It seems Baby Keem is finally ready to be perceived. He’s been seen plenty: as an anonymous drone in the TDE worker hive; then as the cousin capable of coaxing Kendrick Lamar into the loosest, freakiest states of his career; then as an ascendant star with Shia LaBeouf-directed videos and a taste for bridging the gap between AAA rap theatricality, the wobbly pre-rage SoundCloud underground, and subtle R&B grooves. Personal details surfaced occasionally, but for the most part, the hookups and family ties were portrayed at arm’s length. “One day I’ll tell you how my life was unfortunate/For now, I’ll tell you how fast these Porsches get,” he hinted at the beginning of The Melodic Blue’s “scapegoats.”
With Ca$ino, Keem reaches the point where pgLang’s meticulous brand management strategy calls for the Big Reveal. His second album and first in nearly five years received a grander introduction: an exhaustive three-part mini-doc that chronicled his origins in Long Beach and Las Vegas, intercutting interviews with aunties, cousins, and friends with footage of Keem and his producers retooling songs. At its best, Ca$ino is the most reflective Keem’s ever been. He parses through how the Bay Area and the Vegas Strip have poisoned him and his circle, but his warring pop star and rapper sensibilities leave his reckoning in a garbled tonal mess.
The first thing that feels off, inevitably, is the voice. Keem’s trademark yawp gave his early work a demented sense of propulsion. It was a goblin cry wailing against Boost Mobile chirps and clacking percussion that made every abstract flex and missed connection both sinister and snarky. Through age or choice, that voice has deflated considerably, sounding more like Caine from Menace II Society than Smokey from Friday. It serves the more grounded storytelling of opener “No Security” and closer “No Blame,” but doesn’t translate as well anywhere else.
The only thing preventing Keem from drowning on the title track is his athletic flows, which keep pace with Cardo’s frenetic production without ever making a case for themselves. His different vocal affects—breathy bars running over measures on “Circus Circus Free$tyle”; aping André 3000’s tone and Kendrick’s staccato delivery, down to his overenunciated T’s, on “I am not a Lyricist”—should project acuity but instead miss their targets. And while he’s never been the best singer, he sounds completely lost crooning over the pastel pop of “Dramatic Girl” and warbling through the funky hyphy of the Too $hort-assisted “$ex Appeal.” Even his trademark chemistry with his big cousin falls through on “Good Flirts,” a sleepy inverse of their previous collab “The Hillbillies” that aims for playful romance but lands like an Activia ad in the middle of a Degrassi marathon. What was once electrifying as a high-low contrast now often feels flat and disengaged, sapped of the lustful personality oozing from “Orange Soda” or “first order of business.”
Keem’s sparkless performances trip up an otherwise decent concept record with an autobiographical bent. The title, Ca$ino, is a reference both to his mother’s gambling addiction and to the positive and negative ways you can bet on yourself. It’s no good kid, m.A.A.d. city, but learning more about Hykeem Carter Jr.’s come-up makes for some fascinating storytelling. When he recalls being passed between relatives as a child, or how his mother was living in a tent when his breakout mixtape, Die for My Bitch, was first released, his less animated affect underscores the seriousness of the memories. Keem’s Vegas is stark and grimy, a place where drunken uncles roam the streets with sex workers and people fling themselves from balconies over slot machine losses. “I wish we never came to Vegas from Long Beach,” he says plainly, channeling the isolation he felt thinking of locked-up family members. On “Highway 95 pt.2,” he raps over a simple breakbeat and scant piano about traveling with nothing more than $5 for gas and clothes swiped from the church donation bin. It gives the story, and his shaky relationship with his late Uncle Andre, an uneasy rhythm that cracks open into a morose nursery rhyme.
While its confessional nature and sharper writing are an undeniable development, Ca$ino feels like a regression in every other sense. There was a freshness to the way Keem played around with A-list rap bombast on “range brothers” and “booman,” like Travis Scott with an actual personality. Here, the narrative threads don’t connect. Beats meant to spike the energy feel like stale rehashes—“Ca$ino” and the second section of “Circus Circus Free$tyle” can’t hold a candle to the orchestral thump of “Moshpit”—and the more somber beats are too indistinct to register as glossy or avant-garde. Keem lacks the auteur confidence of a Tyler, the Creator or a Kendrick, and can’t even muster the flashy aesthetics of A$AP Rocky’s Don’t Be Dumb. Try as he might, Ca$ino is a bust.
