Rob49 arrived fully-formed, as though he’d been practicing for his first studio session his whole life. The deep-voiced New Orleans artist just started rapping in April 2020, but you wouldn’t know it—already people are calling him “baby Soulja Slim” for his magnetic presence and confidence on the mic. Rob’s pure bars are caked in Louisiana slang and delivered in the kind of gruff, musical cadence you might have heard over Mannie Fresh production 20 years ago, but they’re also refreshingly modern—shot through with the head-spinning velocity of contemporary trap styles.