The second and final season of the Issa Rae-created series premiered on Max in November 2023.
A month after season 2 of Rap Sh!t ended on Max, the streamer has decided not to renew the comedy series for a third season.
The highly anticipated sophomore season of the Issa Rae series was originally scheduled to premiere on Aug. 10, 2023, but was pushed back to November in the wake of SAG-AFTRA officially going on strike last summer and joining the writers already on the picket line after negotiations between the actors' union and major Hollywood studios and streamers fell through. The move marked the first time in 63 years that Hollywood's writers and actors have joined in a strike together.
The postponement was made with the hope of giving the creative team and cast a chance to promote the new season, but the strike didn't officially end until Dec. 5, 2023, with season 2 already in progress.
"We are extremely grateful to Issa Rae for creating Rap Sh!t, a one-of-a-kind comedy with compelling social commentary that reached viewers in a way only Issa's talents can accomplish," a Max spokesperson said in a statement. "A huge thank you to Issa, showrunner Syreeta Singleton and the teams at Hoorae and 3 Arts Entertainment for introducing us to Shawna and Mia, a duo whose journey fans have been invested in and who they have continued to root for through everything. We'll never get 'Seduce and Scheme' out of our heads and we wouldn't have it any other way."
The Max Original series follows two estranged high school friends from Miami, Shawna (Aida Osman) and Mia (KaMillion), who reunite to form a rap group. The concept was developed from Rae’s original Insecure script and aims to highlight the challenges women face trying to break into the male-dominated hip-hop industry.
Jonica Booth, Devon Terrell, Daniel Augustin and RJ Cyler also starred in the series.
Insecure's Syreeta Singleton served as showrunner and executive producer, with Rae and Singleton executive producing alongside Hoorae's Montrel McKay of A Black Lady Sketch Show, Jonathan Berry of Insecure, and 3 Arts' Dave Becky of Russian Doll.
Hip-hop duo Yung Miami and JT of the City Girls also served as co-executive producers, and Rae's go-to audio content company, Raedio, handled music supervision for the series.
Ahead of the premiere, Rae and Singleton chatted with ET about what fans can expect in the new installment, confessing that it was still hard to grasp the show's rapid rise among fans.
"It's really exciting, and it's encouraging 'cause it's always just us talking about it over and over, you know? So, sometimes it's a surprise when people are like, 'I love that show!' and I'm like, 'Oh my God, you do?' Because I know we've cried over it and we, like, fought over it, we bled, you know what I mean? And so for it to resonate with people, it feels so good. It makes it feel meaningful," the showrunner gushed.
The series draws experiences from those in the writers' room, with Rae and Singleton sharing how they've related their life experiences for the fictional duo.
"One of my things was like, when something is announced, the pressure to live up to that that made me be like, 'I don't want no one else in what I'm doing,' cause if you have a project that gets announced, then all of a sudden it falls apart," Rae noted. "Then it's just like, people are constantly asking what happened with this. These girls are in a position where the outside world sees what they're doing, and they don't know the circumstances of it. So, you have to pretend like it's this great thing... when in silence, you might be like, 'This is nothing that I wanted. This is not my dream, this is not the dream that I imagined.'"
Both seasons of Rap Sh!t are still available to stream on Max.
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