False narratives about the so-called decline or demise of New York rap have cropped up so often over the past two decades that, to one of the city’s hip-hop natives, it can feel downright conspiratorial. So it couldn’t have come as much of a surprise that someone like Joey Bada$$ would eventually step up to address the current iteration of this tiresome talking point. After all, the Pro Era figure made his name by both reveling in and refurbishing the hometown sounds of the golden age, building with his crew while seeing his own star rise. “This thing is a competitive art form,” he tells Apple Music. “For people who’s really passionate about this and passionate about moving that pen, we understand that.” His 2025 opening move “The Ruler’s Back” and its subsequent rap ripostes “Sorry Not Sorry” and “Pardon Me” made his position known and, on some level, put him at perceived odds with certain Los Angeles denizens. “I believe I’m at my best when I’m feeling the heat of another pen,” he says, explaining how the perceived rivalry fueled his craft. But regardless of any animosity or gossip generated amid that back-and-forth, it all led to the release of Lonely at the Top, a mixtape that fully transitions the 1999 rapper into his present era. The Chuck Strangers-produced opener “DARK AURA” provides a proper reintroduction, leading swiftly into the confident alliance of Joey with Westside Gunn on the ornate “SWANK WHITE.” In line with the flexibility of the project’s format, the beats sometimes surprise, as with the R&B groover “3 FEET AWAY” and the Neptunes-esque throwback “SUPAFLEE.” Yet even when he’s in more familiar musical territory on “HIGHROLLER” or the Statik Selektah-helmed “BK’S FINEST,” he never sounds stale. NYC pride pervades the project, occasionally amplified by locally sourced guests like A$AP Ferg, Rome Streetz, and Pro Era pal CJ Fly. Given Joey’s lyrical swipes at the West Coast that led to this moment, the presence of TDE mainstay Ab-Soul on “STILL” seems less like a conciliatory olive branch than a slightly subversive act of artistic solidarity, one made even more meaningful by Rapsody’s concurrent feature. “I mean, I’ll say we was trolling, but we had to show people that you can do this,” he says. “And it could be love afterwards—and during, even.”