Three months after Beyoncé’s Renaissance—and the ensuing conversations about dance music’s mainstream resurgence and its origins in queer, Black spaces—Cakes da Killa released his second album, Svengali. For a technically masterful rapper who has long been celebrated for, and pigeonholed by, his queer, Black identity, it was almost too easy to frame that album’s release as a reaction to the current moment. At the time, Cakes, who was revered for his fusion of ballroom and house influences way before those terms became familiar to the rest of the world, released his most personal and subdued album to date, his trademark made-for-the-catwalk bangers sizzling into more mellow, jazz-influenced musings. But Svengali wasn’t a middle finger to widespread co-optation of his sound; it was simply the album Cakes wanted to, and had to, make. It’s the eternal bind of any trailblazer: You’re either going against the grain or you’re overlooked when your style finally goes big. Lost in this discourse, though, was the simple fact that Cakes da Killa is a really fucking good rapper.
Black Sheep, Cakes’ third studio album, acknowledges that lonely position of belonging to no single tribe: too queer for hetero bar-for-bar New York rappers, too much of a rapper for mainstream queer pop. But the album is a confident compendium of breathless performances, bombastic personality, and thrilling genre collages. It is more akin to a victory lap, an unbothered mission statement from someone who knows what he deserves, and who’s going to laugh in your face as he tells you.
Born in New Jersey but long claiming New York, Cakes raps with an unmistakable prolonged drawl on his vowels and spits with the confrontational sensibility of early Lil’ Kim. On Black Sheep, he’s wearing those influences clearer than ever, interpolating Wu-Tang Clan and name-dropping Kangols and Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones, Part II” on closer “Ain’t Shit Sweet.” He channels 1995 hits by LL Cool J and Foxy Brown on standout single “Do Dat Baby,” which features a resplendent Dawn Richard cameo. What separates Cakes from his forebears is, inevitably, who he’s rapping for. “Bump in the cut no K for me/Know a couple they/thems wanna bang my beat,” he opens on “Mind Reader,” a dexterous, soulful cut that is as indebted to Crystal Waters as it is to Remy Ma. The rapping is hard enough for any Hot 97 freestyle: punchlines served one after the other like haymakers; a flow that goes from a speedy whisper to a syncopated bellow in a matter of seconds; and snarling boasts that, even at their most playful, are delivered with ferocious determination and a veteran’s ear for internal rhyme schemes. Who else but Cakes could rap “Shoot your shot while I sip my Riesling/Time to show the girls how to eat in every season”? Who else would admit he’s “too grown to be crushing on a thug” before allowing that he still might let the man top him?
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
