Stop me if you think you've heard this one before: up-and-coming rapper teams with up-and-coming label, releases shit-hot single with big co-signer, fumbles around for two hype-stifling years on clunker of a debut, is now seemingly poised to repeat the cycle all over again. So has been the short, frustrating story of Chicago MC Kid Sister, whose potential as a bona fide party-rocker on "Pro Nails" gave way to 2009's oft-delayed Ultraviolet, a record of party-pop pablum crammed into a thin, day-glo colored shell. Ultraviolet clearly encouraged Kid Sister to reevaluate her career, as she remained somewhat quiet until last January, when she offered up the vaguely Diplo-vian, world-party vibing Kiss Kiss Kiss freebie mixtape. Now there's Kiss & Tell, a four-track EP that aims to reestablish Kid Sister as the brash, brazen rap star she hinted at becoming out of the gate.
So it's kind of a shame that, at a time when the demand for brash, brazen female voices in hip-hop seems to be at an encouraging high, Kid Sister has delivered another stop-gap that highlights her inability recapture or recontextualize her style or persona as a mic-rocking diva worthy of your undivided attention. Instead, Kiss & Tell is yet another entry in a long line of teases that seems to be an exercise in obligation rather than anticipation, with generic rhymes, little hook appeal and only four new verses to its credit. Most of it fails to really offer fans anything new-- actually, if it weren't for the fact that you could stream the entire thing for free, it's unclear as to why anyone would bother giving it a go. Clocking in at just under 11 minutes, Kiss & Tell features two new tracks, a polished version of "Click Clack (Show It Off)" from Kiss Kiss Kiss (simplified here as "Cliq Claq"), plus a remix of "Gucci Rag Top" from the same tape.
The good news here is that, in an attempt to supplement her personality and remain current, she locks down two fun features, with Fool's Gold labelmate Danny Brown and lobotomized pop-rap experiment MTV Riff Raff, respectively. "Gucci Rag Top" already had a kind of trap-approved Salt-N-Pepa playfulness to it when Gucci Mane was on it, but he's easily bested here, with Brown wedging in yet another great verse in a year he's already packed with gems (not to mention, the video has now blessed us with this). And on "Hide & Seek" (which features some clean production from Sinden), everyone's favorite former "From G's to Gents" contestant gets to threaten to "pull up on you jokes in my yacht-style boat."
Still, Kid Sister never seems to get with the program. The cartoonish fun of "Hide & Seek" seems lost on her, and new track "Mickey" irritates without the benefit of offering an accompanying YouTube dance craze. But this is all coming from an EP that has done the absolute minimum to keep its name in what I expect to be tightening, specific circles. Obviously Kiss & Tell is priming us for a sophomore full-length (the Neptunes are rumored to be in the fold), but it's hard to tell what it says about the direction she's headed in. Judging from the amount of effort that went into this, we may never get the chance to find out.
