Kari Faux’s music prizes self-possession. The time-wasters (“No Small Talk”), scrubs (“Lie 2 My Face),” and social media hucksters (“On the Internet”) who haunt her songs aren’t just pests—they’re rudderless and confused, unsure of who they are and what they want. Kari can’t relate. Her mixtape Lowkey Superstar gushes with easy confidence, her rapping and singing playful and nonchalant. The deluxe edition brings some guests into her self-assured world.
The original mixtape was born from a trip to London, where Kari bonded with producer Danio through a shared commitment to improvisation and a mutual love of DOOM. Kari has described those sessions as a restorative time that helped her move past the confessional and probing mode of 2019’s Cry 4 Help EP. “This new music is really fun and I’m a fun person,” she said in an interview. “I’m not a sad girl.” In three weeks, they recorded and finished an album and laid the groundwork for what became Lowkey Superstar.Produced in full by Danio, the fun-forward mixtape exudes color and energy, pinballing between personas and styles. On “StickUP!” Kari chases unpaid invoices with exaggerated bloodthirst. “Stickup, bitch!” she ad-libs, sounding more excited to intimidate her debtors than collect the loot. She raps in a menacing whisper on “While God Was Sleeping,” riding the guitar loop with a metered double-time flow straight from Memphis, a connection underscored by the song’s horrorcore tale of “sex magic.”
Kari sounds everything but strained, her writing and performances lively yet effortless. In 38 seconds, “Skit” swings from resignation (“Uphill battle against patriarchy with a plastic knife/That’ll probably be the synopsis of my fucking life”) to pointed insults and delirious sex jokes. And it’s just the prelude to “McGrady,” which channels Tracy McGrady’s slick handles as well as the swaggering rap of Houston, where he spent six NBA seasons. Her nonplussed delivery carries the track, inspired by Kari’s escape from a love triangle. “I had to shake a nigga like McGrady with the Rockets,” she sings breezily, like she’s just completed the world’s most mundane chore. The self-deprecation in the tape’s title is winking; she’s emboldened by her dim spotlight.The deluxe’s guests, remixes, and additional songs nearly double the short tape’s length, but it feels fuller rather than padded, more unruly, and entropic. After a spirited Smino verse, “Mo ‘Liquor” shifts into a Miami bass breakdown that turns the song into a void of low end, snare, and chants. It feels like a Freaknik block party has blipped through a wormhole. “Too Much, Too Fast” also features a spry transition, morphing into a slick electro-funk groove toward the end. “Slow down, bitch!” Kari shouts, following that instruction by bursting into indulgent crooning.
Kari’s singing can be a liability. Her sung verses on “Actors, Rappers & Wrestlers” and “Rapunzel” lack the charge and grace of her rapping. She’s far more skilled at using melodies to vary her flows than to belt outright or sustain a note. Her best songs leverage the litheness of her voice, using its soft timbre to wind into punchlines or flutter into nervous streams of thought. That use of melody as a vehicle for style as well as expression is an asset in an era where rappers often sing just to emote and singers often rap just to flex. Luckily, Lowkey Superstar centers her animated rapping, celebrating, in its low-key way, the quiet freedom of anonymity.
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