“Trophies hidin’ in the nosebleeds/Baby, get to know me, I got rich off no sleep,” he boasts. On “Gorgeous,” he seems to be already celebrating that achievement, though the specter of violence-like in some Gen Alpha version of a classic Hughes Brothers flick-is always lurking somewhere in the background. Singer Paulette McWilliams on Her Years With Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, and Steely Dan Opener “Trademark USA,” finds him anticipating naysayers, asserting, confidently, over growling bass and blaring flatline-invoking bleeps, “I took the torch, I quit being nice/I took the torch, now I gotta fight.” That you won’t “little bro” him is as palpable as Keem’s conviction that he’s ready for prime time. And while those are pretty big shoes to fill, The Melodic Blue, Baby Keem’s scrappy debut makes it clear that this is, unquestionably, his narrative. To be sure, there’s a trace of his Pulitzer-winning kin in his agile stop-and-go flow. On “Family Ties,” featuring his cousin, Kendrick Lamar, Keem details a murder on the way to a Popeyes (”Fuck around and bury two of them guys”) before flexing on a vacation to France (“I’m OD in Paris”) and leaving an exorbitant nest egg for his grandmother (”A million to grandma, who did I offend?”). That the Carson, California native has seen a lot in his 20 years is evident in each well-enunciated bar, which seems to boil down his distinctive worldview into bite-sized vignettes.
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Baby Keem raps in an exasperated rasp, with an abrupt rise in his tone, as if he were stunned by something he just recalled.