Detroit isn’t the same place it was five or 10 years ago. Back then, the city’s brand of wicked punchlines and cheap-sounding pianos would rarely receive widespread recognition outside of towns with familial ties like Milwaukee, Columbus, and Oakland. However, behind a run of hit singles—Tee Grizzley’s “First Day Out,” Sada Baby’s “Whole Lotta Choppas,” and 42 Dugg’s duet with Lil Baby, “We Paid”—there’s no longer a career ceiling on the quintessential Detroit rapper.
A cornerstone of this flourishing scene is Babyface Ray, who raps about the most inconsequential parts of the most eventful moments. On “Meg Thee Stallion,” he’s being trailed but is more concerned about whether his outfit is fly enough for photos. On “Trill Spill,” he imagines a scenario about death, though not the actual dying part—just what type of suit he’d have on at his funeral. Almost every Ray song feels like a collection of fleeting thoughts built off frivolous details and delivered with the indifference of a person making small talk with a DMV teller.
Unf*ckwitable, Babyface Ray’s new EP, is the product of the city’s musical boom. It’s cleaner, polished, and mixed better than anything he’s made before, but the brief seven-song collection also feels like a transparent marketing move. Not many things are less fun than hearing a rap record that makes you aware of the business of it all. It’s inescapable on Unf*ckwitable, which, in adopting a heavier Southern influence than his past music, is an unsubtle attempt to introduce Ray to an audience less familiar with Detroit rap and to stumble into playlist ubiquity.
It’s hard to blame Ray; after all, almost every rapper wants their music to eventually live in those influential Atlanta clubs. Last year, 42 Dugg seamlessly blended melodic Atlanta flows and production with the stylistic foundation of Detroit, and it made him a breakout star. With Ray, this transition is less natural. There’s a way to make this leap without watering down his homegrown sound. That path might be longer and more frustrating, but at least it would avoid songs like “If You Know You Know,” where Ray trades forgettable punchlines with Memphis streaming juggernaut Moneybagg Yo—over a thudding cowbell-heavy beat that seems as if it was supposed to be sent to DaBaby’s inbox instead. Similarly, the Hit-Boy-produced “Allowance” has the most brutally generic hook; it badly wants to be a strip club anthem.
The traditional Michigan mixtape intro, “Real Niggas Don’t Rap” seems like Ray’s way of bargaining with fans. But the trade-off is worth it just to feel like you’re sitting around a campfire listening to Ray rattle off stories about how there’s nothing to do in the pandemic but get money, or about the time he spotted a woman in the airport with a “Coke-bottle shape.” When Ray is focused on filling in small lyrical details instead of the big picture, his music shines. “Pink 10s,” a conversational back-and-forth with rising Louisville rapper EST Gee, is another upbeat record to go along with “If You Know You Know,” except here, Ray isn’t trying to escape his Midwest roots. It’s time to move past the mindset that you have to temper your regional flair to advance your career. A Detroit rapper can be a star while sounding like a Detroit rapper.
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