Today in Hip-Hop: Pusha Ts DAYTONA Turns 8 - Custom Creative

Eight years ago today — May 25, 2018 — Pusha T dropped DAYTONA, and hip-hop has not been the same since. Twenty-one minutes, seven songs, every beat Kanye-produced, a Whitney Houston bathroom on the cover that Ye paid $85,000 to license, and a Drake-aimed jab on the closer that detonated inside four days into the most personal beef of the streaming era. King Push’s third album debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200 on 77,000 album-equivalent units (39,000 pure), pulled a Best Rap Album Grammy nomination, and walked into Complex’s #1-album-of-2018 slot. Eight years on, it still grades out as the cleanest, meanest 21 minutes in modern rap.

A new format, a real beef, a Whitney cover

DAYTONA was the first of Kanye’s “Wyoming Sessions” rollouts — five 7-song albums released across five Fridays in summer 2018. Pusha got the first slot, which already told you something about how Ye felt about the songwriting. No skits, no filler, every beat sample-driven and dust-laden: “If You Know You Know” rides an Air interpolation, “The Games We Play” sits on a Booker T. Averre flip, “Santeria” buries a wailing Roy Ayers loop, “Hard Piano” puts Rick Ross over a Booker Newberry III sample that thumps like a heavyweight. The album’s closer, “Infrared,” takes the swing at Drake’s ghostwriting that everybody knew Pusha had been holding. Drake answered same-day with “Duppy Freestyle.” Four days later Pusha dropped “The Story of Adidon” — Quentin Miller, Adonis, the photograph — and Drake never recovered the narrative.

The Whitney cover became its own conversation. Kanye scrapped a planned Virgil Abloh design 48 hours before release, pivoted to a 2006 National Enquirer paparazzi shot of Houston’s bathroom, licensed it personally for $85,000, and refused to take it off. Bobby Brown called it tasteless. Pitchfork later slotted DAYTONA at #188 on its decade-best list. Both reads landed in the same place: nobody had condensed luxury-rap menace this hard in years.

Pusha’s pen on it is biographical at the molecular level — kilo math, court-date receipts, the specific weight of paranoia after a flip. It’s also where King Push fully separated from Pusha-the-Clipse-foil and became the contemporary writer in the lineage Rakim opened on Paid in Full — every bar load-bearing, no bar wasted.

We made a hoodie for the heads who came to Pusha first through Hell Hath No Fury — pull it on when you need the Re-Up Gang feel: Clipse “Let God Sort Em Out” Hoodie.

Also today in hip-hop

A$AP Rocky — Testing drops the same Friday in 2018. Flacko’s third album hits #4 on the Billboard 200, pulls features from Skepta, FKA twigs, Frank Ocean and Kid Cudi, and confirms May 25, 2018 as one of the loudest single-day release dates of the streaming decade.
Slick Rick — The Art of Storytelling lands on Def Jam in 1999 — his commercial peak. The Ruler’s fourth album peaks at #8 on the Billboard 200, tops the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, goes gold inside a month, and brings Outkast, Snoop, Nas and Raekwon to the mic — the ultimate “respect the elder” project of the late 90s.
Big Daddy Kane — Looks Like a Job For… drops on Cold Chillin’ in 1993. Kane’s fifth album hits #9 R&B/Hip-Hop, the smooth operator from Brooklyn doing victory laps on the Juice Crew lineage.
Rasheeda turns 50. The Atlanta MC and Da Kaperz alum was born May 25, 1976 — half a century in the game and still in the conversation.
Cardi B — “I Like It” tops the Hot 100 on May 25, 2018 (same day as DAYTONA and Testing). The Bronx took the #1 slot on what was already the loudest rap Friday of the year.