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A couple months ago, I was getting tattooed while commandeering the Bluetooth speaker, bouncing from classic Jay Critch and Sahbabii to unreleased Rob49. But the only song my artist demanded to know the name of was “who” by cade, an introspective young rapper from Detroit whose tightly-wound raps and sharp-tongued wit will leave his indelible cadences thrumming in your brain. That song was off his stellar April EP pre after party, but cade’s kept plenty busy since, dropping another EP in between On The Radar Radio appearances and unclearable loosies (please just listen to “classy” once).
On his new album Star of the Bitter Sea, cade could find depth in a puddle — so whether he turns his piercing eye onto haters who can’t keep up, his ornate inner monologue, or just the spliff in his left hand, songs like “icecream” and “grift” feel vivid and particular. Outro “ringaroundy” forces cade to shimmy through a cacophony of jangling wooden drums over a wheezing echoed synth, bragging about hanging with overly beautiful women one moment, “upping speed like Aston Martin” the next; the way he says, “I just spilled some ash on my Hysteric Glamour jeans” might lodge in your brain for the next few days. Amidst these traditional accoutrements, you might catch a glimpse of the sorrow and irony that seem to define the modern era. “I could make a couple jokes about my fiend encounters / but honestly that shit be sad I really seen some zombies,” cade sighs, though the guilt is incredibly short lived: “If it ain’t molly then I need the downers / I was talking about the zombies but I’m sounding like him.”
