10. “Streetlight”

TrOyMan • Rhythm + Flow Soundtrack: The Final Episode

I cannot recommend the first season of Netflix’s Rhythm + Flow any more highly, one of the show’s superpowers being that it damn near compels you to be invested in no less than ten of the contestants by the time the first batch of finalists reaches Hollywood. In hindsight, the über-professional D Smoke was always the favorite to win the inaugural version of this competition: supremely polished and confident, proficient in a number of instruments, and randomly fluent in Spanish to boot, once Smoke eked past Old Man Saxon during Episode 6’s rap battles, the show was quite frankly his to lose.

Nevertheless, I personally became a TrOyMan superfan, impressed by his very clear growth from episode-to-episode. Bay Area-born and Atlanta-raised with an on-stage swagger rare for a relative rookie, TrOyMan did not arrive in Los Angeles as one of the four best MCs, but by the final episode, I’d become convinced he actually had a chance to take it all. Gifted a truly incomparable Tay Keith instrumental, Troy goes on a run of metaphors I’m still trying to work into some Instagram captions: “B****, I been lyrical since umbilicals / I reached the pinnacle being cynical / Verses on verses, it’s getting biblical / Hallelujah, I’m puffing that indigo / I know where I’m finna go / And it’s where you not gone be.” D Smoke might’ve had the most consistent competition, but TrOyMan definitely had the best one. And although #10 in these rankings isn’t quite worth $250K, I hope the sentiment is felt all the same.