ALBUM OF THE MONTH: Cry Baby

I’ve been trying to write this post for over a year now. Not exactly this post, of course, Vince Staples only released Cry Baby, his seventh album, on June 7th. Insert 6-7 joke, lol?

No, for over a year, I’ve been trying to feature a rap record as my Album of the Month.

The last time I dedicated an AOTM post to a rap artist was March 2024 when I recommended WORLD WIDE WHACK: Tierra Whack’s highly anticipated and equally underrated major label debut. Funnily enough, Whack dropped a very good mixtape, WHACK’S MUSEUM, two weeks ago on Juneteenth. I listened to it as my part of my olr column and you can check out my thoughts here. (For those of you who lack the curiosity to click: I liked it a lot GO CLICK ON IT!)

On the topic of my olr column: those of you that have been following that know I’ve been rolling the dice on a lot of hip hop artists, though its yielding mixed results.

Rap is in a weird place for me. It was the defining pop sound of my teenage years, yet it seems to be on life support as other genres pillage its riches. Sound familiar? Hyperpop and country have been whitewashing the sound for a while now; and I say that as someone who loves underscores and BigXthaPlug. Outside of rage-rap and legacy acts, I don’t clock many rappers who are doing real numbers.

Which brings us back to Vince Staples, this month’s artist. He is something of a legacy act, I guess, but not someone I would consider a household name. Still, his mastery of blunt deadpan humor has served him well across his artistic pursuits, be it his music, his television show, or this iconic interview:

I actually considered writing about Dark Times, Staples 2024 record, as my January Rewind for 2025. But its darkness proved too much for me to enjoy. Staples’ rapping was as incisive as ever, but the production put me in a dour mood more often than not.

Ironically, there are some people questioning if Cry Baby, with its guitar centered instrumentation, is a rap album at all. And that’s stupid. Vince Staples is an amazing rapper. You can rap over anything! If skaiwater and Playboi Carti are rap, this is fucking rap.

And not only that, but Cry Baby also happens to be some of the breeziest, most enjoyable, and most playful rap of Staples’ career. The record plays like Staples jumped on stage with a sharp as hell jazzy-rock band and proceeds to rip through an energetic 35-minute set. That said, the darkness that he has long mined for his artistic process still lurks underneath the music’s buoyancy.

Early on in lead single and opening track ‘Blackberry Marmalade’, Staples recalls some advice from his nana:

“I miss my nana
She used to tell me 'bout her

Blackberry marmalade and sweet tea
Beats the summer blaze, they say

Honesty the best policy? Okay (Say it)
Blackberry marmalade and sweet tea
Beats the summer blaze, they say
Honesty the best policy? Okay (Say it)”

He then repeats:

“Promise me you won’t gun me down”

This song provides the filter through which I listen to every song on this album.

I hear Staples say: ‘listen, we’ll have a good time on this record, but at any moment, it could cost me my life.’ I said he channels darkness, right? The song’s propulsive drums and energetic, twitchy guitars, however, keep my head bobbing and body moving throughout the track. The song manages to sustain an incredible balance of bounce and bleakness throughout its four minutes.

CW: the video contains graphic simulated gun violence.

The more I listen to ‘Blackberry Marmalade’, (and really, the whole record), the more I find myself thinking of Ain’t No Mo’, Jordan E. Cooper’s awesome first term-Trump era play.

Ain’t No Mo’ was a part of an artistic Afro-Surrealist renaissance which produced a bounty of personal favorites including, but not limited to, What to Send Up When It Goes Down, Atlanta, WHACK WORLD, and Sorry to Bother You. Additionally, shout out to my friend Keelay Gipson who has written and continues to write some excellent Afro-surrealist plays.

Most of these works filter the intense violence and grief that Black American’s face on the daily through an exaggerated and often darkly comedic lens. They metabolize through the ‘absurd’, showcasing their subject’s emotional reality rather than their literal reality.

Anyway, there I was, sitting down to watch Ain’t No Mo’ at the Public Theater on its closing weekend.

The play opened with a funeral for Brother ‘Righttocomplain’ who has recently passed away in tandem with the election of President Barack Obama. During the funeral, the pastor encouraged the audience to say the n-word in communal grief and celebration. He pointed to the audience and said ‘you, you, you’ or something like that.

It then seemed like a white person said it, or almost said it, at my performance and the Pastor quickly pivoted to a ‘not you!’ It was played for laughs and, as a New York liberal leaning audience, we did laugh. But that moment, scripted or not, belied something deeper.

Late in ‘Blackberry Marmalade’, Staples baits the listener with his catchiest verse of the song, gleefully encouraging the listener to join him in a sing-along centered around saying the n-word. To avoid hypocrisy, I won’t type it out in full, but if you listen to it, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s a lot and it’s a fucking blast.

At his manic peak Staples concludes with:

Master never love a n****, always tryna cuff a n*****
Obama, Kamala n*****, who the fuck you calling n*****?

I can’t help but think… will some listeners take this as a genuine invitation? Is Staples calling out a listener who sung along with him and maybe shouldn’t have?

My spiral continues: do some people think they can say it when they shouldn’t? Do they want to say it? Do they need to say it? Why? Why do white people (and truthfully all non-black people) have such a need to say it?!? Every time I listen to this song, I find myself simultaneously having the time of my life while also pondering these deeper thoughts.

Oh, and the last sound of the song? A police siren.

Welp: I guess I had a lot to say about ‘Blackberry Marmalade’.

There were other songs I wanted to write about, ‘The Big Bad Wolf’, ‘Cotton’, ‘Go! Go! Gorilla’ but honestly this song is one of my favorites of the year.

Not only that, but I think this is one of those situations where if you don’t care for ‘Blackberry Marmalade’, you likely won’t enjoy this record.

‘Cry Baby’ vs. ‘Crybaby’.

It was only when I typed out the title of this record how important that space between ‘cry’ and ‘baby’ is to my understanding of this record. One is a command or an insult, while the other is a label. Of course, I assume the wordplay is intentional, but Staples made a choice: the title is active.

Who is the baby in question?

The cover art of seemingly points to Trump and white Americans who are quick to cry when Black (or really any non-white) Americans have something of their own or take space. And even worse, while listening to the record, I find myself thinking of moments in history when white Americans cried and got upset and thus committed heinous acts of terrorism and brutality on Black communities. While fun, taunting and mocking is a dangerous act.

While Staples has long written bleak summertime music- his debut record Summertime ‘06 was released eleven years ago today- Cry Baby takes a different approach. This summer, his message is no less bleak but this time Staples follows the wisdom of his nana and serves his knotty musings with a refreshing side of marmalade and sweet tea.

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