Baby Keem finally dropped his long-awaited album Ca$ino, and the hip-hop world is reacting quite fiercely to it and its many compelling achievements. One particular bar about vaccines, though, has people talking, as they are debating whether or not its "antti-vax" or perhaps something different.
"Period pooh, what the f**k do that mean? / When Wyseem get the p***y, treat it like a sex scene / I almost died when I took the vaccine / I was gone for two years, down bad, reflecting," he raps on "Circus Circus Free$tyle." During Baby Keem's Ca$ino listening party in Los Angeles, he expanded on his five-year absence from the game, which this vaccine bar seems to reference.
"I think the obvious point in the room is that it's been a long time since I seen some of y'all," he expressed, as caught by pgLang Updates on Twitter. "My grandma passed away last year, same month. This is a celebration tonight for her... I think she's here in spirit. When I was writing this album, I was just surfing through the topics. These same prominent stories about how I grew up, I just wanted to shine light on that for people."
"As I grow my career, this is a very special night," Keem continued. "I went away and I did something veyr important and I got to shine light on that story... It's not that I'm elusive or trying to be gimmicky. It's just real life s**t that I go through every day... During the album, I remember getting a call that said my mom had left rehab. For me, that was the last option, the last hope... How did y'all let her leave? And that was hours after I got off [Coachella]."
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Baby Keem's "Good Flirts"
"Tonight is a celebration for those that go through things," he concluded. "I named it Ca$ino because that's where I went through all of the things that I went through... Nobody wants to talk about their mom being that sort of way. I kind of changed my perspective on that a lot... It's an empowering thing. I wouldn't change my story, ever... This album is for the child that walks home slow."
Still, with that context in mind, many fans wondered whether or not the unspecified "vaccine" contributed to this absence or if it's referencing something else as an unrelated bar. They also debated whether or not this is an "anti-vax" stance, but we don't have enough context or explanation at press time to understand what Keem meant.
Fan Reactions
Elsewhere, Baby Keem fans are digging deep into Ca$ino and there have been other hip-hop-related narratives to sprout from it. For example, Kendrick Lamar referenced the leaked Young Thug jail calls in his verse on "Good Flirts" with Momo Boyd.
