Cropping Up: SALIMATA

CROPPING UP is an interview series designed to introduce CABBAGES readers to talented hip-hop artists on the rise.

For this edition, I caught up with SALIMATA. Brooklyn-raised and Marseille-based, the rising rapper dropped latest album, The Happening, earlier this month on MIKE's 10k Global imprint. (It also made CABBAGES' Best Albums Of 2025 list, FYI.)

What can you tell me about your history as a writer, be that poetry, rap lyrics, or otherwise?

SALIMATA: I think my first journal, which I still have, is from 2007. I've always written anything that comes to mind down. In middle school, we had a poetry class and my teacher taught me about this program called Urban Word. I joined that from sixth, seventh grade all the way up until high school. She would give us interesting prompts like, write this poem from the perspective of your elbow. And that was really cool for me. I already liked writing and I was also doing storytelling in my little journals, but the poetry really helped me formulate some type of style for myself. My teacher would always be like, alright, we're going to have Sali go last because she's always going to bring up the vibe.

Then when it came to music, in senior year of high school and right after I graduated, I just was writing, listening to random beats on YouTube. I was freestyling with some homies and I was like, lemme try actually writing. It ended up becoming a really passionate hobby of mine. 

I didn't grow up on hip-hop. In the Pro Era era, when Joey Bada$$ was coming up, it was just some Tumblr thing for me. Like, oh wow, there's these cool kids happening. Whoa, I know this nigga goes to my friend's school. That was cool to me. That was my entry into fucking with boom bap. Hearing them I guess I just pulled myself into it as a New Yorker. My friends was listening to Capital STEEZ and they put me on, seeing and hearing what was happening in the hood. He was from Brooklyn; that was my neighborhood.

You're Brooklyn through-and-through, but sometimes artists go to a new place, they get so caught up in that place that they close their sense of self on record. Do you feel that being in Marseille of had its own impact on the way The Happening came together?

My first project, OUCH, in my mind it's super hardcore, super rough–and not just technically, but the energy I'm bringing to the tape. For my project after that, Wooden Floors, I'm still in New York, but I'm trying to make a more sunny side version of what I did with OUCH. Now that I'm in Marseille and I made a lot of the music here, I can see how it thawed me out a little bit, even in terms of beat selection and fluidity. I'm from a city; I'm from a very hard place and our buildings are very tall, so everything's going to be very rough. I feel like, on this project, there's a lot more melody. It's just softer to me. My song "9-5" just has more of beachy vibe. I didn't realize it until everything was coming together like, alright, we're actually moving on to some softness. I'm still going to be aggressive and surprising, but there's definitely an element that comes naturally with your environment.

Lyrically and thematically speaking, what were you trying to accomplish with these new verses versus those on previous projects like OUCH? 

I wanted to say something back on what you said about how some people lose themself when they are in a different environment. It's very real and it can happen. I'm just a real nigga and I know myself, but I didn't know I was using the city before I moved here. That's just my environment. I'm thinking it's my life, I'm just talking about my life. I didn't realize if I'm not going to be bumping into a crackhead today and waiting for the bus over there and doing that over here, there's not really no point in putting that in a piece of paper.

I'm going to be New York no matter where I go, but my reality and how I feel about things have shifted, thawed out and changed. Throughout this project, I'm not really talking too much about my experiences, but I'm talking about my elevation and what I want for myself. I'm often talking about whatever phase I'm in, where I want to be, what I'm aiming for. Everything for me is always about dreaming and aspirations for real–and love. You going to know about me and this is what I got to say. And what I got to say is, I want to get to the bag and I'm that nigga for real. Don't play with me.

Until maybe 23–and I'm 27 now–I didn't even think about what I wanted for myself. All I knew is that I had to work so that I could get something, so that my mom will be good. But then she got married so she don't need me no more. So I had to start thinking, what the hell do I want? There's not a lot of materialistic things I want. I just want peace and to help if I can. That's why usually, if I am talking about money, it's really just about being comfortable or providing for my family, because niggas is going through it. I have a list of all the people that I'm going to provide for or hand my hand out to. We all deserve a piece of the cake.

One of my favorite songs on The Happening is "Foil." It's just under two minutes, with this intentional fadeout, but it feels like you could rap over that beat forever. Why aren't you giving the us whole thing?

I don't be asking producers, can you extend the beat? I just take it as what it is and if it's a long beat, I be like, are you cool with me using less of it? I don't know what the rules are, but whatever I deliver is what it is. I was writing to the beat and it ended and I was like, that's kind of cool. I've always loved short songs and I know now people like short things more, for replay. You want to play it back. I think I said everything I had to say. I don't need to say nothing more. Nobody wants to feel like they're being lectured. It's hard to be conscious and not corny, so you got to be cute about it.

Dewey Bryan & Small Professor, Acapulco Gold

(buy it / stream it)

Though graphic design big kahuna Dewey Bryan leaned heavily into a Californian coastal surf's-up aesthetic on his Beach Burners album with producer Earoh, the laid back L.A. lifestyle rapper's origins lie in the comparatively colder climes of Philadelphia. This explains the existence of that project's new Mid-Atlantic companion piece, done in collaboration with the ever remarkable Small Professor. Less a remix disc than an inventive reimagining of the source material by an elite beat practitioner, Acapulco Gold gives the spitter's breezy lyricism a bold backdrop and some sativa soul. He foists a homegrown ruggedness onto unsuspecting tracks like "Cousin" and "Sicily," chillier vibes that didn't feature on the warmly easygoing originals, all while still leaving space for jazzy accents and deep funk. Things really come to a head when loyal locals Drusef and lojii get in the mix on "ChestnutHill" and the poignant "Troubadour," respectively, though closer "ReelChop" seals the proverbial deal with Bryan flexing subtly over a sublime SmallPro instrumental.

Sleep Sinatra, TIMESOFPERIL

(buy it / stream it)

Lincoln, Nebraska rapper Sleep Sinatra has had a pretty good year, making solid appearances on projects by Fines Double, AJ Suede, and Killer Kane as well as a notable handful of his own EPs. Self-produced under his SINAI. moniker, the comparatively more substantial TIMESOFPERIL provides a better look at this consistently dope artist, one whose 2020s catalog warrants attentive appreciation. Via songs like the noisily warped "Oracle" and the jazzier "Tragic King," he delivers breezy yet sinuous rhymes predicated upon similarly spry boom bap derivations. Those instrumentals sometimes feel like they're bending under the weight of his words, particularly on the gently decaying "Totem" and the somewhat shambolic "Bionic Man." His guest list impresses too, with a resurgent Doseone specifically adapting well to the misshapen music box melody of "Missile Silo."

Three new tracks to snack on...

Starker & Zoomo, "Blow"

Sly Moon, "Never Running Out Of Moon Funk"

BLAX, "Oneirology"