Cry Baby isn’t shy about its themes or purpose, just as Vince Staples doesn’t mince words at any point in time. A match made in hell, but so expertly crafted and realized.
Release date: June 5, 2026 | Loma Vista Recordings | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok | Twitter | Bandcamp
Vince Staples is one of the greatest people we have going right now. Not to get parasocial, but dude is effortlessly funny, a good actor and writer, a man of principle, moral panic inciter, and, last but absolutely not least for our purposes, a consummate music artist since his teenage years. I’ve been following him for 15 damn years since he was making horrorcore raps with Earl Sweatshirt. Shit, Vince bodied Earl on his own track with one of the best verses that’s even been recorded on “Hive“. It was apparent from early on that he was going to be something special.
One thing Vince has never done is shy away from making a point. His music is laced with messaging that continues to be relevant, probably more so as time goes on since we’re perpetually moonwalking backwards toward Jim Crow, sex and gender repression, and rotten and inflamed land for all. Yay! Cry Baby though? By far his most upfront and direct overall statement yet, the cover featuring a fat baby with a single thick blonde curl on his head with an American flag diaper fastened with one safety pin. It reminds me of his Stolen Youth tape cover art with Larry Fisherman (better known as Mac Miller if you didn’t know), but more pathetic as I’m sure was the point. Heavy handed? Maybe, yeah. On point? Of course.
I interpret it two ways. America for all its purported toughness, a supposed bulwark of freedom and strength, is an endlessly whiny baby, shitting its diaper at any challenge to its status quo up to and including someone a little different existing as themself. A result of unchecked narcissism and Western exceptionalism that begets our ‘world police’ station in the world… in our own microwaved heads anyway. The other one requires a bit more creativity: reading it as ‘cry, baby’, a beckoning free pass to purge your emotions from living in a country and world that’s constantly adversarial toward your existence. No one understands that better than the Black community in America, and that is where we must ground ourselves to properly tune into Cry Baby, however ill prepared I am for that as is always the case with hip-hop, but empathy is a hell of a drug.
Moderate content warning here for simulated gun violence and a mass shooting
Across ten tracks and a solid 35 minutes, Vince addresses many aspects of American malaise and cultural failure. This album, aside from the above, has the unique distinction of being one made up of all rock instrumentation for production. This isn’t something Vince is a stranger to so far be it from me (or anyone) to assert he’s trendhopping with acts like Paris Texas and Kenny Mason gaining popularity, that’s silly goose shit. What it does is add another of layer that allows for a meta-esque critique.
Rock, however floundering in the mainstream zeitgeist, is still seen as profoundly American and, however ignorant of the fact otherwise, white in color. Legacy acts like Bruce Springsteen still do hella numbers on the neoliberal boomer circuit after all. Vince, a Black man rapping about America’s ills as filtered through his keen understanding and experiential analysis of his 30-plus years here on earth non-consensually can be viewed as subversive, or perhaps a reclamation and reassertion that rock is and always was a Black institution no matter how many damn Elvises or Beatleses we got (motherfuck them and John Wayne). Or maybe he was just in the mood for this sort of vibe on his latest project. As his pal Kenneth Blume said, don’t over think shit.
Either way, it’s a sound that complements his tone immensely on Cry Baby. Guitar, bass, and drums meld with Vince’s iconic voice that hasn’t changed much in timbre since he laid down that violently dark and edgy verse with Earl on “epaR”. “White Flag” as a single is what you need to hear to see the sound profiles at play here. It’s a track about the mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion one can feel living in modern America. In the music video for the song, Vince is seen painting an American flag stark white with a roller brush, he then hangs it and dumps an automatic rifle’s mag (or two) into it, perforating it so it appears to slightly bleed red. The white flag means a lot of things: surrender (‘White flag, I don’t wanna fight no more‘), a representation of America’s Ku Klux Klan racism (spot the silhouette of their ghostly robes behind the unpainted flag at the beginning of the video), or more specifically the color of people who America is really for from a systemic point of view. The instrumentation being more pensive here allows the vocals to breathe and stew a bit as Vince personifies America and its promise of big dreams, as long as you don’t cause trouble. But Ahmaud Arbery died for jogging while Black so clearly that ain’t true.
“Go! Go! Gorilla” tackles police racism, brutality, and dehumanization over a slick, bouncy rock beat. There’s some burning lines on this track with Vince acting out interaction with cops and eviscerating the supposed ‘serve and protect’ ethos of cops who literally were derived from the slave catcher patrols of the 17-1800s. I appreciate how Vince shouts out his mom in a bar about how she taught him the reality of cops and how they treat people like him (‘She the one that put me onto their program‘), or the bluntness of the 2Pac reference in the hook (‘Red, white, and blue lights flashing/One-way trip to thug’s mansion‘), a sad reminder that a traffic stop or wellness check can easily turn into a state-sanctioned murder. Wild monkey sounds at the end of the track elicit all the uncomfortable feelings they’re supposed to, driving home the fact that there’s far too many people who still see others as animals, less than human, and expendable in the goal of making America great again.
“TV Guide” continues what Public Enemy started with “She Watch Channel Zero?!” in the ’80s, lamenting the propaganda and pacification that television can wreck onto the populace, and yet we all stay glued to it. Racial stereotypes, fake news peddling the next big thing to manufacture compliance or consent, etc. Maybe less of a salient point nowadays, but when you factor in that people still watch tons of shows on streaming services controlled by or at least containing content produced by governments and political interests, it still matters. Vince knows this – he raps ‘Power of the dollar decline, they give us crypto‘ and ‘Touched by Uncle Sam, you better fuck back/You better bounce that ass, you better drop that ass, you better fuck back‘ to illustrate a cruel, perverted need for total control and submission. The song has no business being this catchy for the serious message it emits.
No matter your stop on Cry Baby, Vince just conveys a creeping gravity in each track. Fans know him as a relatively easy-going guy who we love to see interviews of, and while some of that levity finds a way into his music, it’s more intonated slyly, not funny haha breakneck satire so much. Vince always speaks truth, never losing sight of a message, always finding ways to intimate it so as not to cloud his stance or intent. “The Big Bad Wolf” uses Slick Rick vocal samples from “Children’s Story” to color in his own tale of guns and gangs (cops included of course, they’re the biggest gang out there) over funky drums and guitar. The video for “Cotton” follows up on the one for “White Flag” by hanging the Klansman dummy behind the white flag and projecting Black pain and joy onto it for a complex message that, on the surface at least, places a lot of emotional weight on the importance of music. And I can’t forget to mention “Blackberry Marmalade”, a video and song that honestly speaks for itself.
And a slight content warning here for some lynching footage, photos, and general portrayal of historical violence against and subjugation of Black people
As Vince Staples hammers home more contradictions of this country on “Only In America” or its imperialistic, genocidal, and most often illegal use of military might across the world on the sedate and sickly “7 In The Morning”, you get the sense that he was just getting started with Cry Baby. I mean, how does one even choose and narrow down what bullshit to talk about nowadays? Every day’s doom scroll reveals endless horrors ongoing, past, and upcoming. We are not starved for things to be morally and ethically bled by, and while Vince has never shied away from addressing serious topics in his own way, this project being completely and totally about them is a reading of the proverbial room. We’re tired.
It may not be the revolutionary firebrand we need, but it’s yet another voice in the chorus of decency that can see what’s being done here and the world over, and feel incensed to speak out. That mixed with Vince Staples‘ use of tight rock accoutrements to smartly frame his critiques empowers this album as one of his best yet. Seven albums deep, that’s nothing to balk at, and he will continue to keep producing music that’s timely, resilient, and full of personality. That you can count on, just you can count on America generally being crying, shitting, fuckass babies; the greatest disappointment and scourge humanity has ever wrought.
Artist photo by Erik Carter
