Junglepussy: Pregnant With Success

Junglepussy is working within a lineage of comedic rappers, from Biz Markie to Ghostface Killah to Cam'ron and Action Bronson, rappers who elevate the muck and mundanity of life with zany non-sequiturs, adlibs and references. In terms of  sharp-witted artists who led to the increasingly rare seismic belly laughs on the subway this year, she's up there with novelist Paul Beatty, whose 2015 book The Sellout sent up American politics and culture in a way that proves good satire can change your truth. Junglepussy's Pregnant With Success is another reminder of how humor can bring the audience closer and form an emotional connection.  It's as bright as Beatty's novel is dark, but they're both charmingly demented, sharp-witted and necessary social critiques. They remind me how humor can transform literature and music, forms that often aren't as empirically funny as film and television, bringing the audience closer and forming an emotional connection.

She has a rare confidence that's rooted in playfulness: "This pussy don't pop for you," she gloats on "Pop For You", a song with watery snares and a glitchy melody. The hook feels like she's playing a character, a parody of contemporary male rappers, but it's more of a roast that has its roots on the surreal experience of being a woman in 2015. It also riffs on the language of the oppressor, so to speak. Junglepussy spits: "You look up to these dudes to tell you who to screw/What she'll look like if she your type/compliment her if she's light/if she's black don't get her hype." The joke comes at the end, when she compares a guy who takes her to the zoo versus one who buys her leopard print lingerie: "I got niggas taking me to see live animals and you're pulling up with animal prints?"

It's her perspective as a black woman, a regular woman, from New York City that makes this album transgressive. She raps as much about her voracious appetite as she does about fashion and sex. She references Money and Violence and haute Japanese eatery Nobu over a series of glossy melodies and booming bass courtesy of producer Shy Guy. She swiftly cycles through cadences that approximate the balloon-lunged bellowing of Ludacris and a spiky Da Brat flow. On "Country Boy", a song that feels like a nod to her Trinidadian and Jamaican roots, she channels Lady Saw's squawk and the grim commands of Buju Banton before issuing a whimsical sign-off: "I be dutty winin' down the Yellow Brick Road!" The beat on "Get To Steppin'" is the album's most aggressive: a synthetic Orientalist synth loop fights with battering bass and Junglepussy is in your face, exhorting you to step off whilst bigging herself up ("I was fuckin' with me when you wasn't"). It ends with a hilarious outro, a dorky jingle about online shopping and a rush of true swagger: "When your Fendi boots come in the mail, time to front on everyone in here."

But mostly Junglepussy is pure idiosyncratic id; she is unapologetically crass ("If your face ain't a sitting place, fuck up out my face") and freewheeling. Pregnant With Success' appeal lies largely in hearing Junglepussy talk shit like one of the girls, with the aim of pulling apart the patriarchy as she experiences it. She uses humor, the voice curling with every joke, to replicate the situations and street corners of her own life. And when you're listening and laughing out loud on the subway, that's Junglepussy's smart truth-telling finding its way into yours.