Bodying haters with gender-bending braggadocio and unflinching confidence comes easy for rapper Mama Duke. While she’s yet to release a follow-up to the knockout, blitzkrieg debut Ballsy (2020), the Palacios native remains a centerpiece of Austin hip-hop, while also bulldozing a lane for queer people like her. Support comes with neo-soul outfit BluMoon and poet Chucky Blk. Butterscotch-sweet timbres and watercolor jazz swirl in the former’s 2019 LP, Slow Burn. Chucky Blk orbits on an astral plane all his own on A Scathing Critique of Current Affairs.
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— Alejandra Ramirez
