Rap Blog: Kura is forging his own path

Rap Blog is a weekly showcase of a standout rap song.

A few weeks ago I swung through NoHo, Manhattan, late on a Saturday night to say hello to Kura, whose songs hit a sweet spot between the abrasive textures of the modern underground and the blissed out harmonies of SoundCloud’s yesteryear. 2024 has been a pretty fruitful year for the 21-year-old Detroit rapper, from his solo tape DISORDER to his tdf collab project we make noise. When we met up, he had just wrapped a session, sticking around the studio to show me a bundle of unreleased tracks. Right before I left, he played me this song.

Self-produced “jjjjound” bounces a satellite-pinging arpeggio off a rolling bed of sub-bass. Kura’s raps are similarly kinetic, charging forwards as if his bars could somehow outrace his own synths. He slides around the pocket, skates across it; seamlessly slips between staccato stunts and effusive melodic runs. The stylistic flourishes elevate his more boilerplate flexes — Bentleys and AMGs, beautiful women bursting out of Fenty Savage lingerie — but “jjjjound” really shines when it zooms in on the nuances of Kura’s modern life, besieged on all sides by swagless peons and read receipts. “My shit turned off how she know that I read it? / Hoe blow my phone off one damn message,” he keens.

Kura first popped up on my radar last year with the Pi’erre Bourne-produced Born Seditionary, the culmination of an extended stint in Los Angeles signed to Bourne’s Sosshouse imprint. That tape stretched his former boss’s sound into more earnest and eager shapes, and “jjjound” similarly benefits from Kura’s wide-eye for detail and atmosphere. “I get too fresh, but all my friends just think I’m strange,” he grins, unperturbed by the razzing. A couple moments later: “I’ll prolly turn up your show, they wasn’t fuckin’ with you in the crowd” (Ouch). As Kura drives off into the sunset, he picks up the flow again: “Still smoking on strong, still smoking on strong / Fuck that bit too long / took her right out her thong” — and then the song abruptly ends, as sudden and bright as a firework.