VINCE STAPLES - Cry Baby

Red-lined, gentrified

They gave wrist slaps to them and sentenced mines

Went from bread lines to picket lines to mainline prison time

For the crimes that we commit, but genocide

Don’t mean nan’ to Uncle Sam, guess it’s dignified

(From “Go! Go! Gorilla”)

It's just one of the many frontal assaults launched by Vince Staples on “Cry Baby”, his seventh album. His rap has never been so brazen, direct and hard-hitting.

It's clear that the Long Beach rapper's new approach is a product of the times. This is no longer the moment to hide behind cryptic references and meta-textual games, Vince must have told himself. After all, the crybaby of the title, drawn on a blood-red cover, is nothing other than modern America, hidden - obviously - under the caricatured guise of its president.

The renewed lyrical ferocity also comes with a shift in stylistic approach, with a heavy use of played instrumentation rather than samples: funk basslines (“Go! Go! Gorilla”), distorted guitars (“The Big Bad Wolf”, “The Running Man”), piano (“Cotton”). A musical palette that leans heavily toward rock and post-punk, closely tied to the needs of this guerrilla lyrical stance - indeed, it often brings to mind the hybrid approach to UK rap of Slowthai.

Staples' favourite target is undoubtedly President Trump, but the tycoon didn't get back into the Oval Office all by himself. So there's plenty left over for much of the American public too, portrayed as lazy, unstable and immature, across a handful of songs that rail against the media, gentrification, unresolved social traumas such as slavery, and more besides.

“Cry Baby” is a programmatically important, powerful record, but also a beautiful one. It's easy to bet that tracks like “Blackberry Marmalade”, “Only In America” and “TV Guide” will soon be regarded as contemporary classics. After all, even the most hardcore tracks, like “The Running Man”, or the darker, creeping ones, like “Do You Know The Devil”, remain highly catchy and infectious.

In short, if anyone still had any doubts about considering Vince Staples one of the most important rappers of his generation, alongside the likes of Tyler, The Creator and Kendrick Lamar, he's just been given plenty of reasons to reconsider.

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16/06/2026