Rod Wave

Rod Wave

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Essential Albums

  • SoulFly (Deluxe Version)
    SoulFly (Deluxe Version)
    SoulFly (Deluxe Version)

    By 2021, St. Petersburg rap crooner Rod Wave had cemented a trademark sound that was instantly recognizable and ripe for imitation. After his 2020 sophomore album Pray 4 Love, the soulful trap star had little to prove in terms of commercial status, but there remained the question of whether his sound could continue to evolve—whether he could make an undeniable statement that would further grow his reputation. With his ambitious and hook-forward magnum opus SoulFly, the Floridian demonstrated that he was committed to scaling up each of his projects, accessing new emotional heft and inspired musical hybrids. Released in March 2021, SoulFly showed how far Rod had come since his early viral singles. It was his first No. 1 album, backed by singles like the infectious “Street Runner,” a study in toxic relationship dynamics and hard breakups that racked up hundreds of millions of streams. Artistically, too, there are plenty of career highlights, mini-blockbusters that comprehensively embody his singular soul-trap imprimatur. See breakout track “Tombstone,” another of Rod’s finest gospel-tinged moments, which blossoms from skeletal 808s and deadly spare blues to a choir-backed hook that comes across like a pseudo-spiritual. The behemoth, 28-track deluxe version adds more than 30 minutes of music, including high-profile guest spots. The initial version of SoulFly contained only one feature: celebratory bars on “Richer” from Chicago’s similarly sophisticated rap melodic writer Polo G. The expanded album incorporates standout performances from Kodak Black and Lil Durk, both of whom join Rod in reminiscing on their hard-won ascent to stardom and the pitfalls of life at the top. The laid-back, introspective “Get Ready” finds Kodak dipping into a confessional narrative style over a breezy trap beat and a gospel choir: “One day you gon’ wake up with your dreams in your face/And you gon’ been done did everything they said you can’t/The only way they gon’ beat you, n*gga, if you catch a case.”

  • Pray 4 Love (Deluxe)
    Pray 4 Love (Deluxe)
    Pray 4 Love (Deluxe)

    Rod Wave’s sophomore album Pray 4 Love surfaced in April 2020, setting a new high watermark for the Florida rap crooner commercially. Despite its preponderance of smooth beats and sticky hooks, the album retained Rod’s unsparing focus on hard-bitten subjects and psychological trauma. Following his 2019 studio debut Ghetto Gospel by less than half a year, Pray 4 Love was an exorcism of pain—recorded, by his account, in just one month. These songs explore some of the most difficult subject matter of his career to date, from his family’s darkest struggles to deep betrayals by friends, coconspirators, and lovers. Pray 4 Love also evidences Rod’s hunger to harness his burst of creative energy for everything it’s worth. A deluxe edition of the album followed just three months later, expanding the original by 11 songs and revealing just how much he had to get off his chest. His excitement emanates from every moment on the full version of the LP, from the urgency of his recollection of gang banging on “Thief in the Night” to the unfiltered free association on “Dark Clouds.” “Through the Wire,” an homage to his espoused forerunner Kanye West, is especially moving, leading off with the most emblematic Rod Wave line possible—“So much pain built up deep inside”—set to a soaring melody and propelled by a raw, devastating vocal performance. The project is overrun with radio-friendly cuts that bolstered Rod Wave’s already storied track record as a singles artist. Every separately released track came with an auspicious video drop as he found new ways to connect with his fans through visuals. While a full 12 Pray 4Life songs charted on the Hot 100, the ATR Son Son-featuring “Rags2Riches” loomed largest in the rap world, with its combination of swaggering hook and penetrating autobiography. The deluxe album includes the sequel “Rags2Riches 2,” featuring the then-ascendant Atlantan Lil Baby, whose unrepentant Auto-Tuned verse gives the track even more traction than the original.

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About Rod Wave

If he can help it, Rod Wave keeps himself out of the studio. It’s too busy, too impersonal—not the kind of place where you can open up. Which is kind of what Rod Wave does. So he vets the beats on headphones, rents a hotel room with his engineer, turns the lights off, and lets it go. “There’s people who could make a living getting in there and talking about they pain, they life, they story, they struggle,” he told Apple Music in 2020. “It kinda made me open up more. Like, it’s okay to be yourself; it’s okay to talk about what you go through, because ain’t nobody perfect. Everybody want to get on these songs and s**t and walk around like they perfect. That ain’t what it’s about. That’s just vampire. It don’t even exist.” Born Rodarius Green in 1999 in St. Petersburg, Florida, Rod Wave is part of a pack of younger rappers—including YoungBoy Never Broke Again, NoCap, and Moneybagg Yo—taking the street confessionals of forebears like Boosie Badazz and Kevin Gates in new directions, broadening the emotional range of hip-hop with the vocal catharsis of classic soul and, in Wave’s case, even a touch of country. It can be ugly, it can be raw—he meditates on friends lost to violence (“PTSD”), he describes breaking into houses to help out his family (“Popular Loner”). But Wave’s music also has a quietly redemptive streak: His load might never be light, but at least he can leave some of it on record.

FROM
St. Petersburg, FL, United States of America
BORN
August 27, 1998
GENRE
Hip-Hop/Rap

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