Every week, Lil Keed logs onto Instagram and spends countless hours giving fans glimpses of him recording and playing unreleased music. Fans with Young Thug avatars flood the comments with fire and snake emojis, then subsequently rip the clip and pass the snippet around social media. Since Keed emerged with his promising but ultimately undercooked 2018 mixtape Keed Talk to ’Em, the public’s relationship with the 21-year-old has been mainly through snippets. It’s a release strategy that helps rappers maintain relevance year-round and for some, like the leaked snippets of Playboi Carti, it is often the only way we experience their music. In recent months, Lil Keed has been essentially creating his debut album Long Live Mexico in real time on Instagram, building on melodies and deliveries indebted, as always, to Young Thug.
Until late last year, Lil Keed was little more than a serviceable, occasionally special, replacement Thug. Understandable, given that Keed grew up idolizing and mimicking Thug in the same Cleveland Avenue apartments in which both were raised. But on Long Live Mexico, Keed uses elements of Thug’s versatile set of flows as a foundation to build off of, specifically the high-pitched, mush-mouthed delivery. One of the album’s best tracks, “Million Dollar Mansion,” finds both rappers side by side over an airy Pi’erre Bourne beat that belongs in a dystopian sci-fi flick. Thug’s flow is squeaky-high and eccentric, while Keed’s is at a similar pitch but more subtle, eliminating Thug‘s quirkiness. Those differences don’t make Keed sound better or worse in comparison to his mentor; instead, he finally emerges as his own entity.
Despite the daunting 20-track length, Lil Keed’s delivery is hardly ever tiring. His ability to easily change pace makes it appear like he’s trading bars with a guest, like on the first verse of “Real Hood Baby” as he raps about the designer brands in his wardrobe. “Just a Dream” adds a whispery touch to his melody, despite his controversial anti-hug stance: “Yeah, I go savage mode, ho, fuck your hugs.” His hypnotic vocals make the album breeze by, though a portion of the credit belongs to his ear for selecting dreamy production. On “Snake,” the PyrexTurnMeUp and CuBeatz guitar instrumental is soothing, while Keed sounds like he recorded his verse after inhaling helium. But the album’s best beat is by JetsonMade, who pairs a mellow flute with his signature distorted bass on “Oh My God.” It’s also one of Keed’s strongest lyrical outings: “She like them Percocet things because of me/Got drugs heal pain for me/Told her drugs heal pain, but don’t OD,” he says, taking an introspective look at his own habits.
The perennial downfall of an hour-long album is the filler, the ones that could be left off. The “Make U Proud” instrumental sounds like a demo version of Omarion’s “Post to Be” and “Proud of Me” is similarly outdated, which makes sense given it’s a leftover 2015 Young Thug leaked snippet that Keed repackaged. But the one miraculous part about “Proud of Me”—and Long Live Mexico—is that now when Keed digs through Thug’s past for inspiration, he manages to sound like a new artist all his own.
