XXL’s Songs of the Week (April 25

It's Friday; your head hurts, your back hurts, your boss is breathing down your neck and you're not sure if your boyfriend's friends are worth the $35 Uber to the bar. You might be looking for a rapper to whom you can relate, an artist speaking for the Sisyphean struggle you endure week in and week out to pay your rent, your student loans, your unused gym membership. Well, we're here to give you the opposite. Kevin Gates doesn't get tired. Neither does Rich Homie Quan, who seems to snake his way onto this list every week. Nor is Earl Sweatshirt, who follows up a stellar album with one of his finest works to date. These are the XXL staff's picks for the best songs of the week, from rappers who manage their time better than all of us.

Mac Miller, "Boo! (Interlude)"

"They gave my crazy ass a label." Mac Miller, he of frat-rap fame and, later, Flying Lotus-produced, Earl Sweatshirt- and Vince Staples-endorsed avant-rap cred, is back with his latest offering, the curiously titled "Boo! (Interlude)." Raps wrought with Nicolas Cage mentions are sure-fire successes in the XXL offices, so its inclusion should come as no surprise; what should, at least to early observers, is that the Pittsburgh native has gotten this much mileage out of the free-associative style he began employing on his last album, Watching Movies With the Sound Off. If his deal with Warner plays out as it should, Mac Miller could ferry through new, exciting and genuinely weird rap to the mainstream.

Plies, "Dayum!"

If "Dayum!" sounds like a wrestler's theme music, that's because it is. After an unlikely altercation with a fan at a show in Florida, the Good Affiliated rapper took to the booth to detail not just what he'll do to "petty" Instagram users, but exactly how much money was in his pocket when he was body-slammed off the stage. Plies is busy prepping his long-awaited fifth album, Purple Heart, which is expected out some time in 2015.

Kehlani Feat. Chance the Rapper, "The Way"

With Surf, the highly anticipated album from The Social Experiment on the horizon, Chance the Rapper blessed Kehlani's "The Way" with an increasingly rare rap verse. The cut is sparse and summery, a love song to play with people you haven't seen since before the last semester. Moniker now less natural, Chance has been locked away finishing Surf with his close friends and collaborators, many of whom have done production work and/or played as session musicians on the rapper's solo work. That album is expected to drop some time this weekend or early next week.

Rich Homie Quan, "Daddy"

April belonged to Young Thug. The young Atlantan dropped his mixtape, Barter 6, through 300 Entertainment, the powerhouse helmed by Lyor Cohen and Kevin Liles; it was met with rave reviews and the news that an official debut album will follow this summer. His old partner-in-crime, Rich Homie Quan, was off committing actual crimes, assaulting bouncers and escaping on speedboats. But with the release of his new mixtape, If You Ever Think I Will Stop Goin' In Ask Royal Rich, Quan reminds that Rich Gang was what it was largely because of the emotional heft of his writing. Perhaps most emblematic is "Daddy," the closing song. Originally leaked back in January, the cut is reason enough to email your own dad, probably about some money.

Earl Sweatshirt, solace

When Odd Future took the world by storm more than five years ago, their sharpest writer was absent. Though fans and journalists clamored for months to find Earl Sweatshirt, the reality turned out to be stranger than almost any fiction: The precocious teen's mother had sent him to a boot camp of sorts in Samoa. Now, on the heels of his second major-label album, March's excellent I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside, Earl drops a brief EP dedicated to his mother. Called solace, the ten-minute tape is sparser and colder than I Don't Like Shit, which was already short on sunlight. It's his most soulful work to date.

Kevin Gates, "I Don't Get Tired (Remix)"

Instagram fuckery aside, Kevin Gates is one of the best rappers breathing. With four stellar mixtapes in less than 24 months, the Baton Rouge native's 2013-14 run is one of the most staggering creative periods in recent memory. (As an aside, Baton Rouge may be able to boast the two best rappers in the world at the moment.) The new "I Don't Get Tired" remix would be a victory lap if Kevin Gates took victory laps. He almost certainly doesn't; on the redux of the August Alsina-featuring track from last year's Luca Brasi 2 mixtape, Gates has his nose to the, uh, grindstone as usual.

Related: Kevin Gates Fights Two Women

Filed Under: XXL's Songs Of The Week