Nike might’ve fired GloRilla for posting videos turning up to Beyoncé with her best friend, but where the sports brand saw a nuisance, millions of others saw a star. The brazen optimism it takes to turn a retail shift into a virtual concert is just part of what makes the 22-year-old rapper so enticing. Raised in Memphis, Glo was a choir girl who got into mischief with rowdy kids in her neighborhood. Off the heels of the crunk anthem “F.N.F. (Let’s Go)” and Cardi B-assisted throat punch “Tomorrow 2,” the patron saint of newly single women and rabble-rousers turns lemons into mace and gold chains on her debut EP.
Anyways, Life’s Great… is a crash course on faith, which must feel like a birthright for someone named Gloria Hallelujah. “Every day the sun won’t shine/But that’s why I love tomorrows,” she affirms like a preacher. Mary J. Blige, the prophet of divorce anthems, couldn’t help but rap the lyrics to Glo’s debut single. Written during a 60-day man cleanse, “F.N.F.” was conceived from heartbreak and delivered by a blunt. You get the sense that even if her credit score dipped to the 300s, and she had just walked in on the love of her life cheating, and totaled her car all in the span of 24 hours, she would still find a silver lining: “Pussy good, check!”
While people fervently pit female rappers against each other, GloRilla has emerged as a diplomat. Camaraderie is front and center in her music videos, live performances, and collaborations. It’s not a Glo production without a cameo from her best friend and day-one collaborator Gloss Up. Her friends even accompanied her when she got signed to her label, chanting her song on Yo Gotti’s private jet like they were also getting signed. She talks about falling out with her girlfriends with unparalleled grief: “So many hoes done switched on me I’m starting to hate the friend word/Calling me dat shit is like da white folks saying da N-word.” Fellow Memphian Niki Pooh’s verse on “Get That Money” is a ladies-know-your-worth shoulder grab: “If you can ask for ass then I can ask you for ya cheese/Now come on sista sis let’s keep it real.” North and the South collide on “Tomorrow 2” as Cardi lacerates and Glo rubs salt in the open wound: “Fake bitch, that’s why my friend fucked on your nigga/Both you bitches pussy, I think y’all should scissor,” the Bronx native hisses. At times Cardi dominates the track, but Glo remains an energizing host.
As someone who managed to make a children’s book sound like a ransom note, she’s a gangsta rapper at her core. She walks the path paved by Three 6 Mafia’s Gangsta Boo and La Chat—two women who infused ’90s Southern rap with androgynous raunch. Glo’s stomping delivery over floor-rumbling drums, pianos fit for the Undertaker, and crisp snares could provoke the meekest of souls to smash car windows. But beneath her infectious toothy grin, there’s pain. “When they treat you like the strongest it make you the weakest,” she muses over sentimental keys. “If I ever asked for help that mean I really need it.” Her abortion, life in poverty, and the domestic abuse she’s witnessed all factor into her music and make the cathartic element of “F.N.F.” that much more potent. Glo’s off-the-cuff rant about betrayal over “No More Love”’s bed of plaintive R&B heightens the despondency, although her voice almost reaches a bark. Closing the album with a call from an incarcerated loved one, she’s jovial as he showers her in praise. Then the automated “one minute remaining” disrupts their intimate conversation, but they continue to laugh despite the looming reminder of the forces working against them.
In just two singles, a handful of collabs (including link-ups with Gloss Up, Aleza, Slimeroni, and K Carbon), and now an EP, Glo broadened rap’s palette with her distinct husky voice, gritty bars, and party-starting magnetism. A handful of these songs exhibit similar instrumentals and flow templates, but the rock-inflected “No More Love” and poppy “Get That Money” hint at a budding versatility. Lyrically, she’s agile and disarming: “Poppin’ shit, you would think I went to school for chiropractin’.” Decorum is miserable. GloRilla is merciless.
