House Money
Baby Keem rolls the dice with Ca$ino
Listening to Ca$ino, Baby Keem’s first release since 2021’s The Melodic Blue, I’m most struck by the newly chameleonic nature of his voice. The high octave chirp that brought him to fame is present throughout, but it’s joined at times by a deeper register that recalls no one more than Andre 3000. At other moments, you’re unsure if the elastic growls you’re hearing are coming from him or his cousin Kendrick Lamar.
With their history of collaboration and Keem’s behind-the-scenes role as a producer and songwriter for other artists, it’s possible that those flows that we associate with Kendrick might have actually originated with Keem in the first place. Such is the caliber of Keem’s artistry.
"I'm a genre bender and I'm comin' out a broken home"
Breaking out to a larger audience at the age of nineteen with his electric 2019 mixtape Die for my Bitch before his relation to Lamar was publicly known, Keem came off like a SoundCloud rapper with a strange sense of humour. One song’s chorus was just him repeating “I am 50 Cent” over and over again. But his self-produced tracks were bombastic and his songs were stickier than his peers.
In the years that followed, he became the melodic heart behind some of his cousin’s catchiest moments (he likely came up with the “Ugh, you ugly as fuck” chorus for Lamar’s “N95”) and rose to greater notoriety after a well-received debut album and a string of collaborative tracks together.
On Ca$ino, Keem displays a newfound seriousness. We learn about his acrimonious relationship with his mother, the passing of his grandma, and the treacherous upbringing he struggled to escape in the “dirty desert” a.k.a. Las Vegas. Where Keem’s music was once a sumptuous exercise in swag over substance, chants over channeling, it is now an exhibition of measured emotional maturity.
While it’s tempting to point to Keem having a front seat to his superstar cousin’s ascendence as being the trigger for his newly erudite output, I’m reluctant to go there. Judging by his appearances on the album, Kendrick’s presence doesn’t actually elevate the project. While every twist and turn in Keem’s flows has me on the edge of my seat, Kendrick’s moments are serviceable at best and, in the case of his chorus on “House Money,” an unwelcome distraction.
That’s not to say Keem isn’t studying the greats. “I am not a Lyricist” and “Highway 95 pt.2” borrow from the low slung atmospheric funk of OutKast’s ATLiens. “Birds & the Bees” beats Vince Staples at his own game over an otherworldly Feist sample. Much of Ca$ino sees Keem taking cues from prime Kanye West: a rapper-producer merging vulnerability with humour over a chorus of chipmunk vocal samples and wordless background chants.
The Donda sessions that he contributed to must have had an impact on him. The first section of “Circus Circus Free$tyle” recalls West’s “Freestyle 4,” but Keem turns the song into a showcase for his versatility by rolling out two beat switches, countless different flows, and a polarizing line about experiencing negative side effects from the vaccine (also very Ye, tbh).
“I am not a lyricist” into “$ex Appeal” in particular is an inspired bit of sequencing: the former is an exercise in introspective hip-hop and spoken word poetry that analyzes the vices he witnessed coming of age in Sin City, while the latter is a trunk-rattling flip of Sexual Harassment’s “I Need A Freak” with Too $hort chiming in as a pimped-out player archetype.
“$ex Appeal” is an album highlight that exemplifies Keem’s most valuable quality: bravery. He struts onto this track doing his best Rick James impression, a detour that shouldn’t work. His full commitment to the bit here and on the N.E.R.D-esque “Dramatic Girl” is commendable and infectious.
I can’t imagine many rappers would have the chutzpah to breathily whisper about having “too much sex appeal” on a hook, especially in light of the potential Ying Yang Twinz comparisons. Then again, most artists wouldn’t go “booga wooga ooga ooga waga waga wah” like a caveman on a track either. The tone of Keem’s music has certainly matured, but happily, he still manages to never take himself too seriously along the way.
Top Tracks: $ex Appeal, Birds & the Bees, Circus Circus Free$tyle, Dramatic Girl
ICYMI
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Loved it, Rollie <3