Just when they had finally convinced everyone they were more than a dorm-room joke, Das Racist have broken up. Bummer! Thankfully, principal member Himanshu "Heems" Suri isn't quitting the game yet. On his latest solo mixtape, the Punjabi-American rhyme fiend riffs, rants and rambles over aqueous beats from extra-hip producers like Beautiful Lou and Harry Fraud. "I'm stoned at my parents' house/White boys throwing stones at my parents' house," he says in one of many verses edging toward darker, more personal territory. He still knows how to sling a three-quarters-baked punchline, but don't be fooled: Heems is dead serious about rap.

“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"