🎧 Album: AQUARIUM
👤 Artist: Yunmakai
📅 Release Date: April 21, 2025
🏷️ Label: Solus Records
🎼 Genre: Alternate/Indie

Discovering Yunmakai: From “War” to the Versatile Sound of “Aquarium”

In today’s age an artist usually has one moment-one chance to either gain a listener or to be forgotten. Yunmakai‘s someone who I came across a few years ago. I heard an artist who embodied what I envisioned the “underground” hip hop scene to be, hard hitting and versatile.

The song that first grazed my ears was “war“-definitely a song where I was like “this has absolute moshpit potential”. Time has passed but he’s been nothing but consistent.

With his latest project,“AQUARIUM“, he gives a 17 track experience that offers an “aquarium of sounds”.

💽 Standout Tracks + Ratings:

• christian-6.8/10
  Hard hitting.Great chorus work.
• FLYING-8.1/10
  This is Yunmakai in his flow state. Short and catchy!
• $1000’s-8.8/10
  Turn this up!!! Between the beat and overall feel from this track idk what’s better.
• carmen-7/10
  This had a cinematic feel. Just a cold vibe and a great sample.

📊 Final Thoughts: Why “Aquarium” Matters in 2025 Hip-Hop

Through this 17 track album I feel like the audience gets a taste of Yunmakai’s sound. He can go from a fast trap feel on tracks like FLYING to slow, and dreamy tracks like LL TADOE. Songs like-carmen, jas, and face– touch on some of his experiences with women and the complications within it. The spouts of vulnerability add emotional depth to the project.

Aquarium for me brings a bigger issue to light in today’s rap scene. Right now, music is just made for the “vibe”-nodable, but often lacking intention. We’ve seen musical movements or trends in rap that bring conciseness to the forefront. Maybe if movements like “backpack rap” was resurrected and adapted to a more “updated” sound we could get more out of music.

One thing that Yunmakai delivers on is his beat choice. Rappers who are considered the most relevant often suffer from the “type beat curse”.For those who don’t know what a “type beat” is- its when producers make beats that emulate a certain genre or artist. .Artists like Roddy Ricch, or Polo G had something that differentiated them from the artists around them. For Polo G it was his melodies mixed in with the Chicago drill sound. For Roddy Ricch it was his flows and production. But once they get to that album that has been heavily anticipated it’s like they spam their own type beats.

Yunmakai gives us a cure from this recent epidemic by giving us a great spread of sounds. In a land filled with copy-paste projects, Aquarium floods us a fresh array of music.

         FOR THIS ALBUM RATING IDKYETMEDIA GIVES THIS AN:

6.4/10

What do you guys rate it?

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LINKS TO THE ALBUM BELOW: