(Photo: @isaiahrashad via Instagram)
Isaiah Rashad recently dropped his third studio album, “The House Is Burning”. The TDE rapper garnered a loyal fan base with his 2016 project, “The Sun’s Tirade”, but essentially went missing in action for half a decade, dropping only the occasional single or feature.
“Hopefully this is the start of something new,” Rashad told Apple Music. “No more five-year gaps.”
The album debuted at No.2 on Spotify’s Top 10 Global Album Debuts, and currently has three songs charting Apple Music’s U.S. Top 100.
Rashad dropped three singles — “Lay Wit Ya” featuring Duke Deuce, “Headshots (4r Da Locals)” and “Wat U Sed” featuring Iamdoechii and Kal Ban — with accompanying visuals this year before announcing the project last month.
With a nod to the Chattanooga native’s southern roots, “Headshots (4r Da Locals)” draws many comparisons to OutKast’s gritty, soulful bars, although Rashad claims he was initially going for an “Anthony Hamilton” impression.
Rashad brings fellow Tennessean Duke Deuce onto “Lay Wit Ya”, an unadulterated party track that was made in 10 minutes, and matches Lil Uzi Vert’s confident ingenuity on “From The Garden”, No. 2 in Best New Songs on Apple Music.
Rashad described the new album as “one of the most honest.”
“I’m not being a control freak,” he told Rolling Stone. “Most of this stuff just came from just trying shit, not taking stuff too seriously, having the confidence to understand, ‘OK, bro, you’re good at rapping. Just do it.’”