Retooling samples and vocal fragments is, obviously, one of the foundations of hip-hop production, but swiping another rapper’s ad-libs sans context is mostly a 21st century, digital-native practice. Juicy J’s “Yeah, hoe” is far and away the most frequently repurposed snippet; any SoundCloud cache from the past six or seven years would surely confirm this. The chant has survived ebbs and explosions that have made trap production more diverse and more diffuse. This follows years of Three 6 Mafia exerting outsized stylistic influence over 2010s underground rap— the triplet flow Migos brought back to the mainstream, for example. And so, for Rae Sremmurd, who have done more than anyone to mutate trap music into something softer and weirder across the last four years, the next logical step was to track down the breathing, leaning Juicy to recreate the sound himself.

Rae Sremmurd’s Juicy J-featuring “Powerglide” was released last night alongside a solo cut each from Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi, and it would be tempting to peg this as the midpoint between Swae’s silky “Hurt to Look” and Jxmmi’s skeletal “Brxnks Truck.” But it’s not. It’s more like the two approaches layered on top of one another, lush and punishing at the same time. The California-bred producer Mally Mall and the group’s longtime collaborator Mike WiLL Made-It furnish them with something a bit further from the steely, minimal grid that rap radio is built on at the moment, a beat whose villain’s theme keyboards are deeply indebted to Three 6 Mafia’s “Side 2 Side”—a point Swae underscores by paying subtle tribute in the hook, his “poooowerglide” standing in for DJ Paul’s “side to side.”

As was the case with 2016’s monstrously huge “Black Beatles,” the song feels, for its first half, like a Swae Lee solo cut. Swae’s unique in his ability to finesse a voice so fine through thunderous beats; when Jxmmi barrels in around the three-minute mark, he’s a much-needed, razor-edged counterpoint. And then, as a coda, Juicy barks to life: mourning Lil Peep, mulling his Xanax intake—and ad-libbing, of course. At a time when Three 6’s influence is creeping back up the pop charts (see: A$AP Ferg’s “Plain Jane” or Future’s verse on “King’s Dead”), “Powerglide” is a thread that runs back toward some of Southern rap’s most influential modern acts. And by looping back to the originators, Rae Sremmurd yank trap toward something entirely new.