In the last three months, the Detroit rap trio BabyTron, StanWill, and TrDee (collectively known as The Shittyboyz) have emerged with punchline-heavy, ahead-of-the-beat raps in which they send their girlfriends into department stores with stolen credit cards and ruin the credit of grannies so they can punch themselves a gift from Saks Fifth. The production should be classified as “breakdancing on cardboard type beats”; their producers flip ’80s dance pop reminiscent of the Beverly Hills Cop theme song into typical funky Detroit instrumentals.
The most polished of the trio is ShittyBoyz BabyTron, a 19-year-old that rocks a bowl haircut like a Disney Channel star, wears throwback NBA jerseys like a frat boy at a music festival, and raps confidently about the scams that have supported him since the days when he used to keep a credit-card chip reader in his high school gym locker room.
In August, the ShittyBoyz stumbled into a small but fervent following. The trio were beneficiaries of the rise of the 18-year-old Teejayx6, who made Detroit the epicenter for raps about IP strength and stolen social security numbers this past summer. BabyTron’s debut solo mixtape, Bin Reaper, arrives at a moment that’ll decide if the ShittyBoyz gimmick has legs or if it’s bound to get lost in the internet cycle.
Bin Reaper is simple, and BabyTron doesn’t overthink the situation: 13 songs of pop culture-referencing punchlines and ’80s video game arcade beats. Sometimes he’ll compare his credit card punching to an anime like One Punch Man; he’ll rap over a sample of Undertaker’s WWE theme song. At one point, he compares his criminal record, which probably has him on a government watch list, to NBA players like Zion Williamson, Clint Capela, and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Detroit superproducer Helluva laces BabyTron with grooves that sound direct from a Richard Simmons workout video. “Jesus Shuttlesworth” and “Scampire” are maybe the mixtape’s two best tracks; unsurprisingly, they’re both just BabyTron shit-talk and funky Helluva flips. BabyTron even holds his own when he tackles a more typical Detroit beat. “Now I punch shit like Jean-Claude Van Damme,” he brags on “Pro Surfers,” going toe-toe with Michigan punchline savant Rio Da Yung OG.
By the time Bin Reaper reaches its final track, some of the flips are tired, especially when left in less capable hands than Helluva’s (See: “Special Thanks” and “Top Ten”). But the appeal of BabyTron’s music, like so much of Detroit rap, is that it feels like it was made in a bubble. Take any song on Bin Reaper, adjust the pop-culture references, and tell somebody unfamiliar with the ShittyBoyz that it was made in 2000, or 2010, or 2019, they would believe you. BabyTron has a gimmick and he’s aware of it. But it’s a good gimmick, and sometimes in rap, that’s all you need.
