Vince Staples Rocks Out On ‘Cry Baby’

Long Beach rapper turns up the volume on new LP

June 9, 2026June 9, 2026 Ron Hart 0 Comments 2026, Black Jack Johnson, Cry Baby, Kid Cudi, Mos Def, Section 8 Arthouse, Slick Rick, Vince Staples, Yaasin Bey

Vince Staples spent six albums illustrating his life as a youngblood coming up in Long Beach, California.

Now he’s ready to widen his lens to focus on the bigger picture as it pertains to the state of this nation with a sharp creative turn into new creative territory.

And Cry Baby, the rapper’s latest LP, brings that connection between rap and rock back into the forefront, almost expanding upon what Yaasin Bey was doing back in his Mos Def days with “Rock and Roll” from Black On Both Sides and his supergroup Black Jack Johnson. It was Black people who created rock music back in 1951 when Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats crafted the genre’s first song, “Rocket 88.” And then before them, there was Sister Rosetta Thorpe, who plugged in and electrified her gospel performances with distorted six-string salvation dating back to the 1930s.

Vince Staples *Cry Baby*, Section 8 Arthouse 2026

Cry Baby comes at a time when hip-hop has been wiped away from the Billboard charts in favor of bro country, girly pop and fucking Drake. It comes at a time when this current Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, rolling back 60 years of civil rights for Black folks in terms of holding any semblance of authority in their local communities because of hackneyed gerrymandering by mostly white Republicans in office.

But instead of getting even darker than he got on his last LP, Dark Times, Vince redirects his energy into throwing his lyrical darts over arrangements that owe as much to Roy Thomas Baker as they do Kenny Beats.

“Don’t let it get to you, just know they’re miserable,” he proclaims on the album’s bouncing opening number “Blackberry Marmalade.” “And know that behind every smile, they’re thinking ‘bout killing you.”

VIDEO: Vince Staples “Blackberry Marmalade”

And through the course of these 10 tracks and 33 minutes, Staples just beats you up with new wave-ish rhythms, tight-ass guitar riffs and irresistible grooves on tracks like “Go! Go! Gorilla,” “The Running Man” and “Only In America” while showing off his affinity for the sounds of groups like Echo and the Bunnymen, Sublime and even the Minutemen (or so it seems).

In many ways, Cry Baby succeeds where recent rock-rap connections faltered in the past two decades, Kid Cudi’s ill-informed and poorly received 2015 LP Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven being the worst offender by far. But the way by which Vince delivers these songs with such an appreciation for the music itself — particularly the robust, Hall and Oates-adjacent “Cotton” — he delivers perhaps the most poignant work of protest music hip-hop has seen since Childish Gambino’s “This Is America.” Meanwhile, on the Slick Rick-assisted “The Big Bad Wolf,” he reminds listeners of history’s endless doom loop when he says “it’s plenty Zimmerman among us / but that ain’t new / been gunning for us since Columbus.”

VIDEO: Vince Staples “Cotton”

The band behind Staples in this endeavor, meanwhile, is comprised of guitarists Joe Harrison and Curtis Wells, drummer Homer Steinweiss, bassist Zach Fogarty and multi-instrumentalists Teej, Tyler Page and SAINT MINO, and should definitely consider sticking together as a studio band to bring this kind of serious flavor to other hip-hop or R&B acts who might want to experiment with rock.

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If you’re looking for a rock album in 2026 that speaks to these unprecedented times, follow the sounds of this Cry Baby.