Friendzone - Kuchibiru Network 3

The Bay Area’s Friendzone are a production duo you can actually call cloud rap: making their name with the rappers and fellow producers that made slow swelling, rain-brushed music a popular if unofficial micro-movement. Their third Kuchibiru Network mixtape features a lot of that set – Main Attrakionz, Shady Blaze, Keyboard Kid, Silkky Johnson – alongside similarly geared tracks from new acquaintances like Jereme LOL and DJ Kenn. Cloud rap is a mentality as well as a method, and the tape does well to show that. Friendzone themselves, for example, go for kawaii as much as they do the sublime, and Ryan Hemsworth’s entry is really a rose-tinted trap banger, but there’s plenty on offer from every contributor here.