Album Review // Vince Staples // Cry Baby
4 / 5 Stars
For America's 250th anniversary, Long Beach rapper Vince Staples serves up a piece of absurdist pie on Cry Baby. On the album's seventh track, Staples begins his first verse by proclaiming, "America the beautiful, I'd like to take a look at you." In his search, the musician, on his first independent venture, moves away from the individual storytelling approach of his past efforts in favor of an assessment of our morally illiterate, media-inundated, and socially apathetic nation. In keeping with this approximation, Staples employs his signature lackadaisical vocal delivery – sounding battle-worn as tragedies take place on his front lawn. However, the musician does expand beyond his traditional wheelhouse. Abandoning the wooziness of West Coast sounds and Kenny Beats production, Staples harnesses the edge of rock-adjacent hi-hats, kick drums, and basslines. The result is a project that feels as anthemic as it is telling. Topics range from questioning America's trust in police forces on "Go! Go! Gorilla" and "The Big Bad Wolf," comparing our relationship with media to that of lust on "TV Guide," and reckoning with the perpetuation of slavery on "Only In America." Staples concludes that America is damned. When people can watch fellow civilians gunned down in the street with glazed-over eyes, what is there to save?
