Bbyafricka. Photo by Francisco Russo
Extinct flavors of Hi-C include Blazin’ Blueberry, Hula Punch, and an intermittently revived Ghostbusters tie-in named Ecto Cooler. For BbyAfricka, these defunct beverages serve as a simple metaphor for bitches “running out” of juice. As she coolly stalks through strafing hi-hats and thumping 808s, her breathy delivery exaggerates the natural rasp of her voice, underscoring the nonchalant menace in Bbyafricka’s stage whispered threats (“Thought that she would run up / saw me and she ran down”).
There’s something deceptively smooth and fast about the way Bbyafricka raps here, how she casually breaks out of an almost-breathless staccato rhythm to emphasize the way a hater’s cheap watch “tick, tick, tick”s or the way she slows down her flow just a touch when kicking off her verse. At just under two minutes, nobody would dismiss “Hi-c” as static or repetitive, but these small vocal flourishes turn a good song into a convincing one.
Though she’s plenty capable of penning twerkable strip club records or evocative vocal melodies drawn from R&B and emo rock, Bbyafricka’s musical output this year has bent a bit more towards the harder edges of her discography, more “Think Last” than Brain Damage. April single “BEEF” found the Inglewood rapper shuffling effortlessly across a minor key knocker; last month’s HARD COPY, a joint EP with Surf Gang that Evilgiane described as “evil gothic-sounding shit,” spotlit mutated plugg beats as well as subwoofer detonators like “BET.”
“Hi-c” feels like a particularly polished take on these same ideas: Bbyafricka has some choice words to get off her chest, and she wants a beat big enough to match her contempt, the sort of song you’ll turn all the way up to scream along in the car. “I don’t do the bank scams, Bby send the green dot / you ain’t sippin real juice, you be sippin re-wock,” she simpers on the hook. Later: “I don’t link with n*****s, everybody seem to bore me.” No matter how unenthusiastic she feels, Bbyafricka could never be boring.
