Song You Need: RXK Nephew’s impeccable style

The FADER’s “Songs You Need” are the tracks we can’t stop playing. Check back every day for new music and follow along on our Spotify playlist.

Keeping up with RXK Nephew’s catalog would be a significant undertaking for even the most intrepid fan. For the past two years and change, the Rochester rap phenomenon has been putting out songs at roughly a one-a-day clip. They’re not all revelatory, but some of them are, and very few of them are bad. (In 2021, Pitchfork’s Alphonse Pierre made a facetious but very helpful list of Neph’s 100 best songs of the year — less a quarter of his total output — in a valiant attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff, and even he missed some undeniable heaters.)

Today’s entry in Neph’s YouTube diary won’t be going on the first RXK greatest hits compilation, but it might make the box set. In keeping with his chaotic energy, the new track is actually his second song titled “Matching Moncler.” (The first was a collaboration with Smoke Supreme from their joint record SLITHER SMOKE.) It stands out from the pack in part due to its (sadly uncredited) gorgeous beat, which places a stadium guitar-like synth centerstage over a lovely bed of similarly synthetic keys, drums, and sub-bass. (The FADER is currently awaiting Neph’s clarification on the producer behind it.)

Neph has never been one to mince words — he once called out Benjamin Franklin, Jehovah’s Witnesses, algebra, and Cardi B in the space of a single song — and here, he takes a backhanded and pulverizing (if somewhat poorly timed) swing at one of hip-hop’s living legends with one simple but sadistic bar: “Shit’ll get uglier than Young Thug.” Still, it’s all in good fun. Be it his trollish Twitter presence, his filterless lyrical contempt for his peers, or his track titles, it’s best to take everything RXK-related with a grain of salt, even as you enjoy the ride.