Baby Keem - Ca$ino

Baby Keem’s second studio album feels intensely personal and self-interrogative: this is a record where the American rapper revisits his past while staking out the scale of his ambition.

It can’t be easy being Kendrick Lamar’s cousin — arguably the defining rapper of this generation. Fair or not, the public’s interest is automatic and the expectations are calibrated to a superstar relative. Baby Keem, however, seems largely unmoved by that gravitational pull. Nearly five years after The Melodic Blue cemented his foothold in the industry, Ca$ino arrives as a song cycle mapping the protagonist’s interior life: tangled reflections on family dysfunction, triumph and disappointment, and, inevitably, desire.

The album’s tone is set immediately by the opener “No Security,” where Keem contemplates the pressures attached to being a rising star. A similar weight hangs over “I Am Not a Lyricist,” arguably the centerpiece: a sprawling confession that reframes his grandmother’s death, his mother’s arrest, poverty, racism, addiction, and the gradual fracturing of family ties.

The record’s most affecting moments surface when Keem drops the bravado. Take “No Blame,” a song built around a James Blake sample: here he revisits his relationship with his mother and ultimately arrives at reluctant empathy, absolving her troubled behavior as the product of trauma she never escaped.

“Highway 95 pt. 2” also demands special mention — one of the album’s starkest songs. Keem recalls leaving home, reportedly amid violence from an uncle and a generally hostile household. It’s a moment of unsparing honesty, as he wonders whether he himself could ever become a kinder uncle than the one he knew.

Elsewhere, Ca$ino indulges in swagger and self-mythologizing. The title track and “Circus Circus Freestyle” are glittering, shape-shifting bangers that pivot through multiple beat switches. Here Keem sounds fully assured, embracing success and taking playful jabs at his competition.

The most playful cuts arrive when he abandons seriousness altogether: the shimmering “$ex Appeal,” featuring West Coast legend Too $hort, and “Dramatic Girl” with Che Ecru. They almost feel quarantined from the album’s heavier themes — yet that separation seems intentional, as if Keem cordons off romance and lust from the emotional wreckage elsewhere on the record.

What ultimately keeps the album from stagnating is its production. By weaving together trap, pop-rap, West Coast hip-hop, alternative R&B, and even hints of hardcore rap, each track develops its own identity, sustaining interest across an 11-song runtime — a relative rarity in the streaming-era rap landscape.

Ca$ino could easily have buckled under pressure: inflated expectations, a long absence, and the volatility of modern hip-hop all loom in the background. But its strength lies in Keem’s clarity of vision and curatorial restraint. He could have padded the project to 20 tracks and buried it in filler; instead he delivers a concise, tightly sequenced release that remains engrossing. By that measure, Baby Keem comes out ahead.

7.2/10