His lyrics are a beautiful blend of bluntness and absurdity. Young Thug is, to me, a musical and lyrical genius. His confidence and ability to sound so nonchalantly powerful are what appeal to me. I consider listening to Playboi Carti’s music as kind of my guilty pleasure. “To me it is just another era in the evolution of the genre as a whole. “I think mumble rap is absolutely a valid subgenre of rap,” Ziegler told WSN. Tristan Ziegler, a marketing coordinator at Sony Music Entertainment in New Orleans, believes that although the term “mumble rap” is overused, it deserves the same recognition as more traditional lyricists like Kendrick Lamar and J. Some argue that mumble rap isn’t dumbing down audiences, rather it is a response to contemporary audiences that are demanding less nuance in the music they’re consuming.

Mumble rappers are often blamed for not putting enough effort into their music - perh aps we’re the ones that don’t want to put in the effort into deciphering the heavy lyricism. Mumble rap may not even be the correct term to describe today’s top-selling songs that critics may argue are a reflection of the young generation’s laziness. Perhaps the only thing these rappers have in common besides their repeated overuse of the ad-lib “yeah” is their young age - Lil Uzi Vert is only 24 and Playboi Carti is only 22. Today, rappers like Lil Uzi Vert, 21 Savage, Lil Yachty and Playboi Carti represent the most prominent faces of this new subgenre. Perhaps the most pertinent example is Desiigner’s “Panda,” a song so famously unintelligible that people can often only sing along to the title of the song. Some rap fans will remember Future indecipherably spitting the line “I do the whole dash, dropping all cash / Gutta to the death of me I’m sticking to the recipe” in his song “Tony Montana.” This appeared on “Pluto,” the album that supposedly kickstarted the emergence of the subgenre. The term “mumble rap” was coined in 2011 to describe the slew of rap songs that started shifting to grittier production and simpler, incomprehensible lyrics. Although some fight to fiercely protect the sanctity of rap as a voice for society’s marginalized groups, others agree that hip-hop has expanded to upbeat, pop-inspired production that serves to express artists’ bravado to the masses. The merit of mumble rap has grown to become one of the most divisive topics in today’s hip-hop industry.

Best mumble rappers