The Games of Sexyy Red

Midway through her set at the Palladium in Los Angeles, Sexyy Red shielded her eyes from the stage lights with a hand and gazed out at an ocean of beautiful people, choosing lucky contestants to take part in a twerk contest. For what felt like 30 minutes, Sexyy and her team carefully assembled a roster of eight women from her fanbase of “Hoochie Babies.” One girl in a blonde wig and tight pink top came up. Another had Sexyy’s bright red hair. A couple fans flashed their breasts to get her attention so that she’d select them. Then came three rounds of twerking. The top two from each round were determined by the level of applause from the crowd (no noise-o-meter, just vibes), then those four finalists competed for the championship and a cash prize. They all danced to her then-unreleased song “Bow Bow Bow (F My Baby Dad).”

I looked around and saw maybe the fullest picture I’d seen of Los Angeles in the few weeks I’d spent there on a trip motivated by unemployment, restlessness, and a vague desire for Linking and Building. I witnessed, in no particular order: scantily clad twenty-somethings, fratty white boys in jean jackets and Air Forces, 03 Greedo’s entourage, kids in impact-font T-shirts, even the occasional unc quietly singing along. At one point my friend and No Bells creative director Srikar nudged me to point out an IG model standing in front of us. It was high school prom for the people who don’t fuck with prom, loose and rapturous and volatile.

For my money, in 2023, no new artist has had more of an impact on hip-hop than Sexyy Red. Even though No Bells Dot Blog mostly cares about music that sounds like Roblox avatars tweaking out on vape pens, Big Sexyy is the moment, rapper of the year. The kids scream her ad libs, the adults think she’s gloriously vile, the college boys hope she’ll come to their tailgate, and the rap critics get flashbacks to Gucci and Sosa. Her raunchiness makes “WAP” sound like Kidz Bop, and her delivery is so good that she’s able to shirk conventions and chant all over these beats, giving the rawness of Hypnotize Minds a fresh finish. In maybe record time for him, Drake’s already cribbed her swag for one of his best songs of the year. Incredible.

In New York, I’ve heard Sexyy Red in the club pretty much every weekend for months, my favorite moment being when Popstar Benny spun four of her songs back to back, so I knew this LA show was about to feel like a megachurch for Hoochie Babies. We arrived around 8:30, over an hour late per the bill but well before the first opener had even gone on. Enough time to cop a sweet Sexyy Red shirt from the merch table because for some reason I did not think to dress for this.

Then came an all-woman opening lineup: Tay Money, Big Mali and Rubi Rose. They all did their thing. Rubi brought out this goofy-looking Twitch streamer named Neon who I guess has a whole bit about trying to get with her. I felt old. As we waited for Sexyy Red and then waited some more, it became evident the show was being delayed because fans kept passing out. Seems like there was some minor crowd crush going on, and every five or ten minutes I’d see someone emerge from the thick like a deer in the headlights, totally drenched. Finally, the lights on-stage changed to Hood Hottest Princess artwork, and Sexyy Red emerged, wearing black cat ears (it wasn’t Halloween, this is just a thing she does), big shades, and a top featuring a sea of gems meant to accentuate her baby bump.

Sexyy’s small catalog already feels like a greatest hits. From fan favs like “Hellcats SRTs” to more recent hits like “Shake Yo Dreads,” every NSFW line was chanted back by the crowd, and every song Sexyy rapped word-for-word. She brought out hometown hero YG to play “BPT,” rapped all the Drake parts on “Rich Baby Daddy” so well that I’m now fully convinced she wrote it for him, and did “Pound Town” twice at the end, performing it acapella for big stretches. She sometimes struggled with breath control, but the fact that she was doing it at all while appearing to be quite pregnant made such minor details barely noticeable.

The next day, as I wore my Sexyy Red 4 President shirt out near Chinatown, one guy in an Italian deli whispered “skeeyee” as he walked past me. Soon after, another kid yelled BOW BOW BOW at me out of a car window. Even when the show is over, we’re all just pawns in Sexyy Red’s universe.

Bach has 8.7 million monthly listeners. Where does that revenue go?

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