Today in Hip-Hop — October 21: NxWorries’ Yes Lawd! Turns 10, and the Beat-Tape Kid Who Was Already on To Pimp a Butterfly

October 21, 2016. Stones Throw officially releases Yes Lawd!, the debut album from NxWorries, which is Anderson .Paak on vocals and Knxwledge on every single beat. It turns 10 today. Here’s a receipt: the official street date was a formality. Apple Music had the album streaming a full week early, on October 14. Nobody waited, and it still sounds like the vibe got there before the release date did.

A Bandcamp Machine Meets a Drummer Who Sings

Start with the producer. Glen Boothe, the New Jersey beatmaker known as Knxwledge, has put out more than 200 releases on Bandcamp since 2009: beat tapes, flips, loops that last ninety seconds and then disappear. Before the duo ever dropped an album, he was already on the biggest rap album of 2015 with a co-production credit on “Momma” from Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, the album that went on to win Best Rap Album at the Grammys.

Then the voice. In 2015 .Paak was all over Dr. Dre’s Compton, appearing on six songs, and he signed to Aftermath soon after (our Dr. Dre songs breakdown covers that era), and his second album Malibu followed in January 2016. While Dre was polishing him up for the mainstream, Knxwledge was keeping him dusty. The duo’s first track, “Suede,” went up on Stones Throw’s SoundCloud in February 2015 over a slowed-down chop of Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Bottle” and passed a million SoundCloud plays.

Yes Lawd! runs 19 tracks, and most of them are fragments: two-minute grooves, skits and loops that end right when you’re locked in. That’s the point. PopMatters complained that the album wanted to be a neo-soul Madvillainy or Donuts, and that was a compliment it didn’t mean to give. The lineage is real, because this is the Stones Throw way of building an album. The payoff took eight years. The follow-up, Why Lawd?, won Best Progressive R&B Album at the 2025 Grammys, in a tie with Avery*Sunshine. The beat-tape kid and the drummer who sings came away with a gramophone.

Stones Throw’s other legendary duo got there first. We made a Madvillain tee for the record that set the bar Yes Lawd! gets measured against. If you want the full DOOM story, our MF DOOM merch guide has it.

Also Today in Hip-Hop

• 1997: The Firm, The Album (29 years). Nas, AZ, Foxy Brown and Nature on Aftermath/Interscope, with Dr. Dre and Trackmasters on the boards. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Cormega was in the original lineup from “Affirmative Action” but was replaced by Nature before recording started.
• 1997: Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz, Get Crunk, Who U Wit: Da Album (29 years). The Atlanta debut on Mirror Image, with DJ Toomp producing three cuts. Crunk was still regional, years before it took over the country.
• 1997: Salt-N-Pepa, Brand New (29 years). Their first album without Hurby “Luv Bug” Azor. Salt co-produced it.
• Born today, 1995: Doja Cat. The LA rapper and singer turns 31.

Stay creative — The Custom Creative Team