In a world where wildfires rage, sea levels rise, and doomscrolling has become a daily ritual, love — in all its radical forms — has emerged as one of the few constants we can hold on to. But we’re not just talking about romantic love. We’re talking about love as resistance. Love as loyalty. Love as survival. Love for the mic, the craft, the crew.
In this week’s FoldedWaffle feature, we dive into three tracks that capture that spectrum of devotion with spiritual grounding and poetic grit. Whether it’s the lyrical kinship of Mz and Cabra on “BMT,” the self-soothing reflections of Quincy Jamal’s “Puff Puff Pass,” or the meditative head-nod of DET S’RIGHT’s “Code,” each of these songs reveals a different side of how artists keep going — between smoke and silence.
These aren’t love songs in the Hallmark sense. These are sonic letters to what keeps us human, even as the climate of the world (and our minds) grows more unstable by the day.
🎧 Mz – “BMT”
“BMT” is all chemistry, no chorus. Mz and Cabra step into the booth like iron sharpening iron — two artists testing each other’s timing, tone, and cadence. There’s no facade here. It’s love through competition, love through collaboration — the way hip-hop used to be done in the park, or the cipher, or the flat you couldn’t afford but still made magic in.
The grime-laced boom bap backdrop gives both emcees space to flex, but it’s the mutual respect that glues the track together. That back-to-back energy — no ego, just evolution — is rare. Especially in a world where artists are often pitted against each other by the very algorithms designed to “connect” us.
This is Mz’s fifth drop but feels like a first leap into a new tier. For the ES6 Collective, “BMT” is more than just bars. It’s a statement of intent. A love letter to the mic, written in punchlines.
🎧 Quincy Jamal – “Puff Puff Pass”
Sometimes love looks like stillness. Like letting the smoke curl. Like letting go.
On “Puff Puff Pass,” Quincy Jamal drifts into a mellow meditation on pressure, purpose, and peace. Over a silky-smooth, Southern-flavored beat — think Larry June on a rooftop with Isaiah Rashad and a blunt — Jamal floats bars with ease, inviting us into a calm we forgot we needed.
Born in New Orleans and shaped by multiple cities, Quincy channels that displacement into warmth. The kind of warmth you share with friends in a living room lit by lava lamps and low-stakes laughter. It’s a self-loving anthem disguised as a smoke sesh, and every verse is a subtle act of resistance: against burnout, against expectations, against the noise of the world outside your headphones.
In the context of a generation worried about melting ice caps and mental overload, this song is a gentle reminder: don’t forget to pass yourself some grace.
🎧 DET S’RIGHT – “Code”
“Code” doesn’t need lyrics to say a lot. The beat itself feels coded — glitched and grounded, gritty yet clean. DET S’RIGHT offers a love language spoken only in rhythm and breaks, like a vinyl prayer echoing through concrete walls.
There’s something cinematic in the instrumental choices — every snare crack and synth swell whispers of things held tight and let go of too soon. It’s that kind of boom bap you throw on while walking home from somewhere you didn’t want to leave, letting the wind tug at your hoodie and your heart.
This is love as mourning, love as memory, love as a beat that never lets up — even when the world does.
In an age of streaming fatigue and fast-forward culture, a carefully sculpted instrumental like this one demands pause. It demands breath. And maybe that’s the point. DET S’RIGHT leaves the message up to us, coded in every bar — a kind of sonic devotion that speaks louder than words.
These three tracks aren’t escapism. They’re intimacy. The kind that keeps you moving when everything else tells you to quit.
