*Season 2 of Issa Rae’s widely acclaimed series “Rap Sh!t” returned to MAX on Nov. 9, and to celebrate, we spoke to Christina “Xtina” Prince, general manager of label + publishing at Raedio, about the show’s recently debuted soundtrack.
In 2019, Rae announced the launch of Raedio, her imprint on Atlantic Records, which aims to help music artists find work in commercials, film, TV projects, and more. The label serves “artists and creators at the highest level as an ‘audio everywhere company,’ operating as the home to a dynamic roster of talent,” Complex reported.
“Music has always been an essential part of every project I do and working with emerging talent is a personal passion,” Rae previously said. “Raedio allows me to continue that work within the music industry and audio entertainment space. The Atlantic Records team are innovators in terms of shifting and shaping culture. I’m excited to join forces with them to discover new artists.”
Rae’s “Rap Sh!t” series stars Aida Osman and KaMillion as Mia and Shawna, two Miami rappers whose storyline was inspired by City Girls hip-hop duo Yung Miami and JT. The half-hour comedy follows two estranged high school friends from Miami who reunite to form a rap group, Deadline reports.
You can listen to the show’s soundtrack HERE as you get immersed back into Mia and Shawna’s hip-hop escapades.
The soundtrack features new music like “No Panties” from rising star Sexyy Red and “He Can’t Reach” with Maiya the Don and Enchanting. Other never-before-heard releases tap trailblazers like Rico Nasty, Kaliii, Cam & China, Danja, Bankroll Got It, and HitKidd.
We caught up with Xtina to unpack the music behind the show and the making of the soundtrack. Check out our Q&A below.
Can you share the creative process behind curating the soundtrack for season two and how it differed from the approach taken for the first season?
Xtina: So it’s interesting. I started at Raedio in January of 2022, and so by the time I came, the camp was already done, right? They had a camp in December during Art Basel the prior year. So first I didn’t even know who was going to be working on a soundtrack when I got in, so that was a surprise for me. But once I got there, it was like, “Okay, well how are we going to make a soundtrack when we hadn’t had any studio time, we hadn’t had any sessions or anything like that.” We got these songs that we did at the camp, and by then also a lot of the songs have been placed in the show already. So I was like, “Well, we could make a soundtrack, but then at that point, the music won’t be in the show,” or at least majority of it won’t be, because by the time I came back, they had already finished spotting about a good 75% of the show.
I thought, what can we do to pull together a soundtrack that’s still going to be solid and it’s still going to work outside of the TV space? I said, send me every song that’s in the soundtrack, every song that’s in the show that was created at the camp, that was original music, that wasn’t music that was owned or pulled from someone else. So they sent me the list.
It wasn’t a lot, but the good thing was that so much of it was already really good. So the soundtrack still came out pretty outstanding. This year we reverse-engineered that. It was important to me that the soundtrack could live not only on the show but also in the real world, also on DSPs, that it would still have a life in commerce.
And so I said, “Well, let’s, one, shoot a little higher this season.” And we were a little nervous because now you got people you want to pull in from different states, and you got artists that are all not based in LA where we hosted the camp and we were just like, “Well, maybe we could fly people in and maybe somebody’s already in LA.” Our goal was to make it feel bigger. It was to make it more women. That was definitely for sure, we had some women on the last one, but again, because we were picking from songs that were already in the show, we didn’t really have any control over that process as much, but this time we did. And so we invited these women out. It was producers that we love, that we know work with women. So like Hitkidd, for example, he’s known for working with a lot of female artists from Memphis.
And then we had The Breed, who was also there, and then Bankroll Got It, who was also there who works with a lot of hit-making female rappers. And so we were just like, “Okay, let’s get them all in a room, and then let’s build the soundtrack from there.” From doing that, we were able to make records that we knew could work on the DSPs, that we knew even if it didn’t make the show, that it still could have a life and still could live in a world of its own. And so that was really the difference. The difference was we had more control over what was placed on the soundtrack, and then the music supervision team took that, and they placed that in the show. So versus us pulling it from the show and making a soundtrack, we made the soundtrack first.
Okay, so on that note then, when you were curating the list of female artists that you wanted to feature, or your wishlist of female artists specifically that you wanted to highlight on the soundtrack, did you go after artists whose brand, whose music speaks to or already captures the show’s essence?
Xtina: Yes, for sure. That was the goal. So we spent time listening to different artists’ music. I’m a huge fan of rap and particularly female rap. So we essentially just grabbed every name of every artist that we thought was fire. We wanted female rappers that had bars. You could be popular, you could be dope, but do you have bars? So we targeted those artists. We reached out to them, and they were very happy to pop in. They were very happy to step in. Some people couldn’t make it, or they didn’t think they could make it, but Spotify was having an award show, in a gala, for women in LA at that time, so all the women that we thought wouldn’t be able to get to LA happened to be in town at the time that we were hosting the camp.
So some of the women we had already had locked in, but then maybe like a week prior to camp, we started getting people like Maiya the Don, who happened to be in town, Cleotrapa, who was hosting the Spotify event, who happened to be in town. So a lot of these women were able to get to the camp because they were already in LA for the Spotify event. So thank you, Spotify, for that. But yes, the goal was to get women, specifically women who are doing something amazing, whose styles are diverse and unique, but also represent the story of Shawnna and Mia who are on the grind, that are on the come up, that are experiencing some of those challenges that the women face in the show, and it was important for us to highlight them on this soundtrack.
The City Girls are co-creators and or co-executive producers of this series. Do they contribute lyrically, or do the two female stars of the show contribute to the music on the series or the soundtrack?
Xtina: No, they actually didn’t. So Shawnna and Mia on the show, they have a record that isn’t out yet, that’s called BBW. It’ll be on the soundtrack in December. So we are going to be releasing that song as a part of the soundtrack in December. It doesn’t appear in the show until the last couple of episodes of the season, but they contributed to the soundtrack in that way. They don’t contribute as their artist selves. So KaMillion, as we all know, is an artist. She doesn’t contribute as KaMillion, but she definitely contributed as Shawnna and Mia. And then also the Tongue Remix, which is with Reina Reign, that record is also on the soundtrack. Reina Reign is a character in the show, and she’s actually amazing, by the way. She’s a singer. She actually isn’t a rapper, but she does such an amazing job playing Reina Reign. But they have a remix for the song Tongue where Shawnna and Mia are on that record, and those two songs are on the soundtrack.
Were there any collaborations for this soundtrack that were particularly exciting for you?
Xtina: So many, so many. It was interesting to see all of these people in the same room. There were people that never met each other before and admired each other from a distance or appreciated each other’s work from a distance. Bankroll Got It, and their producers, who worked with another production duo called The Breed, were amazing. Amazing. I don’t think they’ve ever worked together before, but them together was just, it was an incredible combination of just producer quality. Talent, their ear, they’re amazing as producers independently. So to put them in the same room together and to see what they were able to produce as a unit was amazing. Was amazing to watch. The record that they did together called We Lie featuring Cleotrapa and Rico Nasty.
Another amazing collaboration was the record Kick Rocks. That was insane. It reminded me of the old Wu-Tang. And so to have NCognito on that record with Guapdad, Incognito being a Raedio artist, on that record with Guapdad, Ben Riley, Tim Gent, Brian Taylor, and Cam & China. It was a collaboration that I wasn’t expecting and a song that I wasn’t expecting to come out of the camp, but it was amazing to see that.
Another combination that I thought was cool was Maiya the Don and Enchanting. Enchanting is from Atlanta, Maiya the Don being from New York. The two having very different styles, very different deliveries, very different cadences to hop on that record together, and they didn’t do it in separate rooms. It wasn’t like we sent the record to Maiya while she was in New York. They were in the same room to make this “He Can’t Reach” record. So, that was definitely a shining collaboration for me out of the camp. I think if you listen to the soundtrack, you can see how there’s multiple artists on every song, on every song, and that was incredible to see.
How would you say the soundtrack compliments or enhances the overall themes and moods of this series?
Xtina: I feel like when you hear it in the show, you remember it, you know? It’s like you can hear the difference between a song that was made for TV and a song that was placed on TV. And sometimes when I’m looking at a show and it’s a song that’s already out in the world, and you can tell that, say the music supervisor tapped that song from DSPs and was like, “I’m going to license this record for use in the show.” I’m always like, “Man, I wish the original music was just as good,” or rather, I won’t even say just as good, but just as, how do you say? Immediate, right? Immediate. And when I watch the show, I could be biased because I already knew the songs, and I’m hoping that that’s what everyone else takes from it being that the soundtrack is already out. But when I watched the show and I heard those songs, I immediately wanted to know, where can I hear that?
And you can feel it. You can feel it in the moments that the songs are placed in the show. There’s a scene with one of the songs called Make U Hate It, by ThankGod4Cody. And in that scene, you feel the intensity of this conversation between the two characters, and that song is on the soundtrack. Another cool thing about that is they mention him. They go, “Oh, isn’t this Cody, playing in the background?” So it’s like, oh man, now when you actually see the show, you’re like, “Oh, that is Cody. I can go look for that. I can go look up Cody. I can go listen to other records by ThankGod4Cody.”
So I feel like the intensity of the music, the way that it was placed in a show because it already existed, because it was already a soundtrack, and everybody already knew the priority of that music, I feel like they found amazing opportunities and moments to place these songs in that worked perfectly for the context of the song, not just for the context of the show.
The music supervision team did an amazing job. Our team, they’re A1. We picked the songs. I think we picked maybe 20, 25, and they found moments for every song. I think we might’ve missed two, but they found the most perfect moments for every song on this soundtrack in that show.
Was it challenging to find that balance between commercially appealing and underground, unknown talent for the soundtrack?
Xtina: It wasn’t as challenging as I thought it was going to be. Last year when we finished the soundtrack, I was like, “Man, next season, we’re going to go crazy. We’re going to target specific artists, we’re going to get…” And I was like, “Man, how are we going to do that?” But I think what made it easier was that the first season was incredible. If you watch the first season, you want to be involved in the show. So when we reached out to people, they were happy to be involved, and they were happy to support. They were already sending us their own music to try to get their music placed in the show. So it was like the benefit of one, you could either send us five songs and hope that we place one of them, or you could actually participate in the making of these songs and guarantee you’re going to be in it, in the show.
So it wasn’t really as hard as I thought it was going to be. And then also our music supervision team worked with us to craft themes and creative directions that wouldn’t make the artist feel like they were writing show tunes or writing records just for TV. So I think it made people more excited that they could come into the room and be themselves. They didn’t have to come in and pretend to be a character on the show or come and pretend to write music that wouldn’t work in their world and their natural world. Because of that, when we were done, we didn’t have a problem getting people to let us put them down as primary artists. These songs are on their profiles, they’re on their Spotify profiles, and no one was against that because the music that was created didn’t stray so far away from the music that they make for themselves.
How do you see the season two soundtrack contributing to the show’s success?
Xtina: I think one of the things that we did focus on was social media. Social media, the show, its theme, and the creative approach to the show are so much around social media, the way the girls use Instagram Live, the way that the girls use FaceTime and all of that other stuff. So we wanted artists and creatives that exist and have a space in the social media world. So I feel like because we chose people that are real, we chose people that have Instagrams, and they promote their own music and things like that. They were promoting the soundtrack as well. They were promoting that on their social media. And by promoting the soundtrack, you are promoting the show. So the ultimate goal was, and especially with the strikes happening at the time, we had to lean on the talent of the soundtrack because we couldn’t lean on the actors and the actresses from the show, and we didn’t know that that was going to be the case.
I think we anticipated the possibility, but we knew that the more people that could be talking about the soundtrack on social media, the more people that found a promotional opportunity for themselves through the soundtrack, the more they would talk about the show, the more that it would drive people to the show. Another thing too is targeting the type of artists that we wanted on the soundtrack, people we felt like their audience would appreciate the story of Rap Sh!t. And if their audience sees them participating in it, they’re likely to go and watch the show. But we wanted to make sure that we were working with artists and working with talent whose audience was the audience for this show.
READ MORE: Issa Rae Wants Cardi B, Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion as Guest Stars on ‘Rap Sh!t’
We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!
