Hip-Hop’s New Ghost – SSHGEKYUME’s ‘DRK COVENANT’ Is a Messy, Vital Scream

Let’s get one thing straight. If you’re looking for polished hooks, club-ready beats, and a good-time vibe, click next. This ain’t it. The new project from Orlando’s SSHGEKYUME, the DRK COVENANT MixTape, is a jagged nerve, exposed and screaming. This is what hip-hop used to feel like—less a party, more a riot.

In his own words, this tape is a “sanctuary” for “the ones they call outsiders, the freaks, the ghosts in classrooms… the people the world tries to erase“. It’s a heavy-duty mission statement, and SSHGEKYUME wears that weight on every single track. The tape kicks off with “!nfinity part 1,” and right from the jump, he’s not hiding the ball: “I wonder, I wonder, I wonder am I crazy?“. It’s the question that hangs over the entire 12-track, 46-minute runtime.

This isn’t an artist who just woke up and decided to be “deep.” You can hear the ghosts he’s chasing. He’s open about how the deaths of XXXTentacion and Juice WRLD hit him, forcing him to tell his own story instead of just living through theirs. But the real key? He says it was seeing Kendrick go at Drake that showed him the power and depth hip-hop can really have. That’s the code-breaker. This is a conscious effort to weaponize that pain, to make it mean something.

And mean it does. The tape’s centerpiece, “God Doesn’t Like Ugly Thoughts,” is a back-alley confession over a skeletal, haunting beat. This is the “ugly” he’s talking about. It’s uncomfortable, and absolutely unflinching. He’s not just rapping, but picking at old scabs. When he gets to the subject of his family, the track turns ice-cold. He digs deep into the trauma of his mother’s substance dependence, confessing to a chilling lack of remorse for anyone who dared to speak on it. It’s not a boast. It’s a scar. The track then descends further into darkness, culminating in a devastating admission of paternal abandonment. He wrestles with the belief that his own father left him, not for any normal reason, but out of fear—fear of his son’s “demonic spirit,” fear that he was the devil. It’s the kind of personal detail that stops you cold, the sound of a kid trying to make sense of an unfixable wound.

But don’t get it twisted—this isn’t just a 46-minute sulk. The man can surely rap. “Yung $tArZ” proves he’s got the swagger to hang with any of ’em. The track explodes with pure trap energy, as he skates over the beat with the kind of effortless braggadocio that hip-hop was built on. He’s all in, boasting that his lyrical skill is second nature and his style is fresher than expensive bottled water. It’s the sound of the “Yung $tAr” he’s aspiring to be.

But this is DRK COVENANT MixTape, and nothing is that simple. Halfway through, the beat flips, the flow changes, and a new, more serious voice cuts through. The bragging about earthly flexes stops, replaced by a heavy declaration of divine purpose, of a legacy just beginning, and of his status as the “chosen one”. It’s a jarring, brilliant switch. The track is a civil war in miniature—the boastful, money-flickin’ rapper versus the self-aware, “chosen” artist.

This conflict drives the entire project. He follows the high-energy swagger of “Yung $tArZ” with the paranoid comedown of “Roll Royce.” On paper, the song might read like a typical rapper’s checklist, obsessed with buying his own luxury watch. But his delivery isn’t a confident flex — it’s a manic, almost desperate chant. He creates a scene of success, imagining himself cruising down the street, a fantasy finally coming to life. Then, just as quickly, it collapses – he wakes up, the car disappears, and nothing in his life has changed. The track perfectly captures the emptiness of the very dream it’s chasing, ending with the project’s most haunting refrain: why does this specific, hollow fantasy linger in his mind?

DRK COVENANT MixTape is messy, it’s contradictory, and it’s emotionally draining. It’s the sound of an artist at war with himself, and he’s invited us to watch. From the mission statement of the title track, weary admission of “Ghosts R Haunting Me,” this is a document of a struggle. But if you’re one of those “ghosts,” SSHGEKYUME is talking to you. It’s the sound of someone else who’s haunted, and who’s finally decided to haunt back.

The DRK COVENANT MixTape is out now. If you’re tired of the fakes, go listen.