The Coachella Valley Vs. The 'Hate Island'
Thoughts on *that* festival and the latest from Teller Bank$. +reviews of Big Gates & Camoflauge Monk, NAHreally
Coachella 2026 wrapped its first of two weekends, and if you're anything like me it went by with a shrug. For those who actually care about the art, such big box festivals rank among the all-time worst ways to experience live music, with truncated sets performed for massive crowds of people who seem to be there primarily for the sake of being there.
Hip-hop heads who braved the desert sun and regularly reapplied their SPF-laden moisturizer got the chance to see a lineup light on rap excellence. As a Sunday headliner, second only to KAROL G on the official poster, Young Thug technically held the most prominent slot of any rap artist, with Central Cee, Sexyy Red, and erstwhile Rae Sremmurd-er Swae Lee gingerly sprinkled across the three-day brand activation experience.
To be clear, the effectively genre-agnostic Coachella has never billed itself as a hip-hop festival, and if anything its latest incarnation appears intent on promoting a general global pop vibe. But twenty years ago, at the 2006 weekender, you'd have had reasonable indie rap representation in the valley. Apart from the major label likes of Common (one summer removed from his RIAA Platinum-certified Be), Atmosphere, Digable Planets, Lady Sovereign, Lyrics Born, Murs & 9th Wonder comprised its rap offering. I lack the capacity to feel any nostalgia for that version of the event, though I can understand why others in my age group might.
Setting aside the tiresome debate about contemporary rap's (ir)relevance measured by its Billboard chart absence/presence, it is somewhat dismaying that Coachella's booking apparatus has seemingly little interest in holding any real claim to its hip-hop history this time around. Those who can play in the Rolling Loud space will do so, with most artists lazily performing over recordings of their own voices in 15 minute intervals. But Coachella has the potential to showcase a different type of rapper than that fest attracts. Armand Hammer, Mavi, MIKE., and Vayda all spring to mind, as do festival alumni Aesop Rock (2008, 2013), Earl Sweatshirt (2013), and Griselda (2022). Still, the festival seems content to cede those opportunities at this current juncture, its idea of pushing boundaries being a hybridized Nine Inch Nails x Boyz Noize set.
If you read all that and think I'm a hater, well, that might have something to do with the amount of time I've been spending on Hate Island. Less a place than a state of mind, this is the latest album from Teller Bank$, a rapper out of Des Moines who had an impressive 2025 run of releases. Among those was DRUG$$$, an eye-opening 17-track outing with beats by a Philly-centric production collective who I've started referring to as The Money Team (no Mayweather). That same set of instrumentalists–q no rap name, Philth Spector, and Killer Kane–return for this thematically acrimonious follow-up with ayashi[!] on board.
Bank$ is a preternaturally gifted artist, one seemingly less concerned with his commercial prospects than in making what he wants to make, to hell with expectations. Even with its surrounding antagonism and an open hostility to a certain subset of listeners who might come across it, Hate Island is worthy of listeners' love. There's a broader storyline connecting this with its predecessor, but even those who slept on DRUG$$$ will pick up on its innate creative potency via cuts like "A Hate Supreme" and the woozier "They Givin' Speeches."
His attitude can sometimes feel like a defense mechanism, transparently so on the insular "G-Uniiitttt" and the dissonant title track, yet his unbridled passion for the format seeps through as well. True to himself, his voice cracks and bends on "They Hated Jesus," with pointed and political commentary spanning generational family history on the front half, switching to a subtly mournful hustle chronicle on its back. He keeps that same energy for "Benny & WE$ 3: Requiem For A Jiggaboo," a scathing run of bars with references and moods galore.
iativos
Big Gates & Camoflauge Monk, Birth Of The Biggest
The success of Griselda's core trio certainly cemented one idea in the collective hip-hop hivemind about what a Buffalo rapper sounds like. However, every regional rap scene worth a damn will have its variants and outliers, and while nobody would mistake Big Gates for Westside Gunn, they'd nonetheless ought to check what he's got to offer. Working exclusively here with seasoned producer Camoflauge Monk, he brings charisma and wisdom to Birth Of The Biggest, both qualities strongly emanating from the likes of "Doll Song" and "Last Days." The majority of these songs clock in at under the two minute mark, his seemingly propensity towards concision actually backing a great deal into the reticent romance of "First Sight" and the boyhood narrative behind "Way Of The World." Gates' associate Jay Exodus makes two appearances here, most effectively on the unhurried "You Only Die Once." Monk's reliably solid beats go from the soulful nostalgia of "I Try" to the gunmetal grooves of "If You Scared, Go To Church."
NAHreally, Extra Cheese
Jersey City rapper NAHreally operates in a rather specific, if sometimes oversaturated lane in hip-hop. What separates him from other pretty brainy, self-deprecating emcee monologists is that he actually has something to say, something worth hearing even. Like the preceding and ultra-proficient Secret Pancake, his self-produced Extra Cheese provides digestible, nutrient-rich rhyming, albeit far from any food rap gimmickry incorrectly implied by those titles. After ten years under this moniker, his half-spoken bars and punchlines benefit from a reflective tack with no small amount of inherent wit on cuts like "Moderately Well" and "Too Many Cooks." This deep in the indie rap game, he knows he's nice with it, slyly reconfiguring the narrative trope of the struggle rapper with fresh optimism and a sing-song hook on "FUCKWITME 2." And whether or dabbling in freak folk on "You've Got A Friend Type Beat" or jazz fusion on "How We Always Gotta Be," he's pushing his production skills further than before.
Three new tracks to snack on...
Maliibu Miitch & PC, "BBM"
JWords, "Clarity (feat. Nappy Nina)"
Ovrkast., "Wata (feat. Niontay)"
