The Best and Worst of Rap This Week: The Arrival of Flo Milli and More

Pitchfork’s weekly rap column covers songs, mixtapes, albums, Instagram freestyles, memes, dances, weird tweets, fashion trends—and anything else that catches our attention in the world of hip-hop.

Flo Milli: Ho, why is you here?

Have you ever silently screamed “Flo Milli shit!” in your head while doing completely normal things? I have. It’s happened while I walked down the condiments aisle in the grocery store, while I stood on the balcony of the Staten Island Ferry, while I put up jump shots at the park. In the span of the last year, the Alabama native has become not just a viral rap star, but the template for a lifestyle. In Flo Milli’s world, men fight for an opportunity to shower her with money, as she shoos them away like dogs who won’t stop begging for food (but not before running up their credit cards).

Can you think of a more perfect title for Flo Milli’s debut than Ho, why is you here? When she says those exact words on the mixtape’s intro, I instantly feel secondhand embarrassment for the sorry soul caught on the wrong end of the question. The tape is not quite as good as I hoped it would be—I’m not sure if there’s anything better than her TikTok hits “Beef Flomix” and “In the Party,” or her punking-dudes anthem “Weak”—but that’s mostly because of the generic beats on tracks like “Not Friendly” and “Scuse Me.” Nevertheless, Flo Milli could rap on one of Cassidy’s sad attempts at rap production and I’d probably still listen. “Make a nigga blow a check on me/Save his number under ‘we gon’ see,’” she raps on “Pussycat Doll,” laughing more deviously than Harley Quinn. Now that’s the Flo Milli shit I can’t get enough of.

A Rod Wave song that is actually not sad

DJs in South Florida like things fast—just check the tempo of a Miami bass track. Since the 1990s, Broward County DJs have been speeding up rap songs, serving up chipmunk’d takes of regional hits. It’s not as simple as it seems, and the key is selecting the right records to edit. My favorites of late have been on a SoundCloud page called ForeignTv954 Reloaded, especially their fast version of Rod Wave’s Pray 4 Love. The St. Petersburg rapper’s heart-wrenching ballads are flipped into songs that make me wish I was in South Florida hitting a perfect bobble walk. I never thought I would want to dance to Rod Wave, but here we are.

Shawny Binladen: “TBC/TBG”

Shawny Binladen has dropped four music videos for new songs this week—and they’re all good. On “Slime Talk/Kickdoor,” the Queens rapper glides over a pair of frenetic beats; “Motion” is a fiery back-and-forth with Melly Migo; and Shawny’s whispery flow shines on “Echoes.” But “TBC/TBG” which puts his nightmarish delivery front and center, is the one I’ve been going back to the most. Nobody else in New York raps at such a breezy pace with vocals this grimy. Based in a neighborhood called Woodhull, near Long Island, he’s removed from other rap scenes popping up around the city; he doesn’t make drill or sing on soul samples. He’s creating something entirely on his own.

Pop Smoke’s “Mood Swings” is not romantic

There are quite a few enjoyable songs on Pop Smoke’s posthumous album, but for some reason the one that keeps finding its way to me is “Mood Swings,” his collaboration with Lil Tjay. It’s being pushed as a sweet-sounding love song with an edge, which seems about right, until you get to the unsettling lyrics. “And shorty got the fatty/Shorty be catching mood swings/Every time I fuck without a rubber/I nutted on the covers,” Pop and Tjay sing again and again and again, and they’re not done. “I ain’t wanna give you a baby just yet, so I backed out and nutted on your breasts,” raps Pop. Later Tjay gently sings, “And the only bitch that make me wanna nut when I’m inside.” And I’m not just uptight, right? No one should be singing this song to themselves with their feet swinging in the air as they fantasize about their crush. A never ending flow of smitten TikToks may disagree, but I will not be fooled into thinking that “Mood Swings” is romantic.

TRL: “Camp Shit”

Everytime I listen to Midwestern rap crew TRL, they gain another member. At first there were two, then three, and now five members are on “Camp Shit.” And since they all use a similar, fast-paced flow, they aren’t the easiest to tell apart, either. Without taking a breath, they pass the mic to one another, seemingly fusing their verses together. Listening to them is like walking up to a lively freestyle circle where everyone’s having a good time feeding off of each other. No matter how many members are on their next track, it’ll inevitably sound like one big party.

(TRL also might be the modern day Power Rangers)

Cochise is not Playboi Carti

It happened again: I’ve been duped. I thought I heard a new Playboi Carti record, but no, it’s just Cochise, a Florida rapper who has a handful of popular songs that sound exactly like baby voice Carti. Cochise came along at a perfect time, when TikTok was flooded with various Carti leaks and the thirst for Carti’s upcoming album was at an all-time high. His song “Hatchback” just slid into the hype and stuck. He’s tried to put his own spin on the Carti sound through an onslaught of anime references—the “Hatchback” hook mentions Tokyo Ghoul, and the “Redhead” video is a homage to Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure—but it hasn’t really worked yet. Listening to a Cochise song gives me the same feeling as watching one of those ’90s action movies desperately trying to replicate Die Hard—it’ll temporarily fulfill your craving, but by the end you’re daydreaming about the real thing.

Jack Harlow, unintentional tattletale

This is the best rapper/NBA player drama since Kendrick Perkins got mad at Quavo for calling him trash.

Baby 9eno: “UUV”

It’s easy to tell that Baby 9eno’s “UUV” is a Maryland rap song—the punchlines sound like they were delivered through a grimace, and the sinister low piano notes feel like they were made to score a classic horror movie. But the song also expands that regional sound by adding an extra layer of keys on top, becoming something more. “Ain’t no eye for eye, bitch it’s hell on earth/Better hope for the best and prepare for the worst,” raps 9eno, elevating straightforward bars with his vibrato. It’s subtle differences like these that make him stand out among the Maryland rap ranks.

We just like to see Curren$y happy

Originally Appeared on Pitchfork