A stallion and a baby? Send to DreamWorks immediately!
[Video][Website]
[6.50]
Nortey Dowuona: Megan gallops past Walker, Charlotte Ranger as the heavy, rubbery bass drums and slithering percussion chase after her, desperate for her merely to trample them.
[10]
Iris Xie: My main conclusion about this song is that I spend way too much time on Twitter, because I didn’t realize I’d already listened to this in full via bite-size memes. Unfortunately, I think ratchet hip hop already amped me way too hard for female emcee expectations, and this song is actually really boring for all the noise around Megan Thee Stallion. It’s a posture track, an announcement that she has arrived and brought a whole narrative of stan culture with her, but her lyrics and relatively restrained flow do the heavy lifting. The beat is quite staid, and a missed opportunity to bounce off her verses, but that’s probably with the goal of easy listening. DaBaby’s verse is the most interesting part, because it focuses on a very intimate acknowledgment that this is her track, with the sudden slowdown to “This lil’ thing here a stallion, look how she walk / Look how she talk, she sexy,” refocusing the gaze back onto her. Sometimes, male rapper guest spots seem like they’re dragging their asses to be there, but DaBaby gives off a feeling of genuine admiration and yeah, he knows his place. Still, Hot Girl Summer has been simmering and (trying to) rage (even though I feel more people I know were having a Sad Girl Summer) and this isn’t too bad for a song attached to a meme that the artist started.
[6]
Oliver Maier: There are far better songs than “Cash Shit” on Megan’s recent mixtape, her delivery here too forceful and rigid for Lil Ju’s drably minimal beat, even if “Send him a pic of somebody else titties” is a contender for lyric of the year. Fellow XXL Freshman DaBaby fares somewhat better with his more relaxed flow, but men fantasising about sex with the female lead artist on a track they’re featured on never stopped being weird to sit through, and it drags his verse down.
[4]
Ryo Miyauchi: Megan keeps the scrubs in check with boasts of equal humor and power, but her in-the-pocket performance starts to sound mechanical as her double-time flow drifts into monotony.
[5]
Iain Mew: When Megan says that her name is going on the account, it’s with such certainty that it might as well have already happened. The impressive, relentless forward march of the track is a great way to get across that approach, though by the end I’m glad for the switch up to something a little less rigid.
[6]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: On her features (cf her turn on a very confusing remix of Khalid’s “Talk” that also includes Yo Gotti), Megan is almost too charming. Her drive and charisma can’t help but outshine whoever else is on the track, and even though she sticks to the same one subject on pretty much all her verses, she frequently has more to say. On DaBaby’s features (most recently on Chance the Rapper’s Valee rip-off), he likewise takes up all the space in the room — less with the suaveness that Megan wields, and more with the persistence of an old-school showman. I saw a tweet earlier that compared his rapping style to how the Bullet Bills in the Mario games drive through the screen, but that visual doesn’t quite capture how funny he can be. “Cash Shit” marries their two appeals well — over a minimalist beat that fits the cyphery feel of the track, Megan gets to take on a little more of the drive of DaBaby, and he gets to slow down a little and play loverman. Both moves work well for them, and “Cash Shit” is the kind of early-career collab between two rising stars that presages excellence.
[8]