NoCap

Mobile, Alabama’s NoCap raps with the visceral energy of someone constantly facing their demons. Granted, the MC (born Kobe Vidal Crawford in 1998) is a tantalizingly clever wordsmith, but his turns of phrase are always secondary to the way he sings. Some of that is attributed to the Auto-Tune that consistently washes over his voice, but it’s also in the way he approaches his subject matter: clear-eyed, unafraid, and honest. Take “Ghetto Angels,” his 2019 hit. He sings of his friend, dead in the street: “You was probably tryna catch a sale/Damn, you should’ve stayed in jail,” he raps. Where Cap grew up, sometimes being locked behind bars is safer than being out on the street. After his own seven-month stint in jail, he started recording as soon as he got out—yielding tracks like the platinum-selling 2021 hit “Vaccine.” “I didn’t even know that was the first song I was gonna put out [after getting released],” he told Apple Music. “I just record a lot, so when I got home I recorded two, three songs that day and two, three songs the next day.” In the relatively untapped rap climate of Mobile, NoCap helps paint a picture of the city’s scene, alongside MCs like OMB Peezy, Rylo Rodriguez, and the OG star, Rich Boy. Yet he still laments the things he’s done that keep him up at night on 2026’s “Never Leave,” a poignant two-hander with Lil Tjay. But even after all of his success, his past lingers everywhere he goes.