R.A.P. Ferreira glides across Kenny Segal’s mixes of old school beats and jazzy samples on ‘The Night Green Side of It,’ an album about loving your family, knowing your history, and being aware and compassionate in the present.

Stream: ‘The Night Green Side of It’ – R.A.P. Ferreira & Kenny Segal

Two of hip-hop’s most attractive innovators continue their fruitful and precious friendship with their sixth full length project on The Night Green Side of It, an erudite and smart album that accentuates both artist’s finer qualities.

It’s often said an average rapper can sound world class with a good producer, but the reverse is also true: Find the right MC, and the beats will sound as natural as birdsong.

R.A.P. Ferreira’s multi-moniker career has seen him produce a wealth of cosmic poetry since the early 2010s. A rapper from an early age, he is barely into his mid-30s, but already runs his own label and record shop, and has put out a dozen albums. First noticed by fellow legend of the alternative scene Open Mike Eagle (himself also responsible for a superb hip-hop album in 2025), Ferreira quickly gained a cult following, and has seemingly worked tirelessly on his craft ever since.

Low-class conspiracies are beating my ass
The lo-fi beat poet eats jazz, strikes again
Burping hard bop
Perching atop your cathedral
R.A.P. Ferreira, the gargoyle on the steeplе
When I let her cook, shе boils people

Kenny Segal’s elite production credits are burgeoning as the years go by. He has manned the decks on some of the finest underground hip-hop records of this era. Maps is likely his most famous and celebrated – his 2023 release with generational storyteller Billy Woods featured on many a best-of list that year (ours included). Like most artists in the scene, he is unapologetically prolific; The Night Green Side Of It is his second major release of 2025 after producing Lower, an album from multi-genre experimentalist Benjamin Booker.

Ferreira’s idiosyncratic brief has always been deeply referential. He makes a point to pay homage to his inspirations wherever he can, even making the entirety of Bob’s Son a tribute to Bob Kaufman’s Abomunist Manifesto. On “spicer and i,” he lets Jack Spicer, a celebrated voice of the San Francisco Renaissance, speak through a lengthy sample before he brings his own verse in. The drop is exquisite, an entire minute passes before that staccato-style boom-bap kick drum fills the room, and not a moment before time. It’s an uncomplicated song for a straightforward homage. R.A.P. Ferreira is always keen to posit himself as a student of poetry, as the latest iteration of a continuum of wordsmiths. He channels the energy of his peers, both past and present; a custodian of the rhyming word.

We dazzle on the casual
They facsimile, and we the actual
Steamboat down the jungle river tabernacle
Humble giver thwacks Adam’s apple
Mumble, they recall it “rap battle”
but that surely antiquated
I’mma take my rhyme book
and get the pages laminated

“blood quantum” is a key song on this record, a challenging piece more experimental than others on the album. The bass is the first thing you’ll notice – Immediately present, and utterly filthy. “blood quantum” introduces ELDON, a British rapper whose style is more textural, emphasizing single words like “abstraction” and “reminding,” and helping to direct your thoughts as his esoteric verse rolls along.

ELDON provides a break from all the high culture, announcing himself as “estupido Mace Windu” and claiming he “crashed the bandicoot / in kahoots with time.” His verse is still deeply thoughtful, with wickedly succinct imagery – “Belief was a squirrel skipping along the street / Self Jupiter voice was a butterfly floating across the scene.” And how about that rude sax razzing up out of nowhere! blood quantum is an audacious and brassy song, one of the nuttiest Ferreira and Segal have ever put to record.

Imagine our surprise to learn the map was a stencil
I would’ve wrote a verse
but I had to stab a rapper with my pencil
It snapped, the Toblerone cracked,
the chromosomes match
Were you holding back?

Moving at the speed of dark,
I hold onto the greenest part
But is the language alive?
Anguish in the eyes, the brush painted wide
I’m not wise, I can’t make the blues stay inside

Segal’s M.O on The Night Green Side Of It is, in the main, about simple melodies which allow Ferreira’s rhymes room to breathe, and they need it – His is a heady, sober mix of beat poetry and metaphor, with the possibility of him bursting into song or repeating a special line to add emphasis ever-present. This loose cerebral style is Ferreira’s unshakeable brand, and he finds a comfortable groove amongst the soundscapes offered by this talented producer. Even with noisier backing on tracks like “by the head,” the vibe is unequivocally laid back. The meat and drink then of The Night Green Side Of It is pleasant beats. “dazzle on the casual,” “apricity,” and “naming the feeling” are all easy enough even for the casual listener to vibe with. To keep things dynamic, Segal peppers in trickier beats here and there – prince of peace with it’s clattering drum-led intro and the disorientating, fuzzed-out “credentials” keep the tracklist fizzing.

Family and the love of kin is one of Ferreira’s key drivers, at various times he dedicates a song to his grandmother Ruby (who the label Ruby Yacht is named after), allows his young son to handle an outro, and at one stage hands over an entire song to NIZM – Ferreira’s uncle and personal inspiration. R.A.P. Ferreira has seen some struggles in recent years, referenced during good hustle, where he gratefully thanks his family and close friends for having his back.

My grandfather told me
being a daddy means I die first
Then he died first, I miss him the worst
My grandfather told me
being a daddy means I die first
Then he died first, I miss him the worst

Offering a more lucid take on “defense attorney,” Ferreira raps openly about his thoughts on the ongoing crises in the Middle East and Africa, expressing his pain at seeing children shot dead and buried under rubble. This song’s content is a break from the scholarly funk that makes up the bulk of The Night Green Side Of It. His words here are unusually bleak and plaintive – “I heard a child wondering if a young girl had her legs blown off / Since she was a young girl, would they grow back? And I know these demons lost they heart, but can it grow back?”

Such stark observances are a heavy tone-shift, which makes them hit all the more hard. Segal’s backing here too is a highlight – He chooses to layer the song with horns coming in and out like tides, filling up the track and slowly decaying, over and over. The process repeats until Ferreira’s verse is done, and the horn section gets full focus for a minor-key outro.

The album closes with a nice easter egg – An unlisted track after a few minutes of silence (remember those, Gen X?), which contains verses from Ferreira recorded over a decade ago as his earlier incarnation Milo. Here R.A.P. Ferreira listens to his old self, chimes in with some answers to questions, offers advice and reminds his younger iteration to not be too hard on himself. Milo’s verse is a little more potent, his delivery from a past era is notably more direct.

It’s a grounded ending to an album which has broad horizons and big ideas.

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The Night Green Side of It

 an album by R.A.P. Ferreira & Kenny Segal