{"id":630660,"date":"2026-06-10T06:47:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T06:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/630660\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T06:47:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T06:47:11","slug":"realyungphil-until-something-changes-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/630660\/","title":{"rendered":"RealYungPhil : until something changes Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the last few years, RealYungPhil<\/a>\u2019s raps have taken on the effect of that friend who always has a life-affirming conversation with you on the porch outside of a house party. I\u2019m talking the kind of heart-to-heart where you only hear faded murmurs of the music coming from inside whenever the door swings open, and when you go back into the crib, somehow so much time has passed that nearly everyone is gone. This casual pensiveness has been part of Phil\u2019s deadpan punchline rap since at least the early 2020s, when I only knew him as the Connecticut-raised graduate of the litefeet scene<\/a> with arguably the coolest beat selection in the underground<\/a>. Ever since the tapped-in Swedish beatmakers\u2014Yung Sherman, Woesum, Gud<\/a>\u2014in the Sad Boys and Drain Gang orbit started hooking him up with their glassy, near-liturgical instrumentals around 2023\u2019s Victory Music, it\u2019s been pushed to the forefront.<\/p>\n

I like Victory Music but not as much as I like the idea of Victory Music. The tape has a celestial glow but it can be one-note, with Phil adding his meditative thoughts and stray flexes to what feels like a beatpack sent over email. It\u2019s more like the kind of cross-Atlantic link-up a fan would dream up if they designed a fantasy rap album (I know I did) than what you\u2019d get if Phil and the Swedish boys were actually feeding off each other. Fortunately, that\u2019s not the case with his new record, until something changes, which feels a lot more collaborative and intentional. Phil steps into their lush world of mystic ambience and in response, they up the tempos a tick to meet his steely East Coast bravado. It makes sense that the album wasn\u2019t only laid down in Connecticut and Los Angeles, but also in Stockholm.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

The real-life chemistry is present on \u201cactivated\u201d\u2014produced by the trio of Woesum, Stacey, and Eurohead\u2014which kicks off with the sort of celebratory church bells you might hear on a wedding day, supercharged by the crashing 808s I tend to associate with the offshoot of drill popular in the Northeast. That little bit of pop gives Phil a pocket to catch as he strings together his resolute words of motivation: \u201cIt ain\u2019t shit that I gain from you losing\/And it\u2019s nothing I lose from you winning.\u201d In another life, he\u2019d be writing uplifting Nike slogans. I initially thought \u201cRemote\u201d\u2014which is, hilariously, Adam Sandler\u2019s Click in song form\u2014was overly glacial, until Gud\u2019s sporadic bursts of ticking hi-hats hit like a downpour in the middle of a heatwave. That slight bounce underlines Phil\u2019s optimistic breakthrough. Woesum and Stacey bring a bigger punch to that serene mood on \u201cSold Out Shows,\u201d where the drums gently rumble like a toy train set. Phil shows out on that beat, too, dusting his verses\u2014in between forgettable raps by UK newcomers Kare and kwes e<\/a>\u2014with short, recognizable messages (\u201cSorry I couldn\u2019t get back to you, I had shit I was going through\u201d) that don\u2019t require him to go any deeper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the last few years, RealYungPhil\u2019s raps have taken on the effect of that friend who always has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[375,96,128,56,54,55,307],"class_list":["post-630660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}