The Ones: Rylo Rodriguez’s “Rolls Royce”

The must-hear rap song of the day

With artists releasing songs at a fast and furious pace it’s difficult for the average hip-hop head to keep track of it all—no matter how tapped in they are. That’s why we created The Ones, a daily post to highlight the song you need to hear curated by the Levels team. We sort through all the new songs—across all the platforms and subgenres—so you don’t have to. Thank us later.

Rylo Rodriguez - “Rolls Royce”

Normally, Mobile, Ala.’s Rylo Rodriguez can be found crooning over acoustic guitars that belong on a Hootie and the Blowfish album. On “Rolls Royce,” he opts to instead take us to church, delivering his mush-mouthed, sing-rap vocals on a soft piano and vocal sample that sounds ripped from a choir. But still, true to the current wave of Deep South vocalists, Rylo sings in detail about the pain of the life he’s lived. “Rolls Royce” is much different tonally though, driven by a sense of thankfulness for his recent success, given that most of his close friends are either in jail or have been lost to violence in his neighborhood: “They kill my dog, I ain’t want to believe he wasn’t bulletproof.”


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Originally Appeared on Pitchfork