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Rob49 sometimes raps as though end rhymes were a luxury he’d rather not buy, superfluous crutches for syntactically inferior rappers. Consider his star-making turn on Travis Scott’s “TOPIA TWINS:” “In my head I just be talkin’ my shit. I don’t be tryna rhyme, I don’t be tryna make music, I just be tryna GO!” he told The FADER last summer.
Still, that disinterest doesn’t mean Rob isn’t perfectly capable: “On Dat Money” finds him stacking simple sticky end rhymes like so many rubber-banded bills. “First class flight’ll change your life / Pussy tight? Raise ya price,” he advises a paramour.
This fiscal counsel isn’t too far off from the prosperity gospel of Cardi B, another rapper well-acquainted with the erotic charge of cornflower-blue cash. Here, she’s “sucking dick from scratch, when it’s soft, when it’s gummy.” She demands a lover tuck her in between layers of Benjamins (“you don’t need no bed!!!!”), pick out her manicure color (he’s paying, naturally), and take her shopping in Chanel (she’d rock the hell out of a tweed suit should the Biden campaign need a hail-Mary surrogate).
Cardi has always thrown off casually excellent verses when her peers reek of charisma the way she does, but her 2024 output has been particularly sharp-tongued, from lacing Flo Milli’s “Never Wanna Lose Me” to interpolating Hot Stylz on GloRilla’s super-fun Meg thee Stallion collaboration “Wanna Be” (RIP to the female rapper she calls a “Great Value me lookin’ ass hoe”). It’s a testament to Rob49’s gravitational star power that he isn’t totally overwhelmed, though unsurprising after hearing him nonchalantly go flex for flex with Lil Baby, Lil Wayne and Luh Tyler. But it’s still an impressive showing, like watching Tom Cruise walk away from an explosion in slow motion.
