like “Success” are anthems about winning in every aspect of life. The instrumentals are reminiscent of ’90s love-making music, to put it euphemistically, adding to the sensual textures and verbiage from the bisexual artist who openly celebrates her intimate pursuits in unadorned fashion. Simply put, this one is for the lovers—not haters—out there.
IAN KELLY, ART
As artful as the name suggests, Ian Kelly’s ART is for the literary-minded listener who prefers music about the layered, emotional gamut of human experience rather than the superficial gimmicks and exaggerated glamour of a mainstream rapper. This is your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper, a throwback golden era lyricist who is constantly striving to master his craft as an independent Oakland wordsmith. Ian is the type of dude who you’ll see performing a freestyle on On The Radar one day, then at a local rap show in San Francisco the next night—he simply never stops. Though the project is bite-sized (it’s only five tracks and 10 minutes long), it’s re-listenable in every sense. From “A to Zion,” a song that runs through the alphabet with acrobatic agility, to “Pyramids,” an anthemic ode to underdog ascension featuring Nappy Nina, every song hits with precision and sincerity.
1100 HIMSELF, THE LEV SHOW
If you’ve been sleeping on 1100 Himself, at this point you deserve to get your mattress flipped. The Funktown gunner has been scorching the Bay Area’s rap circuit with laidback flows and an intentionally lopsided cadence for the past couple years, and is on the verge of a major breakthrough. Listening to Lev is like kicking it at the back of a lecture hall with the coolest kid in the room as he mutters a detached freestyle about everything from ninja swords to moving his mom to a faraway island. The Lev Show—1100’s sole album of the year—spotlights his unpredictable aesthetic, with the video for “Reef Flow” featuring him in a library surrounded by abstract artwork while reading Mary Oliver poems. In its entirety, The Lev Show is a timeless soundtrack for East Oakland’s underworld with off-kilter anime and PS5 references and overtones of a uniquely jazzy, drill-leaning sound.
JUSTPAUL NOW, SWOOSH PACK
The South San Francisco ambassador and Filipino sultan of sneakers JustPaulNow re-enters the recording booth to flex his sense of fashion and nostalgic hoops knowledge with a Nike-themed album, SWOOSH PACK. With a mix of personal storytelling and lyrical versatility, he laces together one of my favorite projects of the year in conjunction with New Zealand producer Kowhai. Each of the 11 tracks is named after an iconic sneaker, from Air Force 180s to Zoom Flight 95s, and recounts the South City representative’s memories of camping out at Niketown in Union Square and pairing variegated colorways with The North Face puffers and fitted MLB caps. (Bonus points for the throwback “NBA Inside Stuff”-inspired album cover and a recent feature in Soles of Mischief.)
OVRKAST., KAST GOT WINGS
After producing tracks for artists like Earl Sweatshirt and Drake (before the Kendrick Lamar beef), East Oakland’s Ovrkast. has been in high demand. The ultra-chill, hoodie-wearing chameleon is equal parts production wizard and poet and delivers a high-end sophomore project with KAST GOT WINGS, a portmanteau, of sorts, referencing Ovrkast. and his collaborative partner, Cardo Got Wings. Arguably the most anticipated Bay Area album of the year (at least for me, personally), it doesn’t pull any punches, with Ovrkast. entering a higher stratosphere of popularity and fame while maintaining his trademark elements of subdued soulfulness. It’s the most high-energy music he has put out to date, which adds a fresh dimension to his burgeoning sound and persona. For more info on the rising artist, check out his Spotify bio (which yours truly wrote a few years ago.)
