Hook sucker-punched her way into the world with last year’s Bully, which flipped the controversial Rockstar video game of the same name to introduce the Riverside, California rapper as a cut-throat queen bee with acrylic nails and clout goggles. She came across as the toughest kid in the schoolyard, the one who taunted the other kids into fighting but wasn’t afraid to throw down herself—her rap name evokes a punch to the face as much as a tightly written chorus.
Hook finds a natural partner in Nedarb, who executive-produced Bully and shares the billing with her on Crashed My Car. One of the contemporary rap underground’s most prolific producers, Nedarb is a relentless workhorse and hustler, as skilled at finding new talent as he is at crafting beats. Before he produced, Braden Morgan (his producer tag is his name backwards) played in hardcore bands, and his most influential collaborations have been with the members of the emo rap outfit Goth Boi Clique. Ned’s most famous beat is an emotional banger that flips a Microphones song, but his music resists being simplified as “SoundCloud rap”—he’s collaborated with artists as varied as Open Mike Eagle and Alice Glass. He pulls equally from alternative rock, experimental electronic music, and various strains of California rap, but the end result is more mutation than mash-up, synthesizing disparate sources into a distinct and singular sound.
Ned was born in Alberta, Canada, but he lives in Los Angeles, and his production for Hook is distinctly West Coast. These beats are heavy and hyphy, a hard-hitting mix of 808s and deep bass designed to make trunks resound and asses shake. The album’s title offers a sonic motif across 10 tracks—wailing sirens, shattered windshields, frenetic voicemail messages—that keeps the listener on a perpetual razor’s edge.
Hook’s Riverside homebase is located in California’s Inland Empire, an area she describes as “nothing.” As she puts it in an interview with The Fader, “the IE” revolves around house parties, not shows: “If you go to a party in the IE, you’re going to hear a lot of ratchet shit, a little bit a hyphy, a lot of L.A. shit. Basically a lot of shaking your ass music.” That Inland Empire influence spills out of Crashed My Car; the album feels like a house party at its peak, threatening to get shut down at any moment. Hook and Nedarb ride that dangerous line when you’re still having a great time but can sense the paranoia starting to creep in, as the clock counts down on one of your neighbors inevitably calling the cops.
Hook’s delivery is staccato and precise, with little distinction between verse and chorus—as her name implies, her bars are all hook, no filler. Her flow is flanked by overdubs and ad-libs, a cacophonous clone army of chattering voices that mimics the imitators she calls out on “Wanna Be”: “I’m who your sister wanna be/That’s not Hook, she a wannabe.” Up front, she’s confident and calculated, but her vocal parts on the edges sound exasperated, overrun with anxiety and gasping for breath. When she ends “Yes Man” just chanting the words “shit” and “fucking ow” over and over again, it sounds not like a Playboi Carti-esque affectation but like somebody going through a crisis.
The features on Bully felt like overhearing an after-school shit-talking session with the kids you weren’t cool enough to hang with; Hook’s guests on Crashed My Car mostly serve to make her look better. Professional shitposter Zack Fox shows up on the title track for a serviceable, punchline-heavy verse that’s overshadowed by Hook’s more distinctive delivery. When she makes jokes, by comparison, they’re more subdued and don’t sound like rough drafts of tweets—“She said she wanna meet up around noon/But I don’t fuck with 12, so I told her 2.” Minnesota’s Lerado lends a spaced-out drawl to “Awesome,” and LA’s Almighty Suspect appears on “Onion” with a flow as unbridled as Hook’s is bottled. “Onion” sounds like something Sada Baby would spit over, but Sada raps like he’s in a shouting match with the instrumental — Hook is equal parts honey and vinegar, and only needs a whisper to command a beat to do her bidding. Like a car crash or the biggest bully in school, Hook demands you give her your attention—if you don’t, she just might drag you on her next tape.
