Blaq Kush is looking for the perfect punchline

Well, not exactly, but who can argue with a great headline? For those born this century, I'm referencing hip-hop's Afrofuturist extraterrestrial godfather and two common themes in the lyrics of Albany-based, Long Island-raised rapper Blaq Kush: rhymes as punchlines and music as a search. That said, this interview is not so much a dissection of his lyrics. If you're looking for that, most of this site's Blaq Kush coverage consists of me quoting back and dwelling on select lines. Instead, what follows is more an overview of his discography up to this point. If you've never heard Blaq Kush's music, here's a chance to catch up while getting a glimpse behind what's for my money one of the most particular and unchecked viewpoints across all of hip-hop's multi-versal space/time continuums. 

As a bit of backstory, Kush first came to my attention around 2015. I was following him on Soundcloud when a guy named Ivan hit me up from what would turn out to be Kush's personal email address to pitch me one of his songs called "Sad Prayer." That track seems to have been scrubbed from the internet, but here's what Ivan said about his friend, which remains as good an introduction as any: "Kush takes ordinary hip-hip cliches and distorts them until they're unrecognizable. In this respect, his music is not too different than the pop art of '60s artists like Andy Warhol. Kush is a good friend of mine and his creativity has inspired me in so many ways. Even though he's not directly preaching positivism, his DIY approach makes me want to do more with my life. I've never seen someone spit so hard yet sound so relaxed at the same time. Hopefully you check him out and appreciate the tunes."

Themes aside, this is two Long Island dudes talking about music and kinda sorta trying to define it, but mostly just harping on enjoying it for its own sake. Hopefully you appreciate the tunes.

Below: Long Island Rap Records humbly presents an extensive discussion with Blaq Kush, which took place Thursday, January 22, 2026.

Blaq Kush - The Infinite Money Glitch

"Looking for a place where money wasn't worshipped only to be reminded of how money is worshipped," begins the chorus of The Infinite Money Glitch's title cut. If money is modern society's most popular religion, Blaq Kush commits with his latest EP an act of heresy akin to writing and illustrating a Quran coloring book complete with caricatures of the holy prophet Muhammad; counterfeiting as an act of subversion. Here's something I could never get a straight answer about from my high school economics teacher: If prices go up only when people are willing to pay more, doesn't that make all monetary value imaginary? Years, perhaps decades, before digital currency, Alan Moore said something about the subject, which has stuck with me since. He said money is basically magic but not all that clever or convincing a form of it. 

Artificial intelligence has likely already cracked the stock market. That said, everything anyone ever needs to know about post-industrial capitalism can be learned from the aptly titled 1970 documentary film, Finally Got the News. At the 14-minute mark, an offscreen voice states, "They give you little bullshit amounts of money for working—wages and so forth—and then they steal all that shit back from you in terms of where he got his other things set up, his whole credit gimmick society, man. Buy shit on credit. He gives you a little bit of shit to cool your ass out and then steals all that shit back with shit called interest, the price of money. Motherfuckers are non-producing, non-existing industry motherfuckers who deal with paper. There's a cat who will stand up and say to you he's in mining, and he sits in an office, man, on the 199th floor in some motherfucking building on Wall Street, and he's 'in mining.' And he has paper certificates, which they embroidered: stocks, bonds, debentures, obligations. He's 'in mining,' and his fingernails ain't been dirty in his motherfucking life. And the motherfuckers who deal with intangibles are the motherfuckers who are rewarded in this society. We see that this whole society exists and rests upon workers." 

As Blaq Kush puts it, "You are the money." And it's here that producer Antonym begins to reveal the project's soul, an unmined rare earth mineral magnetism that can never be bought, sold, or minted. From there, Kush takes the metaphor personally. On "A Dollar Travels," he is quite literally the money. Name your price or not, we listeners get so much more than we pay for.

Blaq Kush - There's Always Hope Vol.5

When a need for mind-numbing television and love of rap collide, Rhythm & Flow offers a new appreciation for memorable punchlines, especially those that arrive early. Blaq Kush answers the call with "The smoke in the room got it looking like the first level on Silent Hill." And levels there are. To begin, Silent Hill puts the gamer in the role of a father searching for his vanished daughter. The end is what you make it. With There's Always Hope volumes, we track the cover girl's expressions from shock through derangement to trauma and then watch (blankly?) as each vanishes, leaving her face as featureless as the projects themselves. You'll wish you hadn't learned where she's from. I never beat Silent Hill. Instead, I unlocked a glitch that made any kind of resolution, however disappointing, impossible. I'm writing this off the first 14 seconds of Vol.5's first song. It's also a weed rap. 

Blaq Kush - There's Always Hope Vol. 4

Blaq Kush's mom speaks my language when she opens this album proclaiming "I can't tell you anything about this business, I don't know anything about it." This has essentially been my pitch to Kush to put a tape out on Long Island Rap Records for the past three years. To be fair, it was also my pitch when he contacted me eight years ago asking me to be his publicist. I'm nothing if not persistent. Hell, with my swimmer's ear, I may as well be the proprietor of "Deaf Man Records." "But I can tell you" that any new Blaq Kush release is practically guaranteed to get run back like "the hottest record in New York City" according to Flex on any given Thursday night. What I'm saying is this: We live in a time and place where Cash Cobain and KRS One share programming blocks. The game is a wrap. Tonight, I googled Blaq Kush and found out about his experimental noise project, This is not Blaq Kush. It's over. We won. Everything from here on out is a bonus track. Let's put two volumes on each side and call it the definitive edition.

Blaq Kush - There's Always Hope Vol. 3

A catalog of dreams deferred, There's Always Hope opened up about as personally as possible, with a home recording of a child singing. If the series' second volume expanded its possibilities, the third doubles down on its duality. "Hope" is a good thing but also nothing. "Always" implies infinite, unattainable. When Rick told Islet, "We'll always have Paris," he meant memories. He was saying, "You'll never see me alive again." Kids represent potential. There's Always Hope Vol. 3 has a standout song called "We Couldn't have the Baby." It's about exactly what the title indicates, but still manages to end on a positive note, with the narrator and his lost love reunited in a nursing home. The project itself follows suit, concluding with the glistening twilight of "Summer in NYC." Here, Shalee Beats channels Uptown Saturday Night-era Ski Beatz while Blaq Kush reconciles independent-as-fuck irreverence with the shiny suit era it railed against. It's the song of a summer that may never come or go.

 

Blaq Kush - There's Always Hope Vol.1 & Vol.2

The problem with cyberpunk is that technocrats (today's, tomorrow's, always) read it aspirationally. Hence, while some selfless computational biologists are trying to leverage machine learning to predict and prevent diseases, many more developers are building AI to improve corporate efficiencies. Today, AI-empowered computer programs can draw, write, and code, all with some degree of effectiveness. But, as Blaq Kush so brilliantly elucidates across two volumes of nonstop quotables, There's Always Hope.

The first opens with what seems to be a child's solo performance of "Amazing Grace" before quickly scrolling off a series of "Intense Notes," including what has to be one of the funniest punchlines I've heard this year, with "You're not the man, you're a crew of kids inside a trench coat." Those who've been tuned in for a while will recognize this brand of humor as Kush's forte, but perhaps never before in his catalog has it been applied toward such explicitly noble ends, namely, offering hope. 

Of course, there's something of a Catch 22 there as well, one which Kush effortlessly relays through his trademark sardonic wit. Like books, kids can't eat hope. Indeed, it's in the best interest of the technocrats who would have this entire post created from an algorithm to inspire (false) hope as far and wide as possible. Hell, best interests? Try utter imperative. It can serve as the basis for entire entertainment platforms, let alone individual media enterprises.

But I digress. I recently learned that the spelling of Black in Blaq Kush's name is an homage to the Queensbridge rapper Blaq Poet. I recently sold a Blaq Poet CD to a German rap fan for $45. One of the high points of Vol.2, the TV writer titled "Dan Harmon," concludes with the line "Better days are not far away, I think that they're Canada." That push-pull of idealism and reality gives these albums their tension and release, but even if that's all made up, it's impossible to hear "I think you're Lucifer but you're more like Lil Uzi Vert in the multiverse" (from "2009") and not smile and think. 

And what more can anyone hope for.

Urbvn Architects NYC - "Can't Wait"

Loss-for-words rap, as in all you can do is quote stuff back. Blaq Kush: "Gritty and narrow, painting your name but it's missing an arrow / Drifting at sea it was misty and shallow / You empty the clip on the fish in the barrel / Stuck in the office, I'm talking to Carole / I told her I'm Darryl, why / You're going to Bed like you live in the Stuy / Reside in the tunnel, I'm missing the sky / Stuck on the corner, said give me a ride." 

Blaq Kush - Ghosts of Jazz Musicians

On record, Blaq Kush spits raps of/for cyphers; that is, rhymes that are both inherently inspired by those who came prior and purposefully unlike any others. Bars pulled from a collective space tend to flip out of thin air. 

If DOOM and Sean Price are the two late, great MCs who most readily embody that tradition, Blaq Kush and his Urbvn Architects cohorts (Josh Alias and Yung K) are three living upcomers most eagerly pushing it forward. 

Ghosts of Jazz Musicians makes that case as well as if not better than anything they’ve released to date, be it individually or as a group. (Which is not to say it’s their best album; that’s a different, arguably pointless discussion.) Voices of hip-hop immemorial flow among beats and choruses. Verses build on one another then mutate like ethereal mists.

“Blaq Kush News” closes with a standalone eight that updates the Rambo franchise’s premise for post-2020/21 headlines. The beats for this and four more of the project’s eight songs are provided by kckflip, whose loops are like chalky outlines – stretched just beyond corporeal, their significance unmistakable whether or not their sources identifiable. As such, they so lend themselves to the EP’s themes they could’ve inspired its title.

 
Another standout, “Suit Case // War Machine” (prod. by Lim0) has Blaq Kush rapping “Cultivate cilantro, journal written off fronto / I’m gone though, the dime rolled hitting like Joe DiMaggio / Signs show your mind’s slow, vacation no Cabo / Imagining with your eyes closed, place where I find flows.” If nothing else, this is what I’m talking about. Stream/download Ghosts of Jazz Musicians below and hit Blaq Kush’s Linktree for all types of ill shit.

Urbvn Architects NYC - Mutual Understandings 2

Mutual Understandings 2 follows up on the group's collective debut and showcases some of their extended collective with features from Profound, Matty Stones, Yung Kobain, Smerk, who also appears on the first album, and V1NO, who delivers a show-stopping performance on "Real Ties." At the project's core, however, remains the trio of Josh Alias, Yung K, and Blaq Kush, three MCs whose creativity is matched only by their daring; see lines like "Cybernetic internet got me outlandish / I stay on line like I'm waiting for a sandwich." Also new in UA world: Blaq Kush's identifiably titled No Dental Insurance is pay-what-you-can for 48 hours.

Blaq Kush - Lost Files from 2013-2017

One of the most readily recognizable voices in Long Island rap brings 10 tracks from 2013-2017 out of hiding.

Blaq Kush - Kushan Sundaze Vols. 10-1

Regular visitors should remember Blaq Kush from his work as 1/3 of Ubvn Architects NYC, and that clique is steadily killing everything and everybody, but the die-hards know Kush's solo work goes back even further. In fact, roughly around the same time the crew starting getting attention here, Blaq Kush also put out a series of bugged out music videos called Kushen Sundaze. Another collaborative effort — this one with Kush's Outer Galactic Marauder Faction — the series has a completely different aesthetic than what you might be used to from Urbvn, but is dope in its own right, so enjoy.

URBVN ARCHITECTS NYC - "DIAMOND"

Look for the new EP by URBVN ARCHITECTS NYC dropping later this week.

URBVN ARCHITECTS NYC - "Tell Me That It's Real" / "Books of War"

URBVN ARCHITECTS NYC - "I Got the Call" ft. Smerk

URBVN ARCHITECTS NYC, the breakout crew comprised of Josh Alias, Blaq Kush and Yung K, has released the first visuals from their debut project, Mutual Understandings. In "I Got the Call," scenes of cyberpunk sprawl eerily recall the architectural and overall aesthetic of the Nassau-Queens border vistas of Elmont, Floral Park and Bellerose, where the squad resides.

Josh Alias - "Casablanca" / "Fortune Off"

Coming from the Floral Park/Elmont area (less than one mile from the current Long Island Rap headquarters actually), Josh Alias is a force to be reckoned with, whether off the top or on the page. Case in point: "When I need that bread financial aids like FASFAs / I've been held back with no captors / Pondering white boys go ghost like Kasper / Like most rappers I grilled and killed, their soul don't know where to go after." Body bag bars ... like if this were Karate Kid, there'd be somebody in the background cackling, "Get him a body bag, yeaaaah!" right about now. Josh Alias' debut project should be out "in 3 months or so depending," according to the MC. Look out for that, as well as the debut project from his collective, which includes Blaq Kush, who's featured on the 2nd video below along with Yung K. That one should be released "in a month or two."

Blaq Kush - unmixed VERY RARE EP

Prepare to have your world destroyed. Blaq Kush combines the uninhibited free-form approach of a Lil B with the the focused vision of a hip-hop auteur, fully embracing conventional mixtape tropes one minute only to toss them out the window the next. "One time for No Child Left Behind."