Josh Alias - Atlas

I've been summering in the Hamptons. Nah, I'm playing. I just haven't felt like writing anything here for a few months. But now, as with this site's legendarily inspired origin spell, mad Long Island rappers have dropped dope records in sequence. So, like Jesus getting out of jail, I'm back in an American adaptation of the French New Wave. 

Speaking of Jesus, one of the pieces I've been meaning to cover for the longest is this, the "final secular album" from Josh Alias. I'm not going to lie. The first time I listened to it, I wasn't crazy about it. I liked it, but it also made me want to wind back the 30-something-song biblical flood of a mixtape he dropped prior to his last album. Instead, I took a few days and relistened. 

I have an uncomplicated relationship with religion, which is to say I've never practiced one in my life, and I currently believe God is most likely the cat my wife and I saw on the Bay Parkway while driving home this evening. I also have a cherished handful of friends and relatives who worship Jesus Christ, and that's cool. One might even say Jesus was the OG JuCommie.

So, anyway, on the holy-trinity third listen, Atlas clicked, and the world perpetually on his shoulders fell into place like a Sisyphean boulder, and now I really like it. Will it take you, phantom-reader rap fan, three listens to enjoy this album, or fewer, or more? Does that have anything to do with your appetite for religion, spirituality, and Gomer Oz Dabar? There's only one ... way to find out.

 

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.

Urbvn Architects NYC - "Scars" ft. Chloe Catara

Is there a Long Island sound? There's most definitely a Long Island Sound. And if you live in a desert—say Reno, Nevada—you consider the Long Island Sound the Atlantic Ocean. And you're half right, but it's a shame if you never take the 25-minute drive south to feel and hear the Atlantic Ocean how I have for most of my life. But does an island this long make a specific sound?  Well, does this site? Yesterday, G said something to that effect, though his exact words might have been "such a specific lane" or "...view" or "...niche." I can't remember exactly what, but I heard that. And if it's more than just me and what I like, maybe you'll feel this, too. 

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.

Adam Snow - "42" ft. Freddie Gibbs & Josh Alias

When you get on a track with an MC like Freddie Gibbs — an MC who has done multiple projects with Madlib and Alchemist, an artist who's consistently in the conversation for best rapper and best project of the year, and who somehow manages to pull all this off while often sounding like he's barely even trying — you must do more than come correct. If you're Josh Alias, you recognize this, so you come with the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. This is what it sounds like when an MC who specializes in blacking the fuck out pushes himself far beyond his personal best and then just keeps going. Look for Alias and Snow's collaborative album, A Place In the Sun, coming soon.

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.

Josh Alias - "Purple Dawn" / "Drive Slow"

Urbvn Architects NYC - "First 48"

New video from Urbvn, with Yung K and Josh Alias on that back-and-forth black-out.

Josh Alias - "Horror Story" ft. Tedy Andreas

Urbvn Architects are killing shit right now.

Josh Alias said, "Forgive me for exploring options, mind's in the clouds / Tryna' soar avoiding foreign objects, flowing from the Jordan River / To a project faucet cannot forfeit can't force this / Who you think led the Israelites across it?"

That's in his new song, "Horror Story," featuring Houston's Tedy Andreas.

Alias's debut project, Growing Pains, will be out shortly. If you like this blog, I suspect you will enjoy it thoroughly.

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."