@Донат Сахапов

Discover new music from artists we think you'll like. Refreshed every Friday.

Discover new music from artists we think you'll like. Refreshed every Friday.

A massive hit with online gym and drift videos, phonk thrives on a highly bassy and warped, chiptune- and cowbell-driven smorgasbord of sounds that sometimes barely echoes the genre’s lineage in ’90s southern hip-hop and trap. These new and recent essentials shine a light on the producers driving digital phonk—and variants like aggressive, drift, house phonk and beyond. They alternate high-octane, electronics-heavy mixtures and moody, low-lit atmospheres strewn with choppy vocals and distorted rhymes. This is the perfect soundtrack to an ingenuously synthesised, thrill-seeking ride.

May Wave$ is affectionately nicknamed the Rostov Weeknd, and it’s easy to see why. Like The Weeknd, the Russian rapper launched his career through posting scrappy but prodigious tracks online as a teenager, but their greatest similarity is in the lustful longing of their dextrous vocal range. This materialises on the high tenor of “Smokey Tears”, enabled by a withered piano and brittle backing vocals, and a near falsetto on the menacing posse cut “Basic Instincts”. Elsewhere he sinks to a deeper, throatier tenor, supplemented by booming trap bass.