50 Hip-Hop Innovators Shaping Its Next 50 Years

Historically, the only career with a shorter shelf-life than being a rapper is being a rap producer. Your sound might become the industry standard for six months, maybe a year if you’re lucky, and then either hip-hop moves on, or younger, cheaper beatmakers emerge who can do the same thing for half your rate. Harry Fraud has gracefully sidestepped that path by consistently varying his sound and collaborators, all without seeming desperate for relevance. In recent years, he’s worked on tracks by Jack Harlow, Westside Gunn, and Rico Nasty, even as he’s remained a go-to producer for blog-era darlings like Curren$y, Wiz Khalifa, and Action Bronson. His sound can be a throwback to the luxurious era of speedboat rap and quarter-million-dollar music video budgets, but he also knows his way around a distorted 808 and the ins and outs of producing a sticky topline melody.

Fraud, 36, first emerged as a name to know for his work with French Montana, helping craft the luxurious drug rap sound that eventually would make French a chart-topping star. Fast forward to 2023 and Fraud has already released a pair of collaborative projects, VICES with Curren$y and the terrifically strange Virtuoso with Valee. The latter is one of Fraud’s best projects in years, as he consistently finds fresh pockets for the Chicago MC’s hushed, oddball verses atop mafioso piano arpeggios, cloud-rap synths, and finely diced soul samples. The album illustrates Fraud’s appeal as both contemporary (RXK Nephew sounds terrific on the springy 808s of “Not Right Now”) and enduring (the signature nimble flows of Twista contrast the languid beat on “WTF” perfectly).

Like all popular culture in the 2020s, hip-hop feels increasingly fractured, with few artists and producers to truly build consensus around. Fraud is an exception, not because he’s aiming down the middle, but because he has his fingers in so many pots that no rap fan could earnestly say, “I don’t like Harry Fraud.” A little like his friend and collaborator, The Alchemist, Fraud has endured not by chasing trends but by establishing his own pocket and inviting artists from across the rap spectrum to be part of it. – G.R.