Protect at Rolling Loud Orlando.
Taryn Segal / The FADER
Even his haters will agree: Protect has an unreal ear for producers. That’s been apparent over the Buffalo rapper’s burgeoning career, but the collected leaks on Slimedude2003 showcase Protect’s omnivorous taste in beats better than any of his previous full-lengths. His vocal performances are equally elevated, more agile and dynamic than he’s been in the past. Taken as a whole, it’s a perfect entry point for the uninitiated, and a promising look at Protect’s growth as an artist over the past year.
Until now, Protect’s music has largely existed in a space somewhere between the rage rap du jour and the bygone blog-era heyday of cloud trap. His music was still harder knocking than predecessors like Pi’erre Bourne, but Protect generally aimed for a similar sort of ambient vibe building. Songs were optimized for soundtracking your life, Protect’s voice just another textural element sitting in the mix like his synths and toplines.
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Slimedude2003 still dabbles in the wall-of-sound ambience his fans clearly love (“Raf trench,” “Whole Crowd,” “What doesn’t kill u”) but largely pushes Protect into the spotlight, his verses and hooks front and center. When we spoke last month at Rolling Loud in Orlando, Protect told me he doesn’t worry too much about lyricism – “I just think about what rappers that I listen to say and I'm like, damn that shit hard – and I say my own version of it” – but Slimedude2003 suggests that sometimes, Protect thinks about more in the booth than just instinctively recapping his day with a little extra swag.
Consider “Zeros,” one of three brand new tracks on the project. Protect’s subject matter is the typical fare, but his flow subtly undulates and flips as the track progresses, crawling up and down octaves from line to line. “Deep voice ‘Tec man I sound like a monster,” he mumbles over throbbing 808s. He never sticks to one register too long, so even though he repeats his entire verse for a second time, no hook or anything, the track doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Or take “Makatussin,” another new joint where Protect scoops up bottles of the titular European codeine and hangs, “with my slime, with my fucking iguana.” The instrumental has an off-kilter syncopation to its snare patterns, and Protect’s voice contorts into unusual tones on lines like, “I suggest that you have my lil money.” These songs show an unexpected attention to detail, which bodes well for an impending full-length scheduled for later in 2026.
The bulk of Slimedude2003 comprises a bundle of fan-favorite snippets and leaks from the past six months, but wasn’t the project Protect initially had in mind for the summer. The rapper’s hand was forced when fans found his unreleased album on [untitled] after close associate and streamer Bruce Dropemoff inadvertently leaked the project’s URL onstream in late April. The files quickly hit the internet, and so from a distance, Slimedude2003 is less of a gift to the fans than an understandable attempt to reclaim ownership (and streaming income) for these songs.
But that eclectic, unsequenced approach might actually be in Protect’s favor, giving listeners a broader view of his uncanny taste in music production. And these are truly some of the most beautiful and intricate beats Protect has ever gotten, which is saying a lot when you consider past heaters like “Ion Wanna Talk” and “IfUGotMe.” The echoey “Firearm” twinkles with starry beeps and boops by ovanni; makkgin threads a woozy, ascending synthline through the fog of “Re4,” where Protect compares himself to the horror games’ protagonist Leon S. Kennedy.
But it’s the album’s backstretch where things truly come together. chinapoet and heroine construct a stuttering, juddering amalgam of a sstepteam-type beat for “Ac130;” sentry and 23.558x23.558 (yes, that’s really his name) operate in a similar vein on “Reset.” The negative space on “Reset” in particular inspires Protect to dig a tiny bit deeper to fill out these songs, admitting that online comments about his looks, “turnt me to a hider / but I can’t be no hider.” That simple repetition might sound silly on paper, but it’s infused with enough emotion on wax to go down easy. Later on that same song, Protect raps, “Dive with no thought, like dolphin / Can we stay together like dolphins?” The line lands genuinely thanks to his oddly tender affect.
Protect is similarly sentimental on “Sk8r,” even if he’s mostly talking about nothing. At one point, he croons, “Stand top on my money, now I'm 6'10" / My lil' cousin call me just to say 67,” and it feels like a silly glimpse into Protect’s close-knit family relationships, rather than (just) brainrot clipfarming.
My favorite song on the album “U da 1” seems liable to hit the TikTok algorithm, thanks to an otherworldly JayRico flip of “Duvet” by bôa. Protect is brushing off people who want to ride his coattails and flexing the range of currencies he has on hand (“Money different colors like a tapestry”). It’s a little shallower and breezier than the rest of the tape, but when Protect poses the rhetorical, “You wasn't here when we started this / How the fuck is you gon' be a part of this?” his frustration at being previously counted out is palpable. That extra injection of emotion and texture elevates what could have been a soulless bid for virality into something that feels more honest and true.
Protect is a big fan of videogames like Resident Evil, Fall Guys, and Sly Cooper, so it makes sense that his latest project was titled after the rapper’s gamertag. Listening to Slimedude2003 feels like watching Protect hit a frame-perfect speedrun, flawlessly-timed and totally precise, hitting every mark without wasting a move.
