The Brooklyn MC is caught between the streets and the penthouse. On her 2026 LP Kween, the Brooklyn rapper Young M.A boasts cover art that features her staring straight ahead, split down the middle between her two sides: the streets and the penthouse. She rocks a crown, though that, too, is divided between these two worlds. It’s a push and pull that animates Kween, her first LP since 2021’s Off the Yak. On the scene-setting opener “Therapy (intro),” the New Yorker raps: “I was never a princess/I was always the misfit/Lil’ tomboy well known in the neighborhood.” Her outsider’s perspective has helped turn her into the defiant, tough MC she is today, but the wounds are still healing. Take the emotional “Open Scars,” in which M.A reflects over a pitch-shifted vocal sample and a stripped-down rhythmic buoy. She spits: “This whole industry is rigged, I don’t need awards/I done things never did and still don’t get applaud.” On Kween, she takes the crown as the people’s champ.