Watch the All-Women Cypher Featuring Latto, Flo Milli, Monaleo, Maiya The Don and Mello Buckzz

There’s a science to rapping. It involves the chemistry of flow, voice, tone and lyrics. When, if mixed at the correct quantities, all four can combine to make a combustible outcome. Thus is the case when Latto, Flo Milli, Monaleo, Maiya The Don and Mello Buckzz step into the first-ever XXL Cypher Lab, presented by the Starz Original Series Power Book III: Raising Kanan, below.

Filmed in October at Hudson River Studios in Union City, N.J, these five artists came together to drop bars in a cypher curated by Latto. Women in hip-hop have ruled 2023, and the four rising femcees Latto chose are some of the names to look out for. With Pooh Beatz on the track and DJ Carisma on the ones and twos, Chicago’s Mello Buckzz puts on her lab coat first, with a freestyle straight from the trenches. "It's lotta guns, it’s Glocks around, might be one in my sock something/We in the field and upping scores, this might be a soccer something," she spits.

Maiya The Don, hailing from Brooklyn, N.Y., reps with Big Apple pride. "Big Don from the big city where girls all like to act up," she delivers. "Way before that COVID s**t I had shiesty n***as with me masked up."

Flo Milli is next. She isn’t lacking confidence. "Walk a b***h down like stairs/Now I’m up, b***h, like air/New G-Wagon all-white, might have to nickname it Karen," the Mobile, Ala. native snaps.

Fellow Southern bred rapper Monaleo, who hails from Houston, drops metaphors with ease when she steps up. "I’m going bar for bar, b***h, that mean I’m bar hopping/I go from car to car, hell naw, I’m not car shopping," she raps.

Latto has the final word. The Atlanta rapper promotes her big dawg status before closing out her freestyle with the line: "Me and Brook like Venus and Serena, we be serving h*es/And all these NBA n***as want her like she Durkio."

Take a look as Latto, Flo Milli, Monaleo, Maiya The Don and Mello Buckzz put their rap skills to the test in XXL Cypher Lab, presented by the Starz Original Series Power Book III: Raising Kanan, below.

Watch XXL Cypher Lab Featuring Latto, Flo Milli, Monaleo, Maiya The Don and Mello Buckzz

Read interviews with Latto, Flo Milli, Maiya The Don, Monaleo and Mello Buckzz in the Winter 2023 issue of XXL Magazine, on newsstands now. The new issue also includes the cover story with Latto and conversations with Killer Mike, DD Osama, Sexyy Red, BigXThaPlug, plus more. Additionally, there's an exclusive interview with Fetty Wap, Quality Control Music's Coach K and P discuss 10 years into the label's growth, in-depth stories on the popularity of sampling in hip-hop in 2023 and the state of hip-hop touring, and the best moments of hip-hop's year-long 50th anniversary celebration.