If you were hoping that the filthy, horny, sex-fueled shenanigans of Sexyy Red would forever be stuck in the summer of 2023, I have bad news for you. She’s got another one with In Sexyy We Trust. Sure, last year’s Hood Hottest Princess (damn-near all bangers) can’t be replicated, as part of the appeal was getting caught off guard and going from Oh, that song where she goes “My bootyhole is brown” is funny to Hold up, did she just drop one of the great rap mixtapes of the year? basically overnight. It was such a polarizing sensation that I wouldn’t have been surprised if her follow-up scaled up too much, in a quest to prove that Hood Hottest Princess wasn’t a flash in the pan. But thankfully, Sexyy does not give a fuck. You’re gonna’ get homages to Gucci Mane and Chief Keef, graphic sex jokes and puns, and vulgar-ass quotables required to be shouted anytime you have a drop of alcohol in your system.
About half of the tracks on In Sexyy We Trust should be summer anthems. “She’s Back” is a full-throttle DJ set cheat code; if it was up to me I would ban Rihanna’s “Birthday Cake” from being the soundtrack of the cake-cutting and replace it with Sexyy’s “It’s My Birthday.” The St. Louis native has a flair for these fun and rowdy songs that feel nostalgic for Southern and Midwest rap of the past without being pure pastiche. A good example of that is the lead single “Get It Sexyy,” where she howls a few Keef-inspired ad-libs and describes her physical attributes with more detail than an NFL draft scout, all in a hummable singsongy flow. Another is “Sexyy Love Money,” in which her verse starts off hot with an explosive, Waka Flocka-coded opening line (“Got my money up, bitch, I can’t act right”) and doesn’t let up. Her energy is cool yet so contagious that even a buzzkill guest appearance by Chicago drill newcomer VonOff1700 and a couple of punchline clunkers by her (“Higher than a motherfucker, eyes lookin’ like ching-chi”) don’t ruin the exquisite paycheck-hitting-your-bank-account-on-a-holiday-weekend vibe.
Fame (going on tour with Drake, photo-ops with Lana Del Rey) hasn’t stopped Sexyy from saying whatever she wants. “Let’s go half on a baby, shoot the club up,” she raps casually on “Boss Me up,” as if she’s talking about splitting the bill at Applebee’s. On the cranked-up “Ova Bad” she blurts out the visual, “Drop and hit some splits, bitch, I wanna see that cameltoe.” Sometimes, though, the shock value can be a little try-hard. For one, the sexual moans on the chorus of “Outside,” the Brazilian funk-infused dud, are just annoying. Then, her duet with Lil Baby “Lick Me” wants to be freaky so bad, but they have such little chemistry that it’s more uncomfortable than sexy.
But Sexyy Red’s worst chemistry is actually with Drake. Last year on Drake’s For All the Dogs, she stole the show with her New Orleans bounce-esque flow on “Rich Baby Daddy,” though he brought nothing to the table. Now on “U My Everything” he’s doing too much. It’s a silly, kind of sweet love song, her cracking melodies making it feel so earnest until Drake appears and instantly steamrolls the lovey-dovey mood by switching the soulful bounce to Metro Boomin’s A.I.-sampling (yawn) Drake-diss “BBL Drizzy.” It’s a troll-job, a way of signaling to Metro that he is unbothered. I do not care. Please, enough of this mid-life crisis rap beef, now it’s taking away the attention from Sexyy Red on a Sexyy Red mixtape, the worst thing you could do.
Sexyy doesn’t need any of that fuss as long as she has her horndog bars and a thumping beat. Tay Keith’s instrumentals are nothing special, blending early 2010s ATL with modern Memphis bounce, but do a decent job of just giving her a blank, danceable canvas to run wild. And she does: From the stripped-down, trash-talking “Fake Jammin’” to the rattling “Awesome Jawsome,” where she comes up with countless different ways to get across that she’s getting head: “I’m on my period, it’s blood drippin’ down his face.” It would be kind of gross if it wasn’t funny, if she didn’t have so much personality, if I didn’t want to rap along. (OK, it still is kind of gross.) She’s no fad, she’s a rap star.
