Review: Cupcakke Stays on a Roll with ‘Eden’

Yet another lean and excellent project – her sixth in three years – from still-unsigned, still under-the-radar, still not-on-Rap-Caviar Chicago pottymouth Cupcakke. Her style should be irresistible for anyone who’s a fan of vintage cassettes with Parental Advisory stickers or modern bloody-shoe boast badasses, a mix of 2 Live Crew’s over-the-top raunch with solid bars full of punchlines and reflection. Eden certainly doesn’t shy away from her unique, occasionally weird filth – one evocative sex rap has the chorus “Finger me like a typo” – but, like January’s Ephorize, she does much more: she drops monster boasts (“PetSmart”), takes aim at deadbeat dads and abusers (“Cereal and Water”), examines her feelings about a cheating man (“Dangled”), investigates the etiquette of sending nudes (“Don’t Post Me”) and closes with a banger about autism awareness (“A.U.T.I.S.M.”). Throughout, producers Mike Kalombo, Ye Ali and Turreekk keep things uptempo and minimal, like a mix of modern trap and the PlayStation blips of early grime. And though her naughty, audacious, sideways, silly lines keep her cutting a unique figure in the dour, depressive world of modern rap (“I always cum first like the day April Fools,” she raps in “PetSmart”), since she also has bucketloads of formalist bars like “In these streets, I’m so liable/To tote that rifle and send hoes higher than the Eiffel.”