Cash Cobain puts a seductive spin on a gritty genre

Cobain was due to perform at the store in a few days. The venue made sense — the boutique doubles as a community space for budding artists, whether they’re DJs, musicians or designers following their dreams. Its versatility mirrors Cobain’s. At 26, he has taken a bombastic subgenre and turned it inside out — a move that has made him one of the more promising young rappers in hip-hop.

The sound in question is drill, a subset of gangsta rap that originated on the South Side of Chicago in the early 2010s. Drill was — and still is — defined by its emphatic drums and masculine, sometimes startlingly aggressive lyrics. If Kanye West wore Alexander Wang and bow ties, then drill rappers wore True Religion jeans. Suddenly, performers such as Chief Keef and — once drill traveled to Brooklyn — Pop Smoke were household names.

“The energy was great — I have no problem with Smoke’s sound,” Cobain says, “but I wanted to go my own way and be a part of it.”

Cobain may be on the cusp of joining drill’s marquee names, but with a boot-knocking twist on music known for its abrasiveness. For his carnal version of the sound, he’ll loop samples of R&B old and new — anything with a smooth, sensual mood. He’ll speed up the samples or chop them down, often using the production tool Serato Sample, he says, because it allows him to adjust the tempo. The speed changes often make Cobain’s music sound smoother and more upbeat than that of his peers. While other artists maximize the bombast, Cobain focuses on seducing listeners.

“I took the elements of drill and made it sexy. When the Bronx-style drill came out, I realized that the Bronx guys were taking real samples and putting them over drill,” Cobain says. New York took Chicago drill and flipped it, using vocal samples from other songs and incorporating elements from U.K. drill, which is based on Afro-diasporic rhythms and 808s meant to bust your ears open. Cobain borrows elements from both, while making his iteration feel like a resort in the Caribbean. “I had to make it sexier, since I always wanted to be different.”

That innovation — yes, called “sexy drill,” a startling proposition in a genre associated with male violence — has made Cobain a rising star in New York rap. The songs are deceptively simple, alternately skittish and lustful, and are almost uniformly about sex, or at least Cobain’s desire for it. “It’s a fusion of hip-hop and R&B,” Cobain says. “I’m not rapping harshly, but it’s very vulgar. We keep going with the formula, but we add new things, too. I don’t want to sugarcoat it. I want to go straight there.”

He does that and then some on a slew of singles that have come out this year ahead of “Play Cash Cobain,” a new album that will drop in late August. The almost childishly seductive “Fisherrr” (pronounced like the phrase “for sure”), released in February, features his boyish chemistry with fellow Queens rapper Bay Swag. The song will make you dizzy — first because of its cartoonishly filthy sex talk, and second because of its unquestionable effectiveness. Cobain and Bay Swag bounce off one another like true collaborators: If Cobain is slightly more romantic, Swag is a little more zesty and explicitly horny. The song’s April remix with Ice Spice struck a match as well, racking up 18 million streams on Spotify between the original and the remix; the popular rapper, one of drill’s biggest exports, fits right in, letting her hair down and holding forth with her trademark arrogance.

The fluid and seductive “Dunk Contest,” also released in February, has lyrics that would put an HBO show to shame. As always, Cobain raps with the earnestness of an “American Pie” character but the nonchalance of a pimp. It was followed in May by “Grippy,” a “Dunk Contest” remix. On the track, which includes a verse by veteran rapper J. Cole, the two performers are a surprisingly good fit, avoiding the awkwardness that sometimes plagues generational crossovers in hip-hop.

The album that changed Cash Cobain’s career was 2022’s “2 Slizzy 2 Sexy” with frequent collaborator Chow Lee. Tracks like “Wavy Lady” and “Vacant” have drums as loud as a landlord’s knock. Of the lyrics, Pitchfork said “Cobain and Lee treat all of New York like it’s an X-rated dating show.” It’s true: Lee, a solid rapper in his own right, gave Cobain a fellow naughty boy to alley-oop with. There was no master planning involved, Cobain says, just vibes — drinking, fun and women. “We were living our raps.”

“We met in 2021 on the Clubhouse app. We all hit it off, and we’ve been working ever since,” says Lee via Zoom, referring to the audio-only social app that was briefly a hit during the pandemic. “We say what everyone’s thinking. It catches me off guard at first, but the women are jacking it.”

But can this sleazy talk cross over? In Cobain’s eyes, it’s possible: “I’m not 50 Cent, I’m Slizzy Cent, but women love my music, you know,” he says. “Nobody can tell me anything. I make the music that I want to hear. If my mama likes it, my sister feels it, my aunt feels it, then it’s good.”

As for the new album, Cobain promises it will be “fire.” “Fisherrr” will be on it, as will “Rump Punch,” a lo-fi cloud-rap song for the dancehall set that was released in early June. One thing is for the certain: Cobain will be on the streets promoting the record.

In early June Cobain returned to Le Père. He was set to perform “Rump Punch” at a block party, rapping from the store’s fire escape. The neighborhood was itching for it; when he started rapping, they knew every word. As the crowd grew, weed smoke polluted the air and people completely blocked the street, and it was clear as glass: He’d arrived.