On Tha Run’s satirical side reminds me of the cynical humor that used to be more common in underground rap back in the 2000s, when it seemed like the major label rappers were eating good. Think of Thirstin Howl III’s tongue-in-cheek brags on “I Still Live With My Moms,” or Strick on Masta Ace’s “F.A.Y.,” getting in his feelings about how much richer Lil’ Bow Wow was: “He prolly got his own chef and a fuckin’ hot tub.” Baby Osamaa isn’t as over-the-top, but on “Couch Surfer,” when she croons through a thick layer of Auto-Tune about “couch surfing all day,” it has that fourth-wall-breaking honesty, plus a hint of sarcasm in how she makes it sound like a flex.
At the same time, she’s pushing her melodies to delirious heights, pulling from 2010s Atlanta in a way that, in a landscape with so many by-the-book imitators, sounds refreshingly messy: I like the imperfect cracks in her Astronaut Status-style dry-mouthed wails of “Paparazzi,” and how the unpolished coarseness of her voice scuffs up the overly cute Top 40 nostalgia of “The Last Dance.” Best of all is “Miami Zoes,” a charmingly ragged, dollar-bin version of a melodic Wayne pop hit with a randomly repurposed Sage the Gemini lyric and shiesty dating ethics that deserves to be sung with your chest.
And, funny enough, despite On Tha Run owing so much to Wayne stylistically, the YMCMB star I thought of most often was Nicki Minaj. There’s this pre-fame Nicki interview I think about sometimes, where she’s sitting on a mechanical pony acting mildly annoyed by the interviewer’s formulaic questions. “Step your dick up right now,” she says to him, half-joking. “Surprise me. Do something crazy, off the wall.” I always thought that impulsive quote captured so much of her ethos: In good times and bad, it excited her to be a part of things that got a rise out of people. I think of Baby Osamaa much in the same way, but coming from a more current perspective. Whether it’s her harsh flows or the way she throws out lines like, “Keep talkin’ crazy, get fucked in your butt, nigga” just because she can, she’s determined to do stuff you’d never call boring. The days of the Young Money lifestyle are gone, might as well be raw as fuck.
