BULLDAWG

Fusing hip-hop with other genres comes with the inherent risk of the rap half being seen as a more accessible—or, even worse, respectable—version of itself. The phenomenon of rock fans, in particular, needing a gateway in order to respect rap is nearly as old as the genre itself; hilarious, considering it all derives from Black music in some way. But it’s only natural that some of the most vital sounds in the history of rap—a form largely founded on collaging other types of music—would come from mutual respect across divides. Run-DMC can play nice with Aerosmith; Linkin Park and JAY-Z can bring two hits together to form one mega-smash; everyone from Rico Nasty and Baby Osama to New Jersey rap-punks HO99O9 and California iconoclasts Paris Texas can display just how much distinct musical worlds have in common.

Since the time he started out as a member of the short-lived collective House 9, Atlanta rapper Kenny Mason has made it his mission to erase the line separating rap from rock for a new generation. His synthesis has been one of the least superficial to bubble out of the underground in the last decade; he’s not afraid to croon a ballad fit for Deftones over turnt trap 808s or effortlessly flow over crunchy guitar lines that wouldn’t sound foreign on a Show Me the Body record. “A lot of rappers act like they don’t even like rapping. I like rapping, bro. I like trying. And I feel the same with rock music,” he recently said. “There are certain spaces I am not in that I should be in—because I’m Black, to be honest. But the irony is that is a punk position to have. I’m wearing it on my sleeve.” On BULLDAWG, Mason’s third studio album, his passion for his pet sounds—rap, rock, and just a splash of gospel—floods out of every corner.

Aspects of Mason’s approach to the rap-rock hybrid seem reverse-engineered from the process of nu-metal bands like Slipknot or Korn. Instead of surface-level hip-hop signifiers—record scratches, echoing samples, the occasional rapped verse—glomped onto a rock song, many of his tracks smush guitar riffs, wailing solos, and bass-drum pedal madness into the confines of Atlanta-centric trap music. Take lead single “BOUNCE WIT ME,” which buries a guitar sample flipped by Atlanta producer FearDorian with skittering hi-hats and subtle low-end claps, delicately nurturing the best of both worlds while Mason rhymes about days when his mother’s food stamps were low and he had to bring the blower outside for money. Or “BLACK FIT,” which pits a vocal sample from Atlanta stalwart Young Nudy against chords jittering beneath drum programming straight out of the YSL camp. Intricate amalgams like these prove Mason’s interest in this relationship is deeper than someone who passively listened to Fall Out Boy or Panic! at The Disco in high school.

That love extends further into the credits. Shane Moran, former guitarist for the defunct Pennsylvania hardcore band Title Fight, plays on a handful of songs; his presence is felt in areas that both blur genre lines (“HERE II STAY (interlude)”) and are more explicitly rock-sounding, like the buzzsaw thump of “BE WHAT I WANT.” Another big difference between Mason and his contemporaries is his knack for when to lean into the mashups and when to just rap over one specific type of beat. The seven-track stretch from the Black Noi$e and Dilip-produced “DOOR SWANGIN” to the JID-featuring “TEST ME” is heavily ATL rap-coded with scant guitar and shoegaze-style gauzy mixing choices, while the run from “BE WHAT I WANT” to “FIND GOD” has a sharper tilt toward traditional guitar music. The ballads between these two sections are a mixed bag. The pleas for love and brotherhood that color “HERE II STAY (interlude)” are perfectly calibrated to the muffled skip of the beat; but that balance disintegrates on “FIND GOD,” which defaults to college-quad earnestness as Mason and Dominic Fike trade verses over saccharine licks aiming for acoustic intimacy and landing somewhere between Sugar Ray and Gym Class Heroes demos.

That one stumble aside, BULLDAWG feels effortless as Mason conducts us through an Atlanta where Dr. Martens, Balenciagas, and Air Forces all converge in the same moshpit. There’s a loose concept where Mason is a mechanic touching up cars for a rotating cast of characters, but otherwise, the sequencing and palette feel startlingly organic, in lockstep with peers like FearDorian bringing the cross-genre love without diluting the rap. This isn’t Lil Uzi Vert covering Paramore songs, or Dem Franchize Boyz combining “Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It” with Korn’s “Coming Undone.” Mason is a rapper skilled and reverent enough to know when to flow through the madness and when to scream his heart out through it.