Isaiah Rashad is BACK!

Last week Tennessee-born, TDE-signed rapper Isaiah Rashad announced the imminent release of his fourth album, It’s Been Awful. This album comes some five years after Rashad’s incredible last album, The House Is Burning. Ironically, ahead of the release of The House Is Burning, Rashad said, “Hopefully this is the start of something new—no more five-year gaps,” in an interview with Apple Music. And here we are again, five years after Rashad’s last masterpiece, eagerly awaiting now music from him.

SAME Sh!T single cover

Before The House Is Burning came The Sun’s Tirade, my personal favorite Isaiah Rashad album. It’s an incredible feat of musicality. Ironically enough, despite this record coming just two years after Rashad’s incredible debut Civilia Demo, the first song on The Sun’s Tirade is a skit spoken by producer and TDE co-president Dave Free, lamenting the lack of an album from Rashad. ‘Yo, everybody was bumpin' your last shit. You don't want to get your next shit out? You don't care? You don't care that they want to hear your next shit?,’ Free’s voice questions. Much of this sentiment is still echoed by Rashad’s fanbase, especially as the gaps between albums continued to widen.

But really, this doesn’t make me any less excited. Would I have liked another album from Rashad sooner? Absolutely. But, and I’m being a little hypocritical here, when you make music as good as Isaiah Rashad does, if it takes a little extra time to make it, if maybe he needed time off for other personal reasons... Well, maybe that’s just how it had to work out.

The beginning of this new era for Rashad is punctuated by the release of the first single from the album, SAME SH!T. The song is really good; it’s energetic, repetitive, and gets me excited for what the rest of the album will hold. I’m a little upset I can’t play it through car speakers until next month, because with the bass all the way cranked up in the car, I think it would be perfect. In a press release put out ahead of It’s Been Awful’s release, Rashad says this about the song: “With all the experimentation and sounds across the album, I wanted to ensure there was something that spoke directly to where I’m from, for my older brothers, for that core audience. It’s that trunk-rattling type of record.” He executes this perfectly.