Throughout his career, Vince Staples has established himself as one of the most singular and outspoken voices in hip-hop. He never shies away from a shift in sound or from speaking his mind, whether in the media, his music, or on his television show, making him one of the most captivating artists of the last 15 years.Throughout his most recent trilogy of albums, Staples looked inward, sharing some of his most personal music to date, reflecting on his life, his hometown and his growth. With his latest LP Cry Baby, Staples is now looking outward and veering into a new sonic direction, leaning almost completely on live rock instrumentation as he sets his sights on the current social and political climate in America.Opener "Blackberry Marmalade" kicks the album off with a bang, setting the tone from its opening lines: "Empires built on bloodstained ground / Kanye West, I hope they all fall down." It's immediately clear that Staples is fed up with the powers that be and the state they've left America in. As he addresses systemic racism and the fear of being murdered for the colour of his skin, Staples approaches the plucky bass line and steady drums with a subdued aggression, scathing in his critiques towards the perpetrators of this prejudiced system."Cotton" is not just an album highlight, but one of the most impressively written songs in Staples's catalogue to date. He uses cotton as a layered allegory to represent two aspects of music and its place in his life: firstly, as something spiritual or therapeutic; secondly, as a metaphor for his art being consumed, another crop for the oppressors' picking. It's an incredibly dense track, exploring Black trauma and the art that comes from the associated pain being exploited for the entertainment of those who perpetuate the systems that keep systemic racism rampant."Go! Go! Gorilla" and "The Big Bad Wolf" are another pair of highlights, both of which address police brutality and the racist practices of law enforcement in the US. The former is an inquisitive meditation on the relationship between the police and people of colour, with Staples asking questions — "Why do I live in fear of a gun and a badge?" and "Who can I trust when I need help?" — whilst touching on the hypocrisy and double standards in the criminal punishment of the poor versus the wealthy."The Big Bad Wolf" is the most conventional-sounding song on the LP, a scratched and looped sample of Slick Rick's "Children's Story" woven into an instrumental that feels very Beastie Boys-adjacent serving as the hook. This track approaches police brutality in a more contemplative and reactionary manner: in lieu of questioning who he can trust if not the police, Staples wonders how people would react or retaliate if/when the titular villain huffs and puffs and "blows down" their loved ones.While nothing particularly complex or thrashy enough to be jarring, the instrumental soundscape of Cry Baby is an incredibly fitting framework. If anything, the punchier instrumentation (notably from a musical tradition with Black roots, long commodified by white opportunists) leaves enough space for Vince's voice and lyrics to remain centre stage in spite of the new and unexpected sound. It's a smart approach to such a drastically different direction, making it both easier to digest and focus on the content of the rapper's words.While the musical backdrop of this record leans toward post-punk, it's clear that Staples's oft-cited love for Joy Division isn't much of an influence here. The spiritual fibre of the album is much more akin to Gil Scott-Heron's Piece of a Man, Nina Simone in Concert, or even Sly & The Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On; deeply rooted in the Black experience, this is an undeniably political record that directly calls for revolution — or, at the very least, a drastic reassessment of America, its values and the direction in which it's headed.With Cry Baby, Vince Staples has taken a huge swing. Making his first independent album on his own Section Eight Arthouse imprint under Loma Vista an unapologetic critique of America and its shortcomings, it's clear that Staples feels more called than ever to express the emotional weight of living in a country mired by division and racial turmoil as a Black man, and to continuously reevaluate his artist-audience relationship to the same population. This may be something different than what fans wanted or expected, but it's a project full of things that undoubtedly need to be said and heard.
Wavelength
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