Review Summary: Slurp
Since releasing her first viral music video at only 15, Elizabeth Harris (better known by her stage-name, cupcakKe) has always been raunchy, rude, and downright nasty in her lyrical output. From her debut mixtape
Cum Cake to last year’s
Queen Elizabitch, Harris proves that she doesn’t shy away from the sexually obscene (she calls her Twitter followers “slurpers,” for godsakes).
Ephorize, cupcakKe’s third studio album (and second within a year’s span) is no different. The album is swollen with dirty one-liners and and puns that would make even Lil Kim blush. It’s her favoring of these puns and one-liners that keeps the album fun and exciting to listen to, but the generic instrumentals and repetitious themes throughout the 15-song album that keep it from standing out among the crowd.
From the beginning of “Two Minutes”, the album’s opener, it’s clear that Harris has the chops to spit among those currently saturating the charts. Although she doesn’t switch up her flow too drastically from song to song, her aggression in delivery is what sticks to the listener. There’s a raw energy that pushes both Harris and the listener through songs like “Cartoons” and “Duck Duck Goose”, while even on the less aggressive songs, like “Self-Interview” and “Total”, the listener still feels out of breath trying to keep up with Harris’s delivery.
The beats, produced by the somewhat unknown Def Starz and Turreekk, are more or less forgettable, providing nothing more than a canvas for Harris to rap over. Many feel borrowed and reworked, especially “Naval”, which reminds the listener of Future’s “Mask Off”, with little more than a subtle flute playing over a soft drum machine. Save the album’s closer, “Fullest” (which is more of a jarring switch than an outstanding beat), there’s nothing that distracts--or even attempts to distract--from cupcakKe herself, which isn’t a bad thing.
Thematically, the album tends to repeat itself over it’s 46-minute runtime. “Two Minutes”, “Self-Interview”, and “Total” all focus on the “real life ***”, but tend to stray from the focus introduced in the song’s outset as Harris’s need to find exact rhymes and hit one-liners get in the way of what could make these songs truly genuine. On “Crayons”, cupcakKe’s “Same Love”-esque, pro-LGBTQ+ anthem, she alienates those she’s attempting to defend (referring to those in the community as “the gays” and “transgenders”) so she doesn’t break her flow. On other tracks like “Duck Duck Goose” and “Spoiled Milk Titties”, there is no genuinity to break from. Lines like “My cakes got fatter by usin’ cum as the batter” and the entire refrain in “SMT” force the listener to pay closer attention to the lyrics and how masterfully Harris can whip out a pun, no matter how obscure (“Bitch, yo money little, so we call you Stuart” and “This tongue kiss so harmless, let me lick your armpits” stand out among the lines that made my actually laugh out loud.) Although the “raunchy female rapper” isn’t a vacancy needing to be filled in the hip-hop world, cupcakKe stands out in her absolute fearlessness to talk about whatever the *** she wants. It’s not necessarily an important voice in the rap community, but it’s a more than welcome addition.
Ephorize is cupcakKe holding true to her most provocative self; a wild, lascivious sprint of an album that shows cupcakKe--almost six years after her rise to fame--finally shouting loud enough to be heard. She doesn’t give a *** if you find her music offensive. She doesn’t give a *** if you think that her songs are too silly or crude. Elizabeth Harris, truly, just doesn’t give a ***.
