Without the stress of essays to turn in and tests to cram for, the earbuds are on and the speakers are turned up in the city of Evanston.

With the new release of Drake’s new album, Scorpion, the “In My Feelings Challenge” has also arisen. The social media dance craze uses a verse from  Drake’s song, “In My Feelings”, making its way to being a mid-summer hit. Although Drake’s song and the name “Keke” have taken summer of 2018 by storm, a variety of hip-hop and pop artists have created summer music.

“I’ll definitely remember this summer by Juice WRLD’s whole album. Especially the song ‘Lucid Dreams’ because that’s all me and my friends would listen to all day, everyday,” sophomore Macy Aiken says.

Even though there has been a  growing popularity of new artists like Juice WRLD, numerous established musicians do not fail with their never-ending stream of radio top charters. For instance, Cardi B, who has gained attention this past year because of her ability to speak with complete candor about her somewhat materialistic desires in the summer hit “I Like It”. Khalid and Calvin Harris have also used their connections in the music industry to collaborate with notable artists. Harris features the singer of the song “New Rules”, Dua Lipa, while Khalid features his song with lesser known artist Normani in the movie “Love, Simon”. In terms of notable, an unexpected album was released titled “EVERYTHING IS LOVE” by an iconic married duo, Jay-Z, and Beyonce under the artist name The Carters.

Familiar rappers showed prescene this August and July, one being Chance the Rapper with his release of four new singles. An Evanston shoutout is given by the Chicago lyricist in the song “65 & Ingleside” briefly: “She moved over from Evanston/You moved over form Eggleston.” Along with the arrival of Chance’s long-awaited return, Travis Scott, another rapper who has not released solo work recently, revealed his third studio album, “Astroworld”, this year at Lollapalooza.

Overall, a theme throughout this past summer in the mainstream is slow tempo hip-hop music, a trend certainly not new. A mellower hip-hop vibe has nothing stopping it from showing up in the study playlists of the ETHS students.