Babyfxce E has traditionally played the straight man in the dynamic Flint, Michigan, street-rap scene: Surrounded by devilishly cartoonish rappers who communicate through depraved growls (Rio Da Yung OG and RMC Mike) and piercing quips (YN Jay and BFB Da Packman), Babyfxce’s silky, slick-talking register is a magnetic outlier. In the early stages of his career, as he was still figuring out how to deliver his bars, his relaxed delivery registered as buttoned up, which lowered the potential ceiling on his punchlines—take the 2022 cut “No Patience” with RMC Mike, where the juxtaposition made it feel like the younger rapper was reading off his hand in the studio. But recently, Babyfxce has learned to use that innate charm as a versatile weapon. The maturation was evident on his stellar M Block tape from 2025, where he coolly switched roles between threatening hustler and sordid spitter. His latest album, Da Realest, while decidedly narrower in scope, offers further proof of Babyfxce’s growth into one of Flint’s hardest hitmakers. His bars are packed tight with jokes and an unwieldy personality, bursting with vocal quirks and tricks that show a rapper growing into his most confident self.
Babyfxce’s previous album was more like a smorgasbord, doling out dirty talk over thumping twerk-drill and groovy funk beats. Da Realest’s production is much closer to recreating the atmosphere that ruled Flint’s airwaves and blocks this past decade. It’s not particularly inventive—“What Bag I’m In” probably came from a folder on Enrgy’s laptop labeled “BeatsForRMCMike_2020”; the droning “ILRB” saps the energy considerably; and the haunted, cinematic blaring on “ProdbyFxce” feels ripped straight from a 2010s Christopher Nolan and Hans Zimmer score. But for the most part, the down-the-middle production choices seem especially tailored to helping Babyfxce get to his fastball, early and often. Booming basslines that threaten to blow speakers collide with blistering piano progressions (“Da Realest in It”), and souped-up, mutated versions of cartoon chase soundtracks (“Say You Trippin” and “Trackhawk”) exist primarily to raise the kinetic energy, without being all that unique.
Yet the anonymous nature of Da Realest’s production is less of a roadblock for Babyfxce now than it was, say, three years ago on The X Tape. Ridiculous one-liners flow out of him in accordance with his city’s penchant for hilarious threats and brags, a skill that he’s had from the jump (“Gang was finna rob him, I said, ‘Naw, wait until his taxes come,’” he spits on “Trackhawk”). But Da Realest peaks when he turns his verses into self-contained worlds, resting on an idea to let the scene build out for multiple lines. You can practically see him yelling at his buddy when he raps, “Just spent four hundred on some drank and I spilled it/Fuck, uh/Hold on, what you gettin’ a towel for? Nigga, that’s still some good,” on the closing “Cut the Block Off.” Even punchlines that feel only tangentially related bleed into each other to paint a full, albeit absurd, picture in a way he hasn’t before. Take “Leg On Me,” where he parlays an anecdote about chugging drank in the TSA line into hopping on a Delta flight and eating fried chicken in first class, then into a grisly joke about torturing an opp by force-feeding him five Popeyes biscuits—a daisy chain of vivid images that grows in intensity with each gruesome syllable.
The spontaneity running through Da Realest patches over the mundane stretches. Sure, some of the beats are nameless or rote (I regret to inform you that the SWV sample on “She So Crazy” feels drowsy). But what keeps the feeling alive are the asides that Babyfxce veers off into, and the way that he’ll throw his voice around the track like he’s in the middle of a ventriloquist act, an expectation that’s set and maintained by his jolting delivery on the opening track. It’s a veteran move frequently used by Flint’s best rappers, and testament to how he’s willingly stepped into a free-wheeling gunslinger’s mentality. Now when he spits, “When I rap, I punch in, I don’t do no writin’,” on “Real Flex,” it’s less of a tired boast and more of a mantra, one that could even be pasted above the studio door as a constant reminder of the mode he strives for.
Da Realest’s standout, “Die Bout It,” where Babyfxce and Rio trade hefty verses for nearly four minutes, is the strongest evidence of the budding star’s improvement. Rio’s staunch griminess, dreaming of whacking his brother and wanting to cut his nephew’s tongue for snitching, drags Fxce out into the open sea. On the other side, Babyfxce treads water with methodical comedic choices: changing his register to a gravelly bass and interjecting scoffs before bragging about his numerous sexual encounters. A more timid, less assured version of himself would have played it safe next to his city’s brightest star—now, it’s becoming more apparent with every bar that he belongs in the same stratosphere.
