The first half of 2025 featured some amazing records and releases in hip-hop. Underneath the colossal shadow that was Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s smash collaboration, “Luther,” there were some truly poignant songs that go beyond the genre’s usual fare of partying, purchasing, and philandering. 

Last year, diss records dominated the charts. Lamar and hitmaker Drake went back and forth with tracks like “Euphoria,” “Family Matters,” and “Not Like Us.” Meanwhile, Megan Thee Stallion scored a big hit with “Hiss,” jabbing at numerous haters and critics, including Nicki Minaj. While the ripples can still be felt now, some songs have stood out as what looks to be a shift in tonal course for the entire genre at large. 

Defying the stigmas and stereotypes, rappers like Meek Mill, Wale, YG, and Clipse have all dropped some stellar tracks that don’t lean on the typical troupes of sex, drugs, braggadicio, and beef. Each of them put a song that tackle incredibly personal subjects and incidents that most listeners have hard times discussing themselves; grief, trauma, and addiction.  

Meek Mill’s guest verse on Fridayy’s “Proud of Me” helped kick off this string of vulnerable releases. On “Proud of Me,” released in February, both Fridayy and Mill discuss the ramifications of their respective fathers’ deaths. Fridayy spoke of using material possessions to hide the pain of his father’s death during a recent tour. Mill’s verse looked back on the trauma of his father’s murder and how broke the heart of teenage Mill. 

Lines like “I’m scared to show up to your grave, ‘cause I might try to dig it out” uncover the lingering grief and disbelief that remains since Mill’s dead was shot to death when the Philly rapper was 17. Mill also rhymed about how his fortune couldn’t bring back his father or his close comrades who lost their lives: “Money rules the world, but you can’t pay God with it/I’d spend it all just to get back my n*ggas.” 

Clipse kicked off the second half of 2025 by disclosing their own battle with parental loss. “The Birds Don’t Sing,” the opening track of their critically acclaimed comeback album, Let God Sort Em Out, finds Pusha T and Malice lamenting on their final conversations with their parents before their deaths. Know mostly for their witty bars about drug dealing, Clipse’s “The Bird Don’t Sing” adds emotional weight to their villainous rhymes. While Pusha T regrets not seeing the hints their mom tried to give him in attempt to prep him for her passing, Malice fondly looked back on how lucky they were to have a loving father when all their friends didn’t. 

In March, Grammy-nominated rapper Wale dropped “Blanco,” disclosing the DMV native’s battle with alcohol abuse. The song’s hook, “Drowning in sorrow/Back on the bottle” over a languid R&B track set the tone for the somber confession. 

On “Blanco,” Wale describes the affects that alcohol has on his body, for the good and for the bad: “She make me numb, but she make me smile/She make me talk more, but she make me loud.” He goes further to describe how the liquor is a substitute for real relationships: 

“And my beautiful house, no friends
Now I’m “Where is my casa migos?”
And my momma don’t ever say hi
She say, “Mmm, why are you single?”
I said, “Mommy, I’m sorry, I’m trying”
But nobody gon’ love me like she do”

Later that month, YG dropped a track about a toxic relationship of his own. “2004” talks about how he was sexually assaulted as a teen by an older woman. The California MC wasted no time letting the listener know exactly what to expect, spitting these jaw-dropping opening bars:

“When I was young, I got raped,
By a b*tch that was twice my age,
Picked me up from school to meet at hers and got laid,
Ever since that day, I never looked at sh*t the same.”

Black male children and teens getting assaulted and groomed by older women is vastly under-reported. A key reason why Black male teens don’t report it is due to the misunderstanding and double standards that come with it. When a Black teenage girl is taken advantage of by an adult male, its labeled as criminal and immortal right away. However, with Black boys, it’s mistaken as a positive sign of manhood and conquest, as YG continued in the song: “Y’all call that sex abuse sh*t/I just thought I was doing some cool sh*t.” The song ends with YG reflecting on how being preyed on led to his toxic behavior in subsequent relationships: “Why every Ho you f*ck with, it’s never long lasting/No access to my heart, I give no passage.” 

Earlier this summer, rappers Joey Bada$$ and Ray Vaughn engaged in a dense back-and-forth rap battle that all but overshadowed Vaughn’s latest mixtape, The Good, The Bad, The Dollar Menu.  Vaughn’s release on TDE is a dense collection of songs that deal with mental illness and drug abuse. The tape’s standout track, “flat SHASTA,” is a letter to his mother, who was suffering from schizophrenia. 

“Mama, you need meds for schizo, but you won’t take it
If you lose all your marbles, you ain’t gon’ have none to play with,
A Black woman who cryin’ for help and I’m tryna save her,
The last thing you want to be called in this world is crazy.”

The signs of the shift began to show before the year began. In 2024, Tyler, The Creator’s Chromokopia album was an immediate hit, and not just for his production and his eccentric lyrics. Chromokopia found Tyler weighing personal fullfillment vs professional accomplishment, contemplation of possible fatherhood, and deeper dives into his own loneliness and fear. While Tyler began to show more intimate sides of himself on albums like 2017’s Flower Boy and 2019’s Igor, Chromokopia displayed the Odd Future founder at his most direct and, ironically, unmasked. 

While Tyler hit paydirt with his emotional evolution, raps fans were oftput by the therapeutic offering of one of its brightest stars in Lamar. His 2022 double album, Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers was dedicated to his therapy for his sexual addiction, depression, and the generational trauma of abuse he inherited from his parents. Although the album won a Grammy for Best Rap Album, the subjects and experimental delivery from Lamar on songs like “Mother I Sober,” “Count Me Out,” “We Cry Together,” and “Auntie Diaries” seemed just too real for fans. 

Doechii hit it big when she re-released an older song, “Anxiety,” to commercial and critical praise. The TDE rapper/singer certainly put a spotlight on the nuances of how anxiety affects people, women have been long been ahead of the curve when it comes to vulnerability on wax. Eve’s “Love is Blind” tackled the emotional trauma of domestic abuse on its victims and their loved ones. Lauryn Hill went diamond and won multiple Grammys for songs about betrayal, spirituality, and choosing to have a child when everyone told her to put her career first.

Our hip-hop queens’ willingness to lay their emotions bare before all only puts the spotlight on how little the men do the same in comparison. It’s easy to understand why from a business standpoint. There’s been little room or incentive for male MCs to rap so unfiltered about their emotions and demons when other frivolous songs overshadow them.

In 2018, smash hits like Cardi B and J Balvin’s “I Like It,” and Travis Scott and Drake’s “Sicko Mode” drowned out rappers like Royce Da 5’9’’, who rapped about his battle with alcoholism and his father’s struggles with cocaine on his album, Book of Brian. That same year, Phonte’s “Expensive Genes,” a song that also explored a father’s death. The following year, Phonte’s Little Brother partner, Rapper Big Pooh, rhymed about how he had to drive Uber between albums.

Certainly, MCs have made deep, introspective records and hit big with them. From Pharcyde’s “Runnin’ Away” to Lamar’s “U,” MCs tackled serious subjects, but rarely have such a quantity of higher profile rappers done such in this close of proximity. Hopefully, it isn’t an anomaly and we see more of this, as listeners need to hear it more than they realize.