The Rap Report: How to be a player, starring Shaudy Kash

The Rap Report is The FADER’s column dedicated to highlights in the rap world, from megastar artists to the deep underground.

Shaudy Kash approaches romance with the manicured charm of Eddie Murphy in Boomerang: Deliberate and confident though not so overtly planned that he can’t call an audible if things don’t go right. “The game ain’t never going to be fun until you learn how to play, learn how to maneuver, and know what to do,” the 23-year-old rapper says, shrugging into his phone’s camera. Shaudy’s game revolves around formulating an experience that only he can curate, making R&B that gets heavy radio play an automatic non-starter.

“First and foremost, everybody know it. It ain’t real sauce,” he protests. “I like sauce.” A few suggestions from Shaudy to step up your courting if you struck out on Valentine’s Day: H-Town’s “Baby I Wanna,” Sonder’s “What You Heard,” and “Close Friends” by him. It’s a given that R&B playlists would eventually come up while talking to Shaudy Kash, a prolific recorder who has zoned out to SZA’s beguiling voice in song outros and reworked The Internet’s “Hold On” to match the energy of his flings. So far this year, the Detroit rapper has released two mixtapes: January’s On the Yeah Side 2 with Top$ide and Ghetto Heartthrob 2 from last month.

Of the two, I’m more partial to On the Yeah Side 2. Sure, its subject matter is more meandering than Ghetto Heartthrob 2’s ladies’ man struggles, but the chemistry that Shaudy’s developed with Monroe, Louisiana-raised, Detroit-based producer Top$ide has me wanting to see how far they can take it. Where other rappers might use brute force to tame Top$ide’s thick basslines and smoky chords, Shaudy tries to become part of a song’s production, like on “Smooth As Ice,” where he makes his sentences aggressively curve inward like the snaking instrumental loop. The cross of Shaudy’s West Coast-indebted style and Top$ide’s New Orleans influences calls to mind Snoop Dogg’s sprawling No Limit debut Da Game is To Be Sold, Not To Be Told.

Shaudy was raised on Detroit’s East Side, but his infatuation with West Coast rap comes from his late father raising him on C-Bo, E-40 (Shaudy’s remixed “Dusted and Disgusted”), Spice 1, and Mac Mall. The first music that caught his ear came from Tha Eastsidaz. (“True story: I was two years old. You know how kids be on Spider-Man? I put Snoop Dogg and Bow Wow on my cake.”) His father, who rapped under the name Eeyanjae, had him around the studio since he was young, but he didn’t think much of rap until later. Football was his first love—he played running back in high school—and some of his fondest memories come from jamming Doughboyz Cashout and Team Eastside on the way to football practice. When he began putting out songs as Young Shaudy, he played around with different voices and flows the way kids typically do. You can see how his knotty and referential style begins to crystallize on a 2015 remix to the late Dex Osama’s “Going Down Tonight," a call-back to the Celly Cel track, one of his first songs to garner local attention. It’d be a few more years, and a pained decision to leave football behind when he dropped out of college until Shaudy began consistently dropping music.

Shaudy’s winding storytelling certainly takes some cues from the Bay, but the abrupt bursts of emotion—essentially character breaks from his nonchalant musical persona—are undeniably Detroit. His projects tend to go featureless, which is a feat in a scene as communal as Detroit’s, but he’s a clear stylistic descendant of Babyface Ray. Though where Ray can seem like he’s directing a heist film with life-or-death stakes, Shaudy comes off like the friend who disappears for a weekend and comes back to the group chat with wild-ass stories. With two tapes already under his belt this year, Shaudy’s got his eye set on other things. He’s on a different path than he expected, but Shaudy feels that he may have been destined to follow in his father’s footsteps: “As I got older, and I really started listening to what my nigga was saying that shit took a deeper meaning to me,” he says. “I damn near feel like he was preparing me for this shit.”

Vayda – Shade EP

Only one song on Shade has a runtime over 2 minutes—by four seconds, so does it really count?—but Vayda manages to compact every possible human emotion into these 5 songs. “Tooamiri,” my favorite track, sounds like a malfunctioning carousel. In the anxiety-inducing first half, you can practically hear her thoughts pacing back and forth in her head. The back half is a relieving comedown. “Breathe in, breathe out” isn’t just an adlib—it’s a sign that you’ve made it through the worst.

Baby 9eno – Thuggin in Public, Paco Panama – The Wire Vol. 1, and Lil 2 Dow – 21 Gun Salute

New Orleans’ influence is all over rap right now. You can hear it in Detroit through Top$ide’s funky production, in Florida where guys like Mari Montana and Reace Sosa are, respectively, smashing No Limit and Cash Money samples, and even in Milwaukee, where it sounds like bounce music has mutated into something new. A trio of recent tapes from Baltimore’s Lil 2 Dow, Southeast D.C.’s Paco Panama, and P.G. County’s Baby 9eno are the latest additions to the ever-expanding list.

Paco’s husky voice, affinity for heavy beats adorned with hypnotic synths, and blunt-force hooks call to mind Los from Detroit. (So much so that I had to do a double take when I heard Los’ voice on The Wire Vol. 1). They both share an eye for details so specific that I suspect they’re location and talent scouts for Tubi flicks. On 21 Gun Salute, Lil 2 Dow pairs his conversational flow with the slinkiest, most luxurious grooves he could find. Nothing about it feels rehearsed or studied—everything he raps comes off as if it’s rolling off his tongue for the first time. The cover art for Baby 9eno’s Thuggin in Public directly references C-Murder, but the actual rapping on the tape is more Soulja Slim, especially during the lilted hook of “Lemons & Cherries.” By the time this post is up, there’ll probably be a whole new region to add.

Sideshow – DON’T JUST STAND THERE

For my money, Sideshow’s DON’T JUST STAND THERE is his best tape yet. A bricolage of production styles—Alexander Spit’s head-splitting chops and airy samples, AYOCHILLMANNN’s breezy waltzes, Niontay’s jittery drum programming and ominous loops—meets the Tigrayan rapper’s tightly guarded memories. It’s impossible to guess where he’ll go: A noodly stretch like “The Running Man Exotic” to “White Fans,” where all three songs are produced by Spit, congeals together into one long release of pent-up feelings. “When I make it to the top, gon be a rope in my hand,” he raps. “Imma help you up.” DON’T JUST STAND THERE is the most satisfying first-listen I’ve had all year.