Heat Check Roundup: Smino, Ayra Starr, Ghais Guevara and more

The Heat Check playlist is your source for new music from around the worlds of hip-hop and R&B with an emphasis on bubbling, undiscovered, and under-the-radar acts. Who's got the hot hand? Who's on a run? It's a menagerie of notable songs curated by enthusiasts from around NPR Music.

This week's Heat Check selects come largely from iconoclasts who have already zeroed in on their individual aesthetics: a singsong rap soulman, an alté sensation, a noise-rap radical, a Memphis outlier, and a bidirectional pop-rap multi-hyphenate. Elsewhere we get songs with signature sounds: drill merengue, rap regalia, synth-R&B as dance music, Auto-Tuned cyber-vibrato and more. Check in.

Smino, "90 Proof" (ft. J. Cole)

We're on the eve of cuffing season and yet Smino's "90 Proof" with J. Cole tries squeezing in a f**kboy fall before it's for Smi to lock down his album the same way his interest on "90 Proof" wants him to define the relationship, and here he makes his intention very clear: he's gonna come through. — Gabby Bulgarelli