Album Review - Ca$ino

This album cover of "Ca$ino" by Baby Keem shows a young child in a white shirt, overlaid with a bold "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content" label.

In 2019, Hykeem Jamal Carter, better known as Baby Keem, popped up on the scene with his hit single Orange Soda. 2 years later, He’d put out an even bigger single with “Family Ties” with a feature from his cousin, Kendrick Lamar. That same year, Keem would put out his debut studio album, The Melodic Blue, which garnered a large amount of positive reviews and success. But after the album was released and the tour he was on with Kendrick (The Mr. Morale Tour), He disappeared.

In 2023, he would reappear with another Kendrick Lamar-assisted single, “The Hillbillies,” but, again, outside of popping out at Tyler, The Creator’s “Camp Flog Gnaw” festival, we still wouldn’t hear much from Keem.

In mid-2023, we would finally get confirmation on Keem’s second album being in the works. In the years that follow, we would get a lot of non-descriptive teasing. To slowly roll out the album, the website eerietimes.com went live. Site visitors were met with an enter button that led to a screen with two white blobs following their cursor and “LOADING” appearing below them. As the word appeared, “the future is eerie” was signaled in Morse code. Fast forward to February 2026, and the album is finally announced and released on February 20th, 2026.

Cutting right to the chase, I love this album. What Keem immediately improved on from his previous album release to this one was keeping things more concise. This album has only 11 tracks and a runtime of about 37 minutes. There is not a minute wasted on the whole album. He immediately starts the album with an introspective intro, “No Security”. In that song(which Sampled from Natalie Bergman’s You Can Have Me) he raps: “No security nowadays, I'm with gang-gang, Put a pause on the lifestyle, I grew up and changed lanes, Uncle Andre just passed, I can't help but bear blame, Wish I got him help when the resources came, I turned twenty-two, I was done with the range, And I'm never online, it's too much to maintain”.

These are the opening lines to the album, and we have wasted zero time explaining the hiatus and lack of presence between album releases. I love that level of honesty so early. We then transition into the title track “Ca$ino,” which is very high energy and again, a great start.

Skipping down, we get to Kendrick’s first appearance on “Good Flirts”.

The last 2 times we heard these two together, the energy was really high; this time, it was very chill. I think that’s a nice change of pace. The next track features Kendrick again (via some adlibs) on “House Money”. This song has my favorite lines on the entire album. On this track, he says, “He put his name on his chain, what the f*** he got a name for? N***** know my name, what the f*** I need the chain for?” I just find that line clever, and it’s a laugh at the idea of the crazy jewelry rappers wear nowadays. One of the major standout tracks on the album is “I am not a lyricist”, which I would make the argument is the best song Keem has done in his career up to this point. There’s so much reference to Andre 3000, Kendrick, and even J Cole. It’s just a truly beautiful song, and I was amazed.

This Baby Keem album accomplishes in a short time what other albums struggle to do in twice as long. After a 5-year wait, he found a way to avoid overdoing it and satisfy his die-hard fans. My standout tracks from this are: Ca$ino, Good Flirts, House Money, I am not a Lyricist, & Circus Circus Freestyle. This is a very strong release, and I hope we don’t have to wait another half-decade for another album from Baby Keem. Because this one was really good.