Baby Keem‘s long-awaited new album, Ca$ino, dropped on Friday and quickly took over the rap discourse online. As one of the first hotly anticipated releases of the year — and with a new verse from Keem’s cousin Kendrick Lamar — the album delivers on the strengths that Baby Keem’s 2020 project, The Melodic Blue, set the foundation for. Over the sparse 37-minute runtime, Baby Keem offers a mature, introspective look at his life with the kind of perspective that only comes with growing older. With a tightly curated set of features, including Too $hort, Kendrick Lamar, and New York singer-songwriter Momo Boyd, the album expresses a singular vision unique to Baby Keem and establishes him as one of today’s young rap stars.
Naturally, the rap internet spent the weekend dissecting the album, with listeners reliably split in their opinions. Some parts of the album, like Kendrick Lamar’s appearance on “Good Flirts,” have been universally praised, while other moments, like “Circus Circus Free$tyle.,” where Keem raps about allegedly almost dying after taking the COVID-19 vaccine, left some fans puzzled. All of which is to say, despite its brevity, there’s plenty to talk about on the new album. Here are Five Takeaways from Baby Keem’s new album Ca$ino.
At Just Over 35-Minutes Long, the Album is Efficient
Perhaps following in Kendrick’s footsteps after the short and to-the-point GNX, Baby Keem’s first album in six years is barely over half an hour long. Luckily, he manages to fit a lot in that time, in part thanks to a dynamic range of producers on the album. Ca$ino clocks in at 37 minutes across 11 songs, and its credits read like a mini-summit of modern rap’s most adaptable hands: Keem himself alongside Cardo, Danja, FnZ, Jahaan Sweet, Michael Uzowuru, Ojivolta, Sounwave, Teo Halm, Sean Momberger, and Scott Bridgeway, among others. That revolving door of different sonic textures helps the album pivot quickly—making room for big moments like “Good Flirts” while still keeping the whole thing moving at a tight, intentional pace.
Kendrick’s Verse on “Good Flirts” Felt Like Another Shockwave
When Baby Keem first previewed the album, it came with a surprise teaser featuring a snippet from what would turn out to be “Good Flirts,” featuring a verse from Kendrick Lamar that finds him “hanging on the couch watching Sinners, worshipping his girl’s booty, and wondering if God might be a woman.” The song also features a breakout moment for New York-based singer-songwriter Momo Boyd, of Infinity Song fame, who delivers the track’s centerpiece by chanting the infectious hook and trading a quippy back-and-forth with Lamar.
Baby Keem Appears to Have Some Controversial Vaccine Opinions
One lyric that’ stuck out on social media comes from Keem’s verse on “Circus Circus Free$tyle,” where he raps, presumably explaining his long absence, that “I almost died when I took the vaccine.” Users on X quickly questioned the line, which some believe bordered on vaccine denialism and threatened to whipsaw us back into the murky discourse of 2020. Luckily for everyone, Keem is swiftly onto other topics on the very same song, rapping about everything from bad investments to his uncle selling his Xbox to buy drugs. So, a mixed bag.
Singer Momo Boyd Steals the Show
On “Good Flirts,” New York singer-songwriter Momo Boyd glides into Baby Keem’s sonic universe like a cool gust of air, with a breezy hook that turns the song into a simmering slow burn. Boyd is best known for her high-powered vocals as a singer in the alt-rock band Infinity Song, and here she uses that same control in a more restrained, teasing pocket, even trading a quick back-and-forth with Kendrick Lamar. According to The Fader, Boyd got the opportunity through pgLang co-founder Dave Free, who started following her back in 2022. He told her he felt she was “up next,” and kept in loose touch for years. After Boyd invited him to an L.A. show in November, Free pulled up, saw Infinity Song “in full power, and—per Boyd—“the rest was history.”
Too $hort Shines on “$ex Appeal”
Baby Keem taps Too $hort on “$ex Appeal” for an intergenerational West Coast link-up that plays like a neon-lit strip-club cut built for late-night replay. Keem is leaning into raunchy humor and swagger, while $hort slides in as the Oakland vet who basically wrote the rulebook for this kind of rap. So far, it’s proven to be one of the album’s most viral tracks, lending itself to TikTok edits where users recreate the kind of slow jam dancing their parents probably got into.
