It only takes three minutes of a recent interview for Anycia’s personality to jump off the screen. She’s kicking back in your living room now, grabbing snacks from your cupboard and tickling your rib cage. She sits across from Gangsta Grillz Radio host Manni Supreme, who asks her: How do you feel about being the first woman from Atlanta with a Gangsta Grillz mixtape? “I feel like, ‘Duh!’” Anycia sputters, her teeth glinting with gold. “I feel like ‘Bitch, you knew what it was, bitch!’” She’s fervent and magnetic like a Black pastor at a megachurch, except she’s raunchy and geeked up off her own tenacity rather than the Holy Spirit.
If you’ve only heard Anycia’s biggest single of the year, “Never Need” with GloRilla and Karrahbooo, you might be shocked to realize this is the same rapper. On that track, she comes across like she’s so bored of niggas she can barely keep her eyes open; her resonant voice hardly raises past a whisper, giving the impression that she stays mellow at all times. Compare that to how she describes Grady Baby, her sophomore full-length, as “disrespectful,” saying, “It make you wanna choke a nigga down, put him on the ground. Make him bite the concrete.” To me, the tape feels more like it’ll make you wanna leave him on read and go about your day. That still makes for a decent release—but when I watch Anycia pop her shit like a firecracker on-screen, I wish that energy translated to more ferocity in her music.
Grady Baby teems with bars about Anycia having her way, putting belt to ass, and keeping men in their place. Her unrestrained attitude is the crux of her appeal. She doesn’t like mincing words: “I could fuck on any nigga, make him eat my butthole,” she drawls on “Daily Freestyle.” What Anycia does like doing: pulling up in black trucks, bullying the girls that throw shade, and making dudes walk the plank after giving her head. Her blunt disdain for whoever isn’t on the same team as her is funny as hell (“I see that you hurtin’ but I do not give a fuck”), but her ability to turn it into cogent wordplay feels uninspired. “You a dummy, I’m smart/Attitude stank/I’m a ocean, you a lake,” from “So Fine” sounds like something you’d let the bass drown out on a Ken Carson throwaway.
Like Veeze or Niontay, Anycia deploys a hypnagogic drowse that works best when it serves as a conduit for clever flips and metaphors. Anycia’s partner-in-crime, Karrahbooo, nails this pretty well over “Never Need”’s sweeping violins. “Nigga wanna see me, I’m too busy/No time in the day/DC done poured up so many lines that he could write a play,” she spits, riffing on her homie’s lean habit. Anycia’s best performance comes over Missy Elliott-type staccato strings on “285,” her cadence gliding like fabric through a sewing machine. Her flow is even-keeled and commanding, making her finger-pointing one-liners feel like a visit to the principal’s office. Houston’s own Monaleo shines here as well, one-upping Anycia’s straightforward verve with hilariously cocky punchlines (“Body like a Coke, bitches built like a question [Huh?]”; “Knew I was the shit, I bet on it/Zac Efron”).
“285” is also one of several early-aughts production callbacks on the album, hinging on nostalgia for the music Anycia heard in her mom’s car as a kid (Ciara, Cherish, Field Mob, etc.). “Never Need” rehashes the beat from Khia’s 2001 cut “Don’t Trust No Niggaz,” and “ATW,” another Grady Baby standout, does the same with Jeezy and Mannie Fresh’s “And Then What.” Rather than an assertion of Anycia’s star power, Grady Baby feels like a love letter to home. After all, this record is named after Grady Memorial, the South Atlanta hospital where she was born. Not to mention DJ Drama yelling her name across the tape and shouting out local ATL spots that only those from around the way know about.
But in a cultural climate rife with recycled hits and clunky homages, I appreciate Anycia’s original compositions more. “Daily Freestyle”’s aqueous keys, wobbly groove, and funky stabs of bass give Anycia a neat backdrop for chastising a lame ex. It’s refreshing, exemplifying the kind of laid back, day-in-the-life stoner music she’s so good at. Still, despite this being her bag, I really wonder what it’d sound like if Anycia leaned into the vigor she echoed in her Gangsta Grillz interview. Imagine that energy over the souped-up beats Mel V and Glorygirl2950 are sliding on! Just listen to Anycia hyping herself up at the end of “Break” and watch the building blocks fall in place. Someone get Popstar Benny on the phone.
