Top Shotta

NLE’s Top Shotta album contains the third, fourth, and fifth iterations of his popular “Shotta Flow” song series, but if you let him tell it, these are the last of them. “I don't plan on making no more after the fifth one,” the Memphis-born MC tells Apple Music. “I'm really trying to get away from them, 'cause there's way more to my music than that s**t.” Doing his absolute best to prove this claim, he delivers Top Shotta at a strapping 20 songs. Outside of the “Shotta Flow” selections, where Choppa unfurls inspired non sequitur over charging low-end-driven production, there aren’t too many outright bar exhibitions, the MC instead choosing to focus on diversifying his catalog. Over production from hitmakers like CashMoneyAp, TNT, and Quay Global, Choppa aims to give fans what they’ve been missing in the eight months since 2019’s Cottonwood project, and then some.

“I was recording different types of songs on different types of beats every night,” he says of the months leading up to Top Shotta's release. “I might make some s**t about murder one night, come back in the studio and make a song about how I feel or who done did me wrong or how I feel left out—I might make some pain s**t and then make some love s**t. But it will be a rotation to where you never have the same type of song. It's like flavors of Starbursts or some s**t. You got yellow, red, orange... You don't want to just open up a pack full of yellows or your ass gon' be mad.” Below, NLE Choppa breaks down a few of the flavors he’s included in Top Shotta.

Daydream
“It’s not daydreaming anymore, it's more manifesting [for me] now, claiming what's already yours. It’s like something you already got, you just got to work towards it and get it. So I really call daydreaming 'manifesting' now.”

Gamble With My Heart
“I was in my feelings, and that's pretty much just me letting it out on a beat. I freestyle all my music, so whatever comes out comes straight from right when I'm there, all in the moment. 'Gamble With My Heart' is one of my favorites ’cause it just feels like I slowed down the perspective and I address a lot of stuff in it.”

Who TF Up in My Trap
“When I came across it, the beat didn't even sound as good as it sounds now. It's a sample that was turned down at first, but when we got to mix it, we turned the volume up and it brought out the whole song. The song was good, but we could tell it was missing certain things. I knew the mix was going to be the most important part about everything. And that is one of the best mixes. That one surprised the s**t out of me.”

Make Em Say (feat. Mulatto)
“Somebody from the label played [Mulatto’s] verse for me. And I was just like, man, I f**k with it. They was telling me, ‘Man, you got to come different, you know this ain’t what you always recording on.’ And so the whole time, I was just focused on tryna make one of those ratchet bangers for the summer—in case things would've gotten back to normal by then. It ain't get back to normal, but it still had to go on my album because it can still slide to the end of the summer.”

Walk Em Down (feat. Roddy Ricch)
“I ain't gon' lie, Roddy Ricch’s Feed Tha Streets II album, the one that blew him up blew him up, I related to that whole album before I blew up. He had hits on that b***h. I was like one of the first n***as in my city that was bumping him. For 'Walk Em Down,' I just DM'd him and he pulled up to the studio the same night.”

Shotta Flow 4 (feat. Chief Keef)
“All of [Chief Keef’s] drill songs I used to f**k with: ‘Love Sosa,’ ‘I Don't Like’—I used to f**k with all them b***hes. I felt like I had to do a song with Keef ’cause he was a part of my childhood. I know once people hear that, they're going to love that one, because they've been waiting on Chief to get back on that drill type of music.”

Paranoid
“I walked in the studio and I said, ‘I just want to make something out of my element.’ I also wanted to make it so it could be suitable towards women. I f**k with that song because it shows a lot of versatility and I know like a few months ago I wouldn't have been able to go get on that beat. I don’t think that I would’ve had it in me. So I feel like I really been growing.”