The subtitle says it all. There’s nary a heart as erratic and unforgiving as that of Mother Nature. Her storms are sublime, Her rage unrivaled. We as humans tend to forget we live on Her turf, often tarnishing and disrespecting the land we are blessed to inhabit. If you’ve ever experienced a blizzard along the mountain range or braced nightfall in the afternoon; if you ever trudged a mile in the biting frost, you know what wrath winter is capable of. Following are fifteen frigid hip hop songs to help you get through. Why do these tunes work so well as antidote (or accompaniment)? Maybe it’s because the sonic canvas they present so closely resembles the one you’re walking on.

So here goes, in no particular order…

Cannibal Ox — Straight Off The D.I.C. (The Cold Vein, 2001)

There’s possibly no rap album ever produced more winter-ready than Cannibal Ox’s underground benchmark The Cold Vein. The album broke ground thanks in no small part to its unorthodox, futuristic production via Independent Rap stalwart El-P (aka El-Producto) — an often overlooked MIDI genius armed with freaky drum textures and a sharp attention to detail (notice the impeccably placed horn bursts on Straight Off The D.I.C.). When El combined some of his best work with the lyrical wizardry and effortless emotive abilities of Harlem emcees Vast Aire and Vordul Mega, the end result ended up becoming one of hip hop’s most evocative poetic statements. And it’s aptly titled; the 70+ minutes of run time sound like a dissonant transmission that came hurtling to earth in an ice-pod from the far reaches of outer space, landing in some remote Arctic location before it was discovered by human beings, who allowed it to thaw before blasting it through a pair of loud-speakers. It’s impossible to pick just one song, so I threw up one of the album’s first-rate nodyourhead-alongs.

See also: El-P — Tasmanian Pain Coaster; Aesop Rock — ZZZ Top

Ras Kass — Reelishymn (Soul on Ice, 1996)

Almost every aspect of Ras Kass’s Soul On Ice points to coldness, and it’s not just the album title. The man’s vocal delivery is sort of a cross between signature g-funk flows and that lyrically dense, fast-burst-spatter of prime Def Jux/Rawkus-era output. While critically lauded for his clever, Historically Revelatory pen game, my personal enjoyment of songs like Reelishymn comes from the bruised, scraped-up beats; the hypnotic chorus vocals; the confident, creative rhyme schemes; the aggressive-yet-cool vocal performance. Try this song for a spin in the summer, then come back a few months later and tell me those distorted, low-fidelity sax weeps don’t sound so much fucking sweeter on frozen scenery.

See also: Ras Kass — Sonset; Apollo Brown — Not That Guy (feat. Your Old Droog)

Drake — No Tellin’ (If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, 2015)

Now, I’m nowhere near the biggest Drake fan, but I’ll be the first to shamelessly admit my love for his song No Tellin’. The five-minute track feels palatial, glacial, bare, with an unequivocally well-rounded, paranoid crunch to its character. It’s slickly produced, mixed; Drake’s vocals are faintly filtered with a screen of high-pass brightness, the synth squeals eerily atmospheric, the drums as sharp and cracked as the longest ice slide this side of uptown Toronto. And speaking of Drake’s hometown, the influence of Canadian winter can be heard everywhere — not just in the sparse production style, which helps create a sense of isolation, but also in Drake’s downcast mood and uncharacteristically antagonistic lyrics (“Please do not speak to me like I’m that Drake from four years ago, I’m at a higher place / Thinkin’ they lions and tigers and bears, I go huntin’ / Put heads on my fireplace”). It’s smoother and colder than Drake’s ever sounded, and when the song swells into something of a gospel choir rap-opera finale, it’s also as grand and audacious as he’s ever been.

See also: Big Sean — Jump Out the Window; Gucci Mane — Last Time (feat. Travis Scott)

Eminem — If I Had (The Slim Shady LP, 1999)

If you’r familiar chiefly with the tamer side of Eminem’s career (his platinum pop-rap collaborations with Rihanna, for example) and less so his earlier output, you may be unaware that the emcee once stirred up some of the most vitriolic underground noise in the hip hop world. His major label debut The Slim Shady LP contains some monstrous hits, but one of its lesser known songs If I Had offers listeners the lyrical and instrumental subtlety that some of Em’s later music lacks. For those who believe the man got complacent at some point down the line, worry not. Ostensibly recorded before his Interscope deal, before he had any laurels to rest on, If I Had has Em sounding genuinely hungry, a lived-in jadedness to his voice. The simple, soul-sampling beat feels woven into the fabric of Detroit’s abandoned houses and factories middle of December. “What is life?” asks Marshall, before listing all the things he’s sick and tired of…and the same thoughts start cropping up in our own minds as we listen, the cold air spiking our lungs.

See also: Mobb Deep — Where Ya Heart At; Nas — Take It In Blood; Notorious B.I.G. — I Got a Story to Tell

A$AP Rocky — Holy Ghost (At. Long. Last. ASAP, 2015)

There’s something about Rocky’s gospel-tinged album opener that strikes a chilly chord. It probably has something to do with the despondent religious imagery; the melancholy folksy harmonies sung by newcomer Joe Fox; the dark, unflinching lyrics (“Lies is the new drugs, my sister the next stripper / My brother the next victim, my usher the next tricker”). The big organic drums and guitar playing are a nice additional touch, giving the tune a serrated edge. Recommended listening for nighttime walks home from work, when you choose to take the long route back through Old Town.

See also: Kanye West — Wolves; Kendrick Lamar — Lust

Heltah Skeltah — Therapy (Nocturnal, 1996)

Rock and Ruck (Jahmal Bush and Sean Price, respectively) should be forever remembered as one of hip hop’s finest hardcore rugged-rap duos. Their debut album Nocturnal is, in truth, perfect for wintertime front to back, so it was difficult choosing just one song for this list. Therapy possesses the same kind of woozy, late-night atmospherics as on Method Man & Mary J. Blige’s famous collaboration All I Need, but with perhaps more howling wind in its DNA. The two rappers flow like butter over the brittle drums as Vinia Mojica entwines her silky voice with the song’s grimy ambiance. “You lose when you fall victim to evil ways / I know crime pays but the rhyme slays nowadays”…Sean Price, you will be missed…May we preserve your verses for posterity!

See also: Method Man — All I Need (feat. Mary J. Blige); Nas — If I Ruled The World (feat. Lauryn Hill)

Kanye West — Christmas in Harlem (Single — G.O.O.D. Friday series, 2010)

Mr. West has dropped plenty gems for the world to hear, many of which complement a cold grey sky. Christmas in Harlem is for my money the most frank and compulsively listenable Christmas-themed rap song, one which befits the winter season better than most in Kanye’s catalog. The extended version features as many as eight artists, including famous names such as Cam’ron, Jim Jones, Pusha T, and Big Sean. The chorus, an instant classic holiday sing-along, soars high as Ye’s greatest hits; this is him at his best, a curator of candidness and soul. The tune is full of sobering, sorrowful ruminations, the sorts of things one often ponders when snowed in and without. But combined with all that is the trademark boastfulness, the unabashed exuberance synonymous with Ye’s personality. It’s at once a celebration and a lamentation. Side-note: song is best taken with heaps of pine and a highball glass of Bacardi-n-eggnog.

See also: OutKast — Player’s Ball; Run DMC — Christmas in Hollis

Danny Brown — From The Ground (Atrocity Exhibition, 2016)

One of the less-discussed tracks off Danny’s experimental, captivating Atrocity Exhibition, From The Ground is one of those short-but-sweet excursions into desolate street corners and dissolving lines. It’s somewhat of an informal comparative essay, as Danny reflects on his past turmoil and pits it against his present-day fortunes. He’s grateful for what he has, appreciates that even the littlest victory can be enormous in impact. “Wake up, wipe the cold out your eyes / It’s a cold, cold world but even hotter when you die,” raps Danny, the always-perceptive emcee from Detroit’s rough-and-tumble neighborhoods, who knows a thing or two about the industrialized, cutthroat world we live in.

See also: Schoolboy Q — Hoover Street; Quasimoto — Bluffin

Uncommon Nasa — Love The Cold Like A Brother (Halfway, 2015)

Need some new hip hop to listen to? Something that gets way less attention than it deserves? Put this article on pause and go listen to Uncommon Nasa’s discography. Thank me later. Seriously, the Staten Island emcee is one of my most treasured discoveries from the past few years. He resurrects that Golden Age hip hop sound but somehow in a totally fresh, revamped fashion. His hook-writing and lyrical ingenuity is undeniable, weirdly theatrical…and I say that with admiration. “Lose one another, lose one another…” Nasa sounds like a flow-slinging philosopher from Jupiter. On Love The Cold he manages to elicit some stark, profound images and feelings with a free-streaming consciousness that cut to heart of our ancestral ills (“Why do the adults kill the children? Childlike versions of themselves that is”). Nasa stomps out a wonderfully heavy vocal performance over an understated brass refrain and sped-up soul intonations. Man, there’s something about those sped-up soul samples in the wintertime — especially with visionary raps on top.

See also: Your Old Droog — Nutty Bars; billy woods — Groundhogs Day

Isaiah Rashad — Wat’s Wrong (The Sun’s Tirade, 2016)

Rashad’s The Sun’s Tirade is one of the very few albums to successfully (and without seeming artificial) marry the drug-fueled nihilism of modern rap post-2010 with the meditative lyrical complexity of its preeminent wordsmiths and flow-connoisseurs. Kendrick Lamar — whose precise, dizzying rhyme schemes and anomalous musical sensibilities feature on Wat’s Wrong — is in the year 2017, four studio albums deep, already a major part of the Greatest Rapper Alive conversation. Deservedly so. But that’s not to take anything away from Rashad — underrated and all over this slice of jazzy soul-sludge, he manages to take some heavy themes and rap about them in a way that feels lax and graceful, sprightly even, without sacrificing vigor and aggression. This is hippie rap for the age of Trump. This is that get-weird-let-loose soundtrack for a mad, mad time. Wat’s Wrong comes on and you’ll find yourself rolling down your car window at ninety miles an hour, inspired, blowing out preposterous smoke clouds in between heartfelt admonishments for the lost souls guarding every street corner in sight — despite the minus-40 weather and gangs of cops dimming your radar. “Sometimes I get so ahead of myself / Feel like I’m running in circles,” sings Zacari on the hook. I think we can all relate.

See also: Mick Jenkins — Jazz; SZA — Doves In The Wind (feat. Kendrick Lamar)

Cunninlynguists — Hard As They Come (Act I) (Oneirology, 2011)

Cunninlynguists are at their best when they sound like a slummier OutKast commingling with a psychedelic fuzz rock group made up of forgotten poets. The Freddie Gibbs-assisted Hard As They Come (Act I) is the song on their fantastic album Oneirology that I return to most. It’s the ethereal chill it sends down my spine, as if I’ve entered into a dream set in some mystifying, palatial winter landscape. It’s the gruff vocal deliveries and hard-knock flows, the brazen lyrics ( “The whole family over for Christmas dinner / Let’s go through the purses and sell the gifts from your mom’s house / They know you out here doing dirt for cash”). It’s the incredible sampling job. It’s everything. This is the song for when your relatives visit during the holidays and partake in all its entailing festivities … yet you can’t shake the feeling that something veritable is missing from your life.

See also: OutKast — Millennium; Freddie Gibbs — Amnesia

Noreaga — 40 Island (N.O.R.E., 1998)

If you want a song to make you feel like you’re on a bus going straight to Rikers, look no further than 40 Island. One of the rawest, least forgiving rap songs you’ll ever encounter, it has Noreaga going toe to toe with Kool G Rap and Mussolini over a beat that must have been fashioned out of New York’s very cement and stone, the cold razor wire guarding Rikers Island’s borders. You can actually hear the rust blowing off aged handrails in the wind, the screeching of subways. You can hear the cold. And that’s something I can only say about a handful of songs. As Kool puts it, “ Niggas kidnappin’ wify’s while hearts cold as Italian Icy’s / Now buck and a half slide across his face lace some nicely.”

See also: Noreaga — It’s Not a Game (feat. Maze & Mussolini); Lord Finesse — No Gimmicks

A Tribe Called Quest — 8 Million Stories (Midnight Marauders, 1993)

8 Million Stories is one of those songs that displays why Midnight Marauders is hip hop’s answer to The Beatles’ White Album. Traditional only in the rhythmic sense, it’s unconventional in every other. Phife Dawg (Rest In Peace) illustrates — in ways Phife Dawg was always artfully capable — what a bad day in New York City looks and sounds and feels like.

The delightfully eccentric instrumental supports Phife’s one-of-a-kind emceeing perfectly, pulsing and bleeding and stabbing with odd little noises throughout. As evidenced by the schizophrenic, jazz-lounge-meets-low-end-banger energy it possesses, Stories (and essentially all of Marauders for that matter) is perfect listening for strolls through shadowy downtown streets in the winter — where lights and parties prosper into the late hours yet.

See also: Busta Rhymes — Dangerous; A Tribe Called Quest — Award Tour

Three 6 Mafia — Where Da Killaz Hang (Chapter 1: The End, 1996)

I sometimes like to think of Three 6 Mafia — especially early Three 6 — as the black metal of hip hop; black metal has always been a genre of music I get cravings for during the wintertime, and I’m similarly moved by the menacing sounds DJ Paul, Juicy J and company churned out in the early-to-mid-90’s: the scuzzy lyrics, the obscure samples, those lo-fi instrumentals that sound like they were welded together in a dungeon full of hell-fire. Where Da Killaz Hang truly sounds grimed and primed for evil-doing, a cacophony of blistering noise and depravity most certainly not for the faint-hearted. But to someone looking for some chop-flowed hardcore trunk rattlers, this song comes highly recommended. Vocally speaking, it’s the Mafia assisted by Juicy’s brother Project Pat going absolutely bonkers on a raw, B-horror-movie beat. “My automatic, ready for static / Blastery tragic, have you in plastic” Lord Infamous (Rest In Peace) raps. You don’t want to put this tune on when you’re alone near an underpass in the heart of winter at twilight … or maybe you do?

See also: Koopsta Knicca — Crucifix (feat. DJ Paul); Gangsta Boo — Meet The Devil

GZA — Cold World (Liquid Swords, 1995)

Iron mic wielder GZA’s 1995 Liquid Swords is arguably the greatest of the many Wu-Tang Clan solo albums, and Cold World is one of twelve reasons many people vouch for its supreme status (thirteen if you count the CD-only bonus track). Master producer RZA tapped into something at the fringes of the cumulative boom-bap canon; the album sounds at once ethereal and earthen, like a clammy nightmare set against a simmering, forgotten dream. It’s haunting, discombobulating. Having The Genius GZA and his Wu-Tang comrade Inspectah Deck both doing some of their finest emceeing doesn’t hurt. I could’ve picked any song from the album for the winter backpacking soundtrack, but Cold World is a natural go-to; it sounds like a snow storm gone awry as a hope-mongering soul singer hobbles through public housing trying to expel the demons and pains born of everyday poverty, his song dueling for survival with the whistling winds. The school windows are shut. Nobody sees the singer’s breath except for ex-cons with merciless business to get down to, but they don’t really see a thing — they have no time for promises of better days, least bit when the snow’s rushing down heavy.

See also: Raekwon — Ice Cream; Wu-Tang Clan — Can It Be All So Simple