You ever seen that video of LAZER DIM playing the same Glokk40 song over and over again? You ever felt the same way as him before? Every so often, there’s a record that comes around and scratches a deep-seated itch in my brain for weeks on end. That’s where I’m at right now with Zel’s Still Right Here, an 18-track manifesto of stateless, mercurial trap music.
More specifically, the track “Flrrt / Drink Water” did my head in so crazy that I’m still trying to make sense of it. It’s brooding and hypnotic in ways that feel native to the Maryland rapper’s music, but its sense of patience makes it stand out: Hi-hats and snares appear in fragmentary bursts, icy synths precipitate and evaporate, and Zel slithers wryly in the cut. It reminds me of LUCKI on “More than Ever” the way he makes a playground out of negative space, leaving acres between his bars so they land like missiles. Still Right Here is unique enough to cast street rap in a new light: Over freakishly lucid, cybernetic production, Zel pens dope boy anecdotes and takes a scalpel to them, splicing, re-shaping, and overlapping his punch-ins as he fits them in wayward pockets. After years of SoundCloud-only singles, his first solo full-length is immediately up there as one of the most singular rap debuts of the decade so far.
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When I tell you Zel has been silently building toward this mixtape for a while now, I don’t say that as a formality. He doesn’t really say shit unless it’s on wax. Whether it’s through DPM, the shadowy avant-rap collective he’s helmed with Xang since 2023, or the cabal of deft producers affiliated with it, Zel has churned out cavalier, boots-on-the-ground street rap with zero social media presence. (At least until now—with the release of Still Right Here, he’s finally gone public on X and YouTube.) His misanthropic ethos informs the music’s gritty, desolate scene-setting, and it’s partly why you won’t find this tape outside SoundCloud. “I’m creepy as shit, I don’t know how to act,” he bellows repeatedly on “Not a Opp.”
On Still Right Here, we find Zel posted up in dilapidated backrooms and on moonlit street corners, testing different straps with different attachments, throwing back Percs and serving the rest for profit. It all feels deathly immediate: His stony, disaffected vocals use dialogue and blunt concision to show exactly where he’s at. There’s almost nothing in the way of metaphor or trickery. “Bruh, open the side door, shit get gory,” he raps on “Charms.” “Bruh, open the side door, let auntie in.” He deconstructs Goonew’s punch-in flow with a uniquely nimble sense of timing, but in spirit, Zel’s music reminds me of what drew me to 21 Savage’s early material: raw and riveting depictions of an environment as depraved and unforgiving as the storytellers themselves. Sometimes it feels like Zel isn’t performing for anyone but his mirror. “Don’t ask why I move like that, you ain’t see what I did,” he spits on “Mutual Friends.”
Zel’s loose, devil-may-care disposition, combined with what feels like a dream team of SoundCloud’s coolest avant-garde stylists, make Still Right Here feel like required listening. The beat curation is as precise as it is volatile. It’s the most fully realized record to adapt the skittish, off-kilter stepTeam rhythms that have infiltrated the digital underground as of late; “Flrrt / Drink Water,” courtesy of myrlu and stepTeam’s own aghast, is a prime example. The mesmeric haze of chinapoet’s “Rear View” and whatever51’s “Know Where I’m At” is a welcome addition to Zel’s sullen ambiance, but the energy moves in waves. From the fidgety electronica of kuru’s “Baby K” and vibey buoyancy of mag’s “Buying Her Shit” to the sentimental, Xiu Xiu-like distortion of remghost and g0bln’s “Japanese Denim,” the sound palette refracts colors from every angle.
