Vince Staples : Cry Baby
A benefit to pausing for a moment is you get to survey the lay of the land. It can reveal aspects of a work not revealed by the work alone, things that only come up via the shadows they cast from the light of others rather than the contours of the thing itself. For example, Cry Baby has been described in a manner inexplicable to all rational thought as a failed rap-rock crossover record, a sequence of synaptic firings hitherto inconceivable if you had merely heard the record.
For someone who had heard the record with their ears, their own ears, not the ears of a collective absurdly deluded internet gestalt mind, they would hear a record that transforms the darkness of Staples’ recent records like Vince Staples, Ramona Park Broke My Heart and Dark Times into something euphoric without shortening the emotional intensity. Staples still focuses on the harsh realities of not just life on the streets but life in an America that is more and more obviously fascist to people who are not just poor or people of color or queer or any other commonly targeted group, but the usage of a live band gives the work a sense of human muscle comparable to the way great soul, funk and rock records pair those same sense of pain with a joyful muscularity. By taking the same tack as an artist like Anderson .Paak, including the use of gang vocals at times, the constant ruminative darkness peppered with jokes that makes up his body of work has a spark of communal joie de vivre that is a welcome transformation.
Cry Baby has more than a whiff of that particular strain of ’80s and ’90s hip-hop spearheaded by artists like De La Soul, Digable Planets and Digital Underground, hip-hop groups that fused the punky rock spirit of the earliest days of rap with the brighter advancements of alternative music. To describe it as rap-rock while very technically true misses the spirit of the record; there is a bounce and brightness here that applies more to the spirit of the block parties that birthed rap itself way back in the ’60s and ’70s more so than it does by the implied window of rap-rock in the ’90s and 2000s. There’s not a whiff of nu-metal or even the bizarre if charming hybridization showcased on Lil Wayne’s Rebirth.
Perhaps an even keener touchstone might be Gorillaz. There’s a fruitful intersexuality at play here. Gorillaz, who themselves acted as the launching pad for a returned De La Soul introducing them to a new generation of alternative music fans, began to involve Vince Staples in their recent work in much the same role De La Soul had served before, acting as a charismatic cartoon character paying off his slowly expanding acting and voice-over roles pursuing the same ends. That Gorillaz on their most recent record The Mountain abandoned their iconic sound for a welcome sonic renaissance pursuing alternative raga opened the door for this pivot to occupy that space by Staples, especially given his proven adeptness.
“Go! Go! Gorilla” is as much a cartoon theme song as “Black Marmalade” is a funk groove-driven meditation. “TV Guide” marries dark fixation on the cruelty of the world mirrored in “Only in America,” resituating Staples’ consistently funny as fuck bits and punchlines as what they’ve always been: a creative means of coping and finding glimmers of joy in the brutality of a fascist world. That the album was released on the label currently home to everyone from Ghost to Denzel Curry, Castle Rat to Robert Glasper, Mastodon to Killer Mike feels proper. Staples clearly understood Dark Times to be as we described it here, the apex and closure of a stylistic window, opening the door to new ventures. Given the consummate synchronicity of elements at play here, I wouldn’t be surprised if the live-band era of Staples’ career extended for a few years; as satisfying as this is, sitting next to Big Fish Theory as his most entertaining record, there is yet more to see and do.
Label: Loma Vista
Year: 2026
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