Download Johnny May Cash’s Death Row Mixtape

It seems like we post a lot of Chicago music these days, whether that be one of the many prodigious, young drill rappers or one of the Windy City’s bevy of footwork pioneers. Today we’re bringing you one of the former in the form of Johnny May Cash’s second mixtape, duly titled Death Row. With a heavy helping of Young Chop and 808 Mafia production, May Cash raps in near-constant autotune, bouncing between 808 & Heartbreak style crooning and something akin to Chief Keef’s ever-creative drone rapping. At only 11 tracks, Death Row is an extremely condensed mixtape, curated with a touch that rarely makes into the bulging informal rap world. It’s easy to spit off platitudes about how drill rappers elucidate the dire nature of Chicago’s “South” and “West” sides (though the city is far more fractured than that), but the emotional strain that pervades Death Row is palpable on a level beyond production and storytelling. Stream “Day One” below and download the tape from DatPiff here.