The Best Hip-Hop on Bandcamp, September 2025
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October 01, 2025
September’s spotlight on the best new hip-hop releases to grace Bandcamp includes a Newark duo’s intense noise-rap, a Berlin beatmaker’s musical ode to Tokyo, and a Winnipeg MC’s art agenda that’s laser focused on longevity. We also dig into the latest project from the Griselda camp.
Chester Watson
Psychic Warfare Department
Chester Watson resembles an abstract hip-hop wandering bard, existing in a sort of dreamy liminal zone that inspires philosophical wanderlust. For Psychic Warfare Department, the focus is on Watson’s beat-making prowess—the track list is split between instrumentals characterized by cosmic synth lines and subdued drums, and outings that are bolstered by an expanded roster of guest vocalists including Gabe ‘Nandez, chuuwee, and Archibald Slim. Key to the whole experience is mid-album cut “mystery,” on which lojii navigates a backdrop sculpted from slurry bass to boast about his longevity: “A lot of trends tend to fade away/ Who’ll be remembered through the decades? We’ll see who they still play/ My world spinning on a turntable/ Soul bleeding through the speakers, heart bumping like an 808.”
Count Bass D
Bells Majestic
Count Bass D’s Bells Majestic is a sumptuous 21-song testament to the Pennsylvania producer and crate digger’s ear for melodious refrains. Across the project, instrumental songs strike a soothing note: “Put Something Down” is carried by soft, pillow-y synth lines and languid drums; “Hear We Grow” centers on gentle boogie; and “Fish Sandwich” rolls forth with echo-enhanced drums and a subtle piano riff. The album also features Bass D’s cover of Hall & Oates’s classic ‘80s cut “Maneater,” complete with a repeated on-topic vocal sample from Brand Nubian’s Sadat X.
The Expert
Vivid Visions
The Expert’s inaugural producer album pairs the Dublin beatmaker’s hallucinogenic sample smarts with an expansive cast of vocalists including Seattle’s suave spitter AJ Suede, veteran experimentalist Buck 65, and the prolific duo of Curly Castro and PremRock, aka ShrapKnel. “Relics bought, relics sold/ Hope you live to tell it old,” relays the Prem over the acoustic guitar and murmuring bass tones of “Electric Kool-Aid House Band,” exemplifying the sort of reflective thought that The Expert’s psychedelic production inspires in the lyricists. For fans of the ancient art of the posse cut, head to “Take A Trip” to witness the quartet of Dillion, Donwill, NAHreally and Rob Cave dropping verbals over a shape-shifting backdrop of taut funk drums and horn riffs that could have been rescued from an unreleased late-‘80s Flavor Unit studio session.
FloFilz
Hagaki
Released via Melting Pot Music, Hagaki is the fourth installment in a series of audio travelogues, each dedicated to a specific city. Following projects focused on Paris (Metronome), Lisbon (Cenario) and London (Transit), Hagaki presents Berlin beatmaker FloFilz immersing himself in Tokyo culture for a month via 16 musical reflections. Leaning heavily into jazz, mid-tempo clipped drum patterns are topped with muted melody lines from a close circle of musicians including guitarist Toshiki Soejima and bass player Greedo. Tranquil closer “Sunken Stones” uses what sounds like ambient field recordings to represent FloFilz’s time exploring mountains and forest regions.
Ho99o9
Tomorrow We Escape
Tomorrow We Escape is a bold blitzkrieg of rabble rousing noise-rap crafted by the Newark duo theOGM and Yeti Bones. (Their group’s name, Ho99o9, is pronounced “horror.”) Inhabiting a sonic space somewhere between Clipping’s musically expansive experimentalism and pioneering New Jersey duo Dalek’s industrial rap, the 11-song album is relentless in both its sonic and verbal intensity. “No new friends, fuck a parlay, don’t care what you gotta say/ System blower every day/ Ain’t free? You gotta pay,” Bones seethes over distorted waves of electro funk on “OK, I’m Reloaded,” before twisting together rap references and rebel visions: “Government cheese where the rats lay/ Death’s cousin, MC Eiht/ Born menace, Lynch Mob, Ice Cube, but no good day/ Outlaw society, I’m a dead man on a one-way street/ My heart is rust, I get no sleep/ Angel dust when demons weep.” Yung Skrrt, the Nova Twins and Pink Siifu contribute to the mid-project ensemble cut “Incline,” with the latter taking aim at dubious preachers, corrupt police, and the American constitution over grinding digital bass and suitably agitated snapping snares.
ILLPO
THELONIOUS PAPERS
Greensboro, North Carolina
Greensboro, North Carolina
Consisting of the longstanding Greensboro MCs Mundae Boones and J Bond, ILLPO’s THELONIOUS PAPERS is a powerhouse 16-song project that blends the duo’s sharply composed (and often conceptually focussed) bars with gritty, boom-bap-influenced production provided by fellow Greensboro representer Kev Kaous. Brawny and impactful from the outset, the siren-style synths of “BAD NEWS” are accompanied by bars that celebrate indie smarts over major label industry woes; “INFLUENCER” takes aim at the duplicitous dynamics of social media gatekeepers; and the stuttering ‘80s soul groove of “HACKED” celebrates moments when, “The universe validates your opinions/ And your ancestors bring you more clarity than religion.” Staking a claim for most curious sample source of the month, “CAMEL CLUTCH” is sparked by a snippet of the kitschy theme song to an ‘80s UK light entertainment TV show.
Len Bowen
If You Don’t See Me, You Saw Me
Len Bowen’s If You Don’t See Me, You Saw Me is a compact eight-track statement from the Winnipeg MC reflecting his belief that artists should strive to create long-lasting art rather than chase fleeting fads. Backed by slinky, jittering drums from producer Junia-T, on “Flowers & Thorns” Bowen targets, “all these false prophets” peddling “cheap worship” before dropping a cutting charge: “Most of y’all dudes can’t eat without per diem.” Beyond the song’s sharp barbs though, Bowen signposts a place of solace: “Letting go is hard, yeah, but holding on hurt more.” For even deeper introspective thoughts, head to closer “The Journey Pt. 3,” on which Bowen attempts to deal with restless nights racked with self-doubt, set to a backdrop of appropriately desolate piano lines provided by producer Slang Hugh.
Lt Headtrip & steel tipped dove
Hostile Engineering
The latest release from the prolific purveyors of experimental hip-hop over at New York’s Fused Arrow Records brings together the politicized art-rap of Lt Headtrip with label founder steel tipped dove’s stripped-down psychedelic production. “I’ve watched my aspirations shed their flesh and eat it/ I’ve been hunted for my hide, I’ve been measuring my edicts,” raps Headtrip over ominous rolling chimes and smartly sparse percussion on “Eatin’ Every Breadcrumb,” a track that weaves together thoughts on religion, existentialism, and identity. “I’ve been trying to find an end game in a never ending sequence/ But nothing ever happens when I snap my fingers.” Closing out the proceedings on a moralistic note, the elegiac “Coulda Had It All” reflects on the life of a self-centered character in blunt terms: “He’d abandoned his intentions for the fame of his success/ And found himself the victim of a state that he oppressed.”
THERAVADA
THE YEARS WE HAVE
With THE YEARS WE HAVE, New York MC and beatmaker THERAVADA proves himself a wizard at crafting hypnotic hip-hop from tuneful soul samples and smartly tempered drum loops. Over 14 tracks, elegant string lines and tranquil keys take center stage powering songs like “Conditions/Climbing,” where the MC assembles nostalgic snapshots of days spent scrimping; the track transforms with a beat switch into a series of happier sentiments about making “magic on a sunny day.” Venturing into classic braggadocio, the two-part “Sucka MCs” sets THERAVADA’s relaxed one-upmanship bars over production that brings to mind vintage EPMD scoring a Spaghetti Western flick.