“Rump Punch,” an early single from the Bronx drill Casanova Cash Cobain’s new album PLAY CASH COBAIN, rides a glittering piano riff layered over the rapper-producer’s signature drums—boisterous and staggered, the air in between each drop packed with a sly romantic tension. Cash is a blueprint for a new kind of rap-r&b crossover. Lyrically, he’s able to turn top-tier raunchiness into something smoother (Pussy taste like rum punch,” he cooly raps on the track), all while he builds out a sonic universe that’s taking the rap world by storm. Cash’s sound has been bubbling up in rap circles around New York for some time. So much so, that “Rump Punch” samples a previously unreleased Cash Cobain song, a kind of meta flex possible when you’re as prolific a producer as Cash.
PLAY CASH COBAIN, a follow-up to last year’s Pretty Girls Love Slizzy, arrives at a moment when the Bronx-born producer’s sound is as red-hot as anything the rap world’s seen in some time. Quavo arrives on album opener “Slizzyhunchodon” like Cash’s long lost twin, the slinky, rhythmic flow he perfected with the Migos slotting into Cobain’s production style with ease. Similarly, Don Toliver sounds enlivened on the track, tapping into the chemistry he and Cash exhibited on their smash single “ATTITUDE.” here, Toliver is more subdued, his impressive vocal range arriving at its most dynamic over Cash’s boisterous, undulating drum loops.
“Problem,” the eight-minute posse-cut featuring everyone from Big Sean to Luh Tyler, is a case study of Cash Cobain’s ability to conjure moments that take command of our attention. The song features a sample of the rising rapper Laila!’s viral On The Radar freestyle looped to almost surrealist terrain, while a who’s who of rappers young and old volleying various boasts over the song’s hypnotic and booming drum loop. While PLAY CASH COBAIN leans heartily on the producer’s signature style, a sensual take on the bravado of New York drill, Cash explores a refreshing range of new sounds too. During a recent visit to Rolling Stone’s offices, he said the song “Luv It,” was inspired by Soca music. The song, a pitch-perfect crossover hit, proves how effortlessly Cash Cobain can construct sonic universes. Throughout the album, he shows how singular a voice he is in today’s rap landscape
Ken Casey stuck around after the show in San Diego, California, talking to members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Some of the challenge-coin haul.
The band started as a bet. “My band has a show in three weeks,” Casey’s coworker told him in 1996. “I dare you to open for us.”John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Dropkick Murphys (from left): Casey, DaRosa, Webster, Kelly, Rheault, Brennan, and Lynch John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Casey is largely the voice of the band, but the other members back him up. “We’re so lucky he’s the mouthpiece,” says Brennan, left. John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
“Only the Irish can take a song about death and destruction, famine, alcoholism, and raise a glass like it’s an anthem,” says Casey. John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
“Anytime it feels like things are about to plateau for us, something gives us a little bump,” says guitarist Lynch. “It feels exciting. It feels dangerous. It feels like doing something.” John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Jay-Z performing at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis in Paris.
Jay-Z Deserves the Super Bowl Halftime Gig
Where’s the love? Jay-Z asked that question 25 years ago, in the chorus of one of many songs in his catalog that still move audiences today. If he performs “Heart of the City” as part of his Super Bowl halftime show next February, those indignant bars are sure to be a highlight: “First the Fat Boys break up, now every day I wake up, somebody got a problem with Hov…” It would be an appropriate choice, too — because then as now, any time Jay-Z notches a new achievement, people find a way to complain.
The jokes and nonsense started almost as soon as the first rumors trickled out that Jay, whose company Roc Nation has executive-produced the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019, might be choosing himself to headline next year’s show. “Jay-Z just Dick Cheney’d himself for the Super Bowl,” Puck‘s Matthew Belloni quipped on X last week, alluding to the time that the late prince of darkness, who’d been asked to run the vice-presidential search committee for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, put himself on the ticket. (Super hip and current reference, and not at all apples-and-oranges.) Others pointed to TMZ reports that pop stars like Harry Styles and Justin Bieber had been asked first. “How are they the frontrunners, and he end up in the front?” Cam’Ron, who’s delighted in trolling Jay for many years, wondered aloud on his podcast. “Out of all the people on the roster, they couldn’t pick nobody else?” asked Cam’Ron‘s co-host, Ma$e.
These critiques miss the point, which is that Jay-Z is one of the best choices for a high-profile gig like this. He’s a superstar with a comparable level of name recognition to any other A-lister in music. He has a deep stack of classic songs going back decades. And he’s a highly skillful live performer who knows his way around a stadium stage, as he’s spent this year reminding people on his Jay-Z 30 tour. He tore down Yankee Stadium three nights in a row this summer; just last week, he rocked SoFi Stadium, which happens to be the same place where the 2027 Super Bowl is being held. He held the crowd’s attention with ease at all of those shows, and though there were plenty of glittery guests — that’s a given at a Jay show, and it will surely be true at the Super Bowl, too — he did it mostly through the force of his own magnetic energy. Let’s state the obvious here: Jay-Z is really, really good at rapping. We’re talking about one of the slickest, sharpest talkers in the history of words, someone who made it to the top through a sustained act of myth-making, then kept going. Are we seriously asking whether he can handle a 15-minute televised performance?
And yeah, there’s a touch of self-congratulation in the way he appointed himself. So what? Praising his own gifts is arguably Jay-Z’s greatest talent of all. He made a fine art out of self-applause. He told his story again and again, retracing the steps from Marcy Projects to the corner suite, and he made us believe. It would almost be insulting to the audience if he didn’t give himself the gig at some point.
Pop culture observers in recent years surely remember the backlash to Super Bowl headliners like Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny — all of it at least culturally conservative, and much of it frankly just racist. The blowback to Jay’s announcement is mostly coming from other quarters, at least for now (let’s just wait to see what the right-wing swamps make of this one). But it’s disappointing in a different way. Jay-Z has spent his career expounding hip-hop as a mainstream commercial force. He’s not a businessman, he’s a business, man. But he’s also an artist. He’s made huge amounts of money, and gotten himself into the rarefied rooms where he even has the ability to give himself a gig like this, by spinning his experiences into compelling narrative art, one verse at a time. Let’s not lose sight of how impressive his life’s work really is. Jay-Z is not some random C-suite bro, and he’s definitely not Dick Cheney. He’s one of the greatest rappers of all time, by any measure. He’s earned that Super Bowl spot.