Point Counter-point: Best Rap Feature

t’s unlikely that Pusha T will ever have another moment as viral as his 2018 Age of Adidon diss. That is very unfortunate, especially when you consider that Pusha has been putting out for over 15 years. He doesn’t seem to be losing steam any time soon, his Kanye-produced DAYTONA showed that.

One of my favorite parts of each year in rap is finding out who had the best year in rap as a feature artist. It may seem like a novel accomplishment, but it’s a great way to stay relevant without releasing a full-length project. As I’ve wrote about repeatedly on this blog, that’s becoming a more and more important factor in how artists release their work.

It’s also a great way for an artist to heat check themselves in public before a big album release. In 2014, right before the release of To Pimp a Butterfly, it was Kendrick Lamar. He left memorable verses YG’s Really Be, SZA’s Babylon, Flying Lotus’ Never Catch Me and Pusha T’s Nosetalgia. I even checked out a Chris Brown song just to hear the latest Kendrick verse (those who know me know that’s a huge feat).

“It’s also a great way for an artist to heat check themselves in public before a big album release.”

Last year, much to my chagrin, this award went to J Cole. The exciting part of this was that people were starting to recognize the importance of this kind of feature run. J Cole featured on JID’s Off Deez, Anderson Paak’s Trippy and 6lack’s Pretty Little Fears. I’m trying to keep my feature naming to three, but that doesn’t give enough credit to the sheer volume of features that we got from 2018 Cole. He also worked with Jay Rock, Rapsody, Cozz, Royce, Bas and Ari Lennox. The track that I will always remember from this run was a lot by 21 Savage, the standout verse on an album that cemented 21 Savage as a legitimately good hip hop artist. It’s runs like these that make me excited for his next project, although he did come out with (the very average) KOD that year.

That does leave an interesting finale to Pusha T’s 2019, as he recently went on Ebro’s Beats 1 radio show to promote an album that seems to be coming by the end of the year. He’s already put out two singles for the project, both are Pusha T standard quality. If he puts out an album to that level, he will complete a very rare combination.

It often seems like rappers who win the best feature award are using all their best verses that year for those features. If there’s no album that year, that’s not a big deal, but with KOD it seemed to impact the quality of his solo project. Before we reach that album discussion though, let’s run through some of the best songs Pusha T has been a part of this year.

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