Pop Smoke – Meet the Woo 2 (Deluxe)
Pop Smoke opened the title track of his 2019 debut Meet the Woo with a series of bars that distil exactly what the Brooklyn MC is all about: “Baby girl, come and meet the Woo/She know we keep a tool/Big knockin' on my body/Watch who you speaking to.” The album—propelled by the breakout single “Welcome to the Party”—made a star out of a previously unknown MC, at once familiarising the rap game with this promising voice, as well as the Canarsie hood he came from. Meet the Woo 2, as its title suggests, is another helping of the consistently intimidating, endlessly catchy contemporary Brooklyn drill music that gave Pop Smoke his fame. Success has only served to fortify his earliest claims of citywide dominance (“Invincible”, “Christopher Walking”, “Element”), but he isn’t too self-important to share the mic with several of New York City’s most celebrated young voices (A Boogie wit da Hoodie, Fivio Foreign, Lil Tjay), spreading love in the Brooklyn tradition.