Nino Paid returns with the album Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Nino Paid released a new album, "Somewhere Over The Rainbow," on August 4, with HotNewHipHop giving it a first listen the same day and singling out its instrumentals. The 19-track project features Wale, Shy Glizzy, VonOff1700 and Benji Blue Bills, among others.

Pitchfork published a review by Alphonse Pierre on August 12, calling the DMV rapper's writing sharper than on his earlier records and describing the album as a piece-by-piece account of him trying to find some bliss after years of hardship. Pierre wrote that it followed 2024's "Can't Go Bacc" and 2025's "Love Me as I Am" as the third in a run of introverted, heartbreak-driven albums, each feeling like a step up from the last.

The review highlighted the go-go fusions Nino Paid built with D.C. production archivist Tone P on tracks including "Step With Me" and "Shine," calling the latter one of the strongest songs on the record for blending his hard-earned storytelling with a bass slide and electric guitar riff. Pierre also pointed to the drug-addiction verses on "When You Miss Me Most" as some of the most direct writing on the album.

Pierre singled out individual lines for their weight. The stripped-down "Rewind It" opens with "I know I said I'm done with all the sad songs" before landing what he called an emotional relapse, and "Mirror" finds Nino Paid rapping "In the mirror I look like my dad," a line the review tied back to his father's death on 2024's "Play This At My Funeral" and the family arguments described on last year's "Tomorrow Will Be Better."

Pierre wrote that no single song on "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" overwhelms on its own, but that the intro and "Nun But Drums" add up to what he called an emotional whirlpool best taken in all at once. He was less convinced by some of the record's detours, singling out the Buddah Bless-produced "Valedictorian" and a Jaydes-style guitar ballad, "Long As I Got Love for You," as weaker stretches.

The DMV material fared better in the review, which pointed to "Peace of Mind," where Nino Paid tries a Wale-assisted brunch-rap turn, and "Drop," a callback with Shy Glizzy that revives an AutoTune preset unused since 2016. The record adds to a catalog Nino Paid built from 2023 YouTube uploads into a run of acclaimed studio albums, and it lands in the release calendar alongside the rest of our hip-hop coverage.