Review Summary: Sing Me a New Style of Music, My Brothers in Christ
$uicideboy$ are two cousins from Louisiana making SoundCloud-esque trap rap. Ruby da Cherry and Scarecrow $crim, year after year, drop aggressive, violent, over-the-top rap music that is guaranteed to blow out your car speakers or your money back.
And I LOVE IT. Or, I did.
Ever since these two dropped their debut album I Want to Die in New Orleans back in 2018, they’ve come a bit further into focus; their sound resonates with more people than ever these days, and the boys have basically designated their project as the poster child for their label GREY59. Not that there’s much competition over there in the first place, but they made the name mean something essentially all on their own, which is impressive. Not to mention the rate at which they drop albums and extended plays with a decent amount of consistency is worth commending as well.
I know I personally loved their sound when I first got into them - it was around the time they dropped their second album, Long Term Effects of SUFFERING, which was around two years ago now. After listening to both of the aforementioned projects, I determined that I enjoyed both of them, though in the back of my mind, I knew that their creative range was not all that expansive. Fast forward to now - it’s been a year since this album dropped, and they’ve come out with multiple collab EPs since then, and it’s safe to say that after relistening to their third full-length outing (and realizing that no one wrote a review on it yet (surprising but also not)), I find myself on my hands and knees begging for them to do something new.
Ruby and $crim have been at it since 2014 - a bit before that, if you include their solo efforts - and yet through their entire discography, I am yet to notice a drastic change in their style. From a general perspective, you can categorize all of their songs into two groups: aggressive trap music that concerns their materialism and hatred of themselves, and aggressive trap music that concerns their materialism and hatred of themselves, but sadder, and leans more into the latter topic.
As I’m sure you can tell from my descriptions of these categories, in practice, they aren’t all that different. This is true for even their most prolific and popular tracks; if it’s up to me, a song like …And to Those I Love, Thanks for Sticking Around and a track like Phantom Menace or Life is But a Stream~ don’t do much to separate themselves from one another. Sure, the first one may stress an issue like suicidal thoughts more than the other two, but they don’t go very far into the details of it like you’d think they would with a title like that.
With all of this said, my biggest issue with Sing Me a Lullaby, My Sweet Temptation is that it hardly attempts to graze the second category I mentioned above. All of these tracks are hard-hitting and high profile and discuss everything you’d expect, like abusing medication and having game with girls needing to get a new vinyl graphic for your car. None of this stuff is inherently bad on its own; if anything , $uicideboy$ does this sort of stuff really well. But everything that I heard on this project is something I heard from them before.
Nothing feels really all that innovative here. Not even innovative from a grander standpoint, I just mean innovative to themselves. It’s another sleeve of $uicideboy$ bangers that I can enjoy enough while it’s playing, but ultimately walk away from not feeling much at all.
I don’t even really have much to say on the content of this album itself. There’s some great tracks here, don’t get me wrong. Genesis, in my opinion, is their most iconic opening track to date, especially with the Mario World sample. No Matter Which Direction I’m Going In, I Never Chase These Hoes is a really addictive debauchery anthem. Complete with a beat that’s in a major key (rare for the boys) and really good verses from both $crim and Ruby, topped off with a GREY59 chant for a hook, it’s a winner for sure. Aside from those two, I can really only regress to the minor contrived compliment of “it has good moments.” The lyrics don't switch up much, either - I think there's supposed to be a more religious theme surrounding this one, considering the names of some of these tracks and the album itself, but it adds so little I didn't notice it.
From a structural standpoint, a lot of these tracks aren’t that bad at all (with the exception of Escape from BABYLON, which is just really annoying and not much else). It’s just that I’m so damn bored of this sound. The thing which probably is holding them back from trying something else is likely the prospect of their name. It’s literally $uicideboy$ - what are you supposed to do, make folk music? I can see why this whole identity was flawed from the start, but I personally believe that switching up their sound while retaining the name would make them super unique. It’d be something new, at the very least.
Hell, there’s very little I can say about Ruby and $crim’s performances on this thing. They’re as solid as they’ve ever been on this project. Ruby’s singing is welcoming. $crim is lovably grimy. The beats are addicting. The lyrical content is on par for $uicideboy$. All of the ingredients are here - I just want them to try a new recipe next time.
5/10
FAVORITE TRACKS: GENESIS, 1000 BLUNTS, NO MATTER WHICH DIRECTION I’M GOING IN, I NEVER CHASE THESE HOES, UNLUCKY ME
LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: ESCAPE FROM BABYLON
Thank you for reading (:
