SEXYY RED STACKS ‘HOOD HOTTEST PRINCESS’ WITH NOSTALGIC & NASTY CLUB ANTHEMS

If a new breed of street rappers with a predilection for deadpan punchlines and abundant punch-ins has made Detroit the de facto center of the universe, Memphis could be considered a sister city. The city’s revitalized industry has reached well beyond Tennessee’s borders to create a new lineage of bawdy, unavoidable club-rap anthems, led by the production trio of Tay Keith, Hitkidd, and Juicy J.

Sexyy Red, a rapper from St. Louis, is the most recent artist to transform Three 6 Mafia’s tried-and-true formula into a contender for Song of the Summer: Her outrageously hot debut single “Pound Town” is a vivid, frequently funny celebration of casual sex that is sure to fill dance floors for months to come. Even while it can be challenging to follow up bottled lightning with a long-form work, Sexyy Red’s sophomore mixtape Hood Hottest Princess succeeds by playing to her advantages. The disc, which has few features and is only 30 minutes long, is jam-packed from front to back with hard-hitting nu-crunk intensity and obscene quotables—exactly the kind of content everyone pushing play is searching for.

Songs like “Looking for the Hoes” and “Sexyy Walk” show that the musicians have a thorough understanding of what makes excellent party music work. Sexyy Red punctuates each track with call-and-response portions, dance cues, and melodies you can easily yell along to while using a consistent palette of plunking keys, manufactured horror-flick strings, and straightforward drum rhythms. When played loudly, the music and lyrics aren’t very groundbreaking, yet the emcee’s natural charisma and straightforward wordplay make it difficult to criticize.

While the tape’s momentum remains constant throughout, there is just enough variety in the beats it uses to keep things fresh. Taking its instrumental cues from the cheesy synth melodies and brassy bombast of early Atlanta trap mixtapes, “Female Gucci Mane” migrates south from Memphis to mine for influences. It also provides bars from a female perspective that are frequently absent from the scene’s legendary releases.

She raps over buzzy, Zaytoven-like production, saying, “Walkin’ past the mirror, I’m like damn, I’m getting thick; 5’5, slim thick, with some juicy lips.” Even if the mainstream of Hip Hop is currently all about nostalgia, it’s gratifying to hear a classic sound completely recreated rather than haphazardly added to a sample drill beat or interpolated in karaoke fashion. The best qualities of each sound are combined in a more organic conversation between the present and the past.

Even fellow crunk-revivalist Tisakorean’s loopy, occasionally discordant background music on “Nachos” has some similarities, even veering into psychedelic collages of adlibs, stammering chops, and organ slides. Most importantly, it offers a possibly thrilling direction for Sexyy Red’s continued development.

The next song, “Mad at Me,” again hits hard with a bassy intensity, but the effectiveness of its sparse arrangement wanes. Even though the sound can be entertaining, the minimalism of rhythms made solely of staccato piano notes and straightforward 808 samples eventually loses its allure.

Hood Hottest Princess may be a snappy, high-octane statement, but if it went on for more than a half-hour, its homogeneous composition would probably get boring. Sexyy Red has lots of room to develop beyond the tape’s minimalist ethos without losing her unique individuality, as evidenced by songs like “Nachos,” and her libertine subject matter is strange enough to handle more experimental production.

In its current state, the tape is a great introduction to her music because it is the party itself, transforming a long shift, a workout, or even a commute into an unplanned rager in your head.