Cry Baby

The Roast

“Vince Staples has spent a decade being the smartest man in whatever room rap put him in, so naturally his idea of a victory lap after leaving Def Jam is handing back the beats and picking a fight with a live drummer. Cry Baby trades the icy minimalism of Dark Times and the surveillance-funk of FM! for guitar, bass, and drums, ten tracks of rap rock and post-punk fury released on his own Section Eight Arthouse imprint through Loma Vista. And here is the cynical part: it mostly works, which is almost annoying. 'Go! Go! Gorilla' and 'The Running Man' snarl like a man who finally read the fine print on his old contracts, 'Only In America' does the state-of-the-nation address without the TED Talk smugness that sinks lesser rappers, and 'Blackberry Marmalade' opens the record like a post-punk anxiety dream. The catch is that Vince raps over rock the way a brilliant essayist reads aloud, precise, deadpan, occasionally swallowed whole by the noise he commissioned. A few of these songs mistake distortion for development, and the back half sags where the front half sprints. Still, after Big Fish Theory proved he pivots better than most artists progress, Cry Baby is the rare midcareer reinvention that sounds like conviction rather than a mood board.”

The Bright Side

What genuinely works is the conviction. Staples does not cosplay punk, he weaponizes it. The live band gives his deadpan delivery real stakes, the writing on faith, Blackness, and the American grind is his sharpest since Summertime '06, and independence has clearly loosened something in him. 'Only In America' and 'The Running Man' are the sound of a great writer finding a new room to be furious in, and the whole record runs a lean ten tracks with no filler features. That discipline is rarer than the genre swap.

Hardest Sneer

“Vince made a punk record so dry it makes actual punks sound like theater kids. The only thing crying on Cry Baby is every rapper who attempted this pivot and ended up fronting a Limp Bizkit tribute act.”

Issues (3)