Put bbymutha’s catalog on shuffle and get shrewd lessons on lousy lovers, tips for freaky sexcapades, and uplifting quotes for your mirror Post-its. In 2017, the video for her song “Rules” catapulted her to underground fame right from its breathless opening line: “You can’t give your pussy to a nigga who not used to getting pussy ’cause that pussy gon’ be everybody business.” Her unsparing candor resonated, earning her a cosign from Björk and a tour opening for Earl Sweatshirt. But for bbymutha, the way some of her early music was received felt at odds with what she intended. Speaking on “Rules” in a recent interview, she decried it as a “bad memory,” reflecting, as have other artists before her, on the paradox of Black pain being received as party music: “People really want you to turn up to your trauma with them.”
On her latest album, sleep paralysis, she insists on setting the terms of the turn up. Much has changed since she made “Rules.” She’s moved up from her grandma’s crumbling house in Chattanooga to her own place in Atlanta. And for the first time she’s released a record with the backing of a label, the New York-based indie outfit True Panther. sleep paralysis is a freewheeling and exuberant ride through grimy electronic music and dark, bass-heavy Southern rap—and it’s some of the most fun music she’s made to date.
She wrote the album in London, in between tour stops, and half the tracks echo sounds heard on British dancefloors, from skittering drum’n’bass to spooky dancehall. The oozing bassline and driving breakbeats of “Piss!” are busy enough to stand alone as an instrumental. But rather than get swallowed by the production (co-helmed by East London rapper and singer LYAM), bbymutha slides into the pockets of the beat, using her voice more like an instrument. It’s a weird and exciting start that gets weirder with the industrial booty bass of “head x shoulders.” Over buoyant 808s coated in the kind of instrumental debris that recalls the best of M.I.A., bbymutha, who turned a slight into her stage name, continues her mission of reappropriation by puffing up her chest to say she’s “proud to be a bastard.” The standout of her UK sojourn is “Lines,” a big-beat banger that uses a cocaine metaphor (“He wanna cut me like the lines on the dresser”) to confront a lover who’s not walking the walk.
But on the chaotic “Tony Hawk,” bbymutha’s own words get lost and her voice feels too much like an ornament in the production. So it’s refreshing to hear her get back to familiar territory in the album’s second half, where her lyrics shine and her growth as a rapper is clear. Mutant Academy’s resident producer Foisey channels Project Pat on “ghostface,” a menacing highlight that bleeds with passion as bbymutha rails against her opps, threatening to jump them with her kids. “final girl” plays with pacing and internal rhymes (“I watch bitches giggle, be tickled by my misfortune/I pull up and give abortions, might dabble in some extortion”) over a trap beat from the netherworld. On “Mutha Massacre” she taps into Tennessee horrorcore, painting a disturbingly vivid image of dragging a dead man by his genitalia. As fun as it is to hear her flex different styles, she hasn’t exhausted the potential of her Southern rap roots.
Vulnerability can be empowering but it can also be exploited; it’s tempting to believe that keeping things in is the only safe choice. On closing track “go!,” bbymutha rejects that defensive posture, choosing to open up about romantic attachment that slips into possessiveness and neediness. This music draws on a different kind of vulnerability: Where “Rules” was founded in the regret of a failed relationship, “go!” channels in the reckless abandon of a happy one. Bbymutha may not be able to control how her art is received, but she’s still willing to take the risk of disclosure. This time, she shows us that good, honest music doesn’t have to come from bad memories; there’s gold to be mined from happy ones too.
