A few weeks after the news that Insecure was entering its fifth and final season, Issa Rae is back with another show. HBO Max has ordered an eight-episode order to a new half-hour series from her titled Rap Sh*t for now. The show will follow two estranged high school friends from Miami who reunite to form a rap group.
Central Park and Insecure’s Syreeta Singleton will serve as the showrunner. Issa Rae will pen the pilot. Black Lady Sketch Show’s Montreal McKay, Insecure’s Jonathan Berry, and Russian Doll’s Dave Becky will serve as executive producers alongside Singleton and Rae. Casting is currently underway, and production is set to start this summer.
Hip hop duo Yung Miami and JT of City Girls, whose music has been included in past seasons of Insecure, will also serve as executive producers—joining them as executive producers are Kevin “Coach K” Lee and Pierre “P” Thomas for Quality Control Films and Sara Rastogi for HOORAE. Radio, Issa Rae’s audio content company, will handle music supervision for the series.
Rap Sh*t was part of three high-profile projects announced for HBO Max in 2019 when the service was first publicized at WarnerMedia’s streaming presentation. Mindy Kaling’s Sex Lives of College Girls has also moved forward to series, with Pauline Chalamet, Amrit Kaur, Reneé Rapp, and Alyah Chanelle Scott all set to star.
The most recent season of Insecure earned Issa Rae a best comedy series Emmy nomination. Even before the announcement of its finale season, Rae has been relatively busy. She's also an executive producer of two other HBO projects: A Black Lady Sketch Show and the documentary Seen & Heard, about the history of Black representation on television. In addition to all of this, Rae is developing a TV adaptation of the podcast Nice White Parents with Adam McKay and a show about backyard wrestling with Dwayne Johnson.
