Stark, acapella, and to the point, the freestyles that XXL produce in conjunction with their annual Freshmen class series stand out in contrast to the list itself, which takes numerous factors into consideration in order to determine the hottest up-and-comers in the game. It's been clear for a few years that being the best pure rapper isn't the only way you can make it there. Maybe you're not the best lyricist in the game but you've got a new sound and a cult following. Maybe you're a street rapper who never freestyles. Maybe you're a singer! This is all fair game when it comes to landing on the cover itself, but when it's time for the Freshman freestyles, that all goes out of the window.
Taking anywhere from 30 seconds to over two minutes, each Freshman gets up close and personal with the camera and delivers a 32, or a 16, or maybe even what just sounds like a hook. It's one of the few places in the current culture of perfectly-curated Soundcloud page and Snapchat stories that we get a completely bare-bones look at artists' abilities, free from alteration by auto-tune and distraction by way of impressive production. Especially since the magazine started taking singers and non-freestylers into serious consideration, there's quite an obvious range of skill level in each year's crop of freestyles, but the diversity can also produce some stunners-- stuff you typically wouldn't hear in a serious cypher but adapts artists' new styles into the form of acapella delivery.
Today, we're ranking the freestyles by this year's ten XXL Freshman from worst to best. Points are given not only for lyrical dexterity, but also for originality, and they're subtracted for the use of bars that have appeared in already-released tracks.
Kodak Black
We loved Kodak's recent tape Lil BIG Pac, but unfortunately his "freestyle" is a different story, or rather the exact same story told once more. He opts to just rap the first verse of the tape's Boosie Badazz collab, "Slayed," which has some definite bars in it, but is still a lazy move overall. We know Kodak's got some great flows up his sleeve, so it was rather disappointing to hear an old one recycled.
Lil Dicky
Luckily, we only got two rappers this year who were brazen enough to think they didn't need to come to the freestyle sessions packing new lyrics. After Kodak, Lil Dicky's the other, as he chooses to use a very slightly altered version of the second half of his track "Bruh" in this instance. You can't really deny his speed or dexterity, both of which he puts on display here, but in addition to the unoriginality, you also have to note the questionable nature of lyrics such as "My flaccid is growing fat as Samoan cracker."
Lil Yachty
Although he still finishes in the bottom half of this list, you've gotta give Lil Yachty some props for being less disappointing than you'd expect. He's never been considered an especially gifted lyricist, especially after his recent attempt at freestyling on Hot 97, but this time around, he manages to flip his unique style into at least a handful of enjoyable, if not exactly wowing, bars. Note how the camera shakes, playing up Yachty's whimsical charm.
Desiigner
In terms of pure attention, Desiigner's the clear winner of the pack, with his video garnering over six million view to date. It was all anybody seemed to want to talk about the day it was released, with Timmy Turner memes still popping up and inspiring the rapper to flesh this one out into a full track. Funnily enough, his is the most minimal and least lyrically involved XXL Freestyle ever, basically just a hook with a few words. But man, that melody's haunting, and you've got to admire Desiigner's gall at deciding to just sing and snap rather than flat-out rap.
21 Savage
This scratchy-voiced ATLien has a minimal rapping style that doesn't really lend itself to the acapella format, as riding chaotic trap beats with ease is his definite main strength. He comes off a bit lazy in this 50-second-long outing, not changing up his flow that much, pushing the speed of his lyrics, or going for any intricate rhyme patterns. It's the type of thing that might blow you away if paired with the right beat-- as 21's so gifted at finding just the right pockets within an instrumental-- but in its current form, this is not a wildly impressive freestyle.
People don't usually think of the melody-minded Uzi Vert as a freestyler or a particularly gifted lyricist, but he erases nearly all of that with the deft opening lines of his Freshman Freestyle. Doing back-to-back double entendres with "for" and "four," he shows that there's often more than meets the ear in his music, which most people just assume consists solely of "yeah"s and garbled singing. He gets a little more repetitive and simplistic as time goes on in this freestyle, but definitely holds his own against more venerated lyricists.
Dave East is unarguably the least popular rapper of this year's class, with his freestyle only receiving less than 400,000 views thus far (around 200,000 less than anyone else's), but he's used to batting from an underdog's position, and uses this opportunity to show his New York roots and focus on a more linear narrative than any of his classmates. He's no-frills in his delivery, opting to erode away at stanzas of lyrics rather than dazzle with quickly-spoken fireworks, but that only bolsters his workmanlike image. East is an old soul that has no interest in joining today's flocks of neon-haired, melodic rappers, and here, he shows that that's still worth something.
G Herbo
After being snubbed the last two years, Herbo finally got the spot he's deserved for his more lyrically dextrous take on drill. He goes the fuck IN here, rapping for thirty seconds longer than anyone else and adeptly finding his way into a new flow every few seconds. Like East, he keeps it real with tales from his own life, but manages to dazzle a bit more with twisting couplets like, "We wake up, flame up, pop up, post up, steal dope, clap folks, crack jokes." Herbo's approach might sound busy over hyperkinetic beats at times, but this is the perfect arena for him to flex in.
Anderson .Paak
Singers may face a tougher challenge in the freestyle section, but .Paak isn't your average R&B dude. On Malibu, he proved himself able to slip into melodic rapping with ease, and here, he does it again, all while maintaining a rhythmic playfulness. Almost a song unto itself, .Paak's freestyle is part beat poetry, part hook, and part display of technical gifts. He comes across as the most well-read vocabulary expert in the whole group, and does so without seeming one bit nerdy.
How did Denzel Curry rise from cult hero to XXL Freshman? Pure, unadulterated bars. He shows that off without a shadow of a doubt here, managing to rap faster, more nimbly, and more intelligently than any of his classmates. "Fuck a big body Benz, I need warships," he says, big-upping himself while also taking stock of the surrounding culture. If you're not yet convinced that this kid's a problem, watch this video a few more times.