W!LD

Wolves tend to pop up regularly on Russ’ album art, but the creature on the cover of W!LD is something more ambiguous—perhaps a kind of wolf-horse hybrid, looking wistfully over its shoulder. Breaking down the image and title of what he bills as his sixth album (though technically you could consider it his 17th) on social media, the 32-year-old rapper explained that after spending years single-mindedly focused on external success, he’d grown more interested in exploring the “wilderness” of self-discovery. Five years after completing his deal with Columbia Records and going fully independent, the rapper who was once known as a lightning rod for controversy seems to have chilled significantly, meditating on success, love and his own unexpected trajectory over soulful self-produced beats. (“How’d I beat the game without looking at the user guide?” he marvels on the intro.) He has yet to chill on punny entendres that oscillate between cringe and brilliant, like the one he drops on “Go Up”: “Brooks Garth/This country’s backwards.”