Protect. Photo by James Saw.
Rap Blog is a weekly showcase of a standout rap song. Follow our playlists on Apple Music and Spotify.
In December 2024, Protect, a rapper from Buffalo, NY, released Ball Hog For Life, his second album of the year. It cemented his blown-out, melodic style — musically, he sits somewhere between OsamaSon and Destroy Lonely, and he’s got access to all of the underground’s best producers (wegonebeok, Cade, prettifun, CXO, Rio Leyva, etc). On songs like “Fall Guys” and “Ion Wanna Talk (Instagram Live),” his instinct for pristine hooks was front and center, lodging phrases like “blue bunnies pink fiftiesss” deep in the subconscious.
Out today, 500 Days of Summer burrows further into Protect’s fried sound, his ear for beats somehow even wonkier than before. I’m partial to the detuned pan flutes of “Jumbo” and the translucent 808s of “Gossip Girl,” though I miss the copyright-violating dialogue sample from the latter song’s snippet (“Not everyone wants to be Blair Waldorf” “Not everyone can be”).
The album standout for now is “IfUGotMe,” whose instrumental conjures the image of a 15-story tall cricket rubbing its legs together, twitching and chirping insistently. The titanic Cade instrumental spurs Protect to admit “I don’t want talk to no one / I don’t wan’ be around no one / I just wanna be alone.” He’s crooning about women stalking his page in one breath and dismissing hating ass tweets in the next. “Pull up but I won’t stay long,” he intones on the hook, then: “social battery gone!” he yelps, an odd burst of candor in the sub-two minute song. Sometimes the most important skill is knowing when to leave.
