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As the track “scapegoats” plays in the background of Baby Keem’s album trailer for “The Melodic Blue,” Keem is shown embracing his family in the middle of a rainbow-painted dock.

Keem’s eyes lock on the camera as he raps “Mama gave me all my sins, love me when the story ends,” hinting at the topics of family eventually discussed in the album. The trailer finishes with a visual of what would be the album cover — a sea of water with a slow current, while Keem sits on top of the dock.

The project itself is homogenous to the cover: The water represents Keem’s normal rhythmic high-pitched sound, but the rainbow depicts a colorful change as he explores new melodies and themes.

In his debut studio album, Keem shows increased maturity with production and lyrics compared to his last project, “DIE FOR MY B*TCH”, which featured his breakout track “ORANGE SODA.” Though he was mainly known in the rap game just as Kendrick Lamar’s cousin, Keem — whose legal name is Hykeem Carter Jr. — escapes that image in his latest project, adding an experimental mixtape in album form to his discography, released on Sept. 10.

Overall breakdown:

Prior to the release of “The Melodic Blue,” Keem released four singles that would end up on the album. Two of the songs — “hooligan” and “no sense” — showed unseen sides of Keem in the base production and piano additions. The pair ended up at the end of the deluxe edition, which dropped on Sept. 22.

In the two other singles, Keem did something else he’d never done before: he brought someone else onto a track. Who better than Travis Scott and Kendrick Lamar, two of today’s largest rap icons, to be the first features included on Keem’s songs. The collaborations made these the most listened to songs on the album, with “durag activity” featuring Travis Scott at almost 46 million listens and “family ties” featuring Kendrick Lamar at more than 57 million.

What’s most compelling about these songs is that Keem is on par with his peers, and sometimes even better. On “durag activity,” he steadily rides a lo-fi trap beat before clearing the way for Scott to deliver a vintage verse filled with autotune and adlibs. Keem follows Scott to end the song with some quick-hitting rhymes.

He doesn’t disappoint on “family ties,” where he hops onto a hype beat similar to “Numb Numb Juice,” a ScHoolboy Q song he helped produce, and “MOSHPIT,” a track from Keem’s last EP.

In the complete opposite tone of “durag activity,” Keem flexes his celebrity status, hitting a Drake-inspired bar, saying “the girl of your dreams to me is a fan,” before switching up the beat for Lamar to go to work. Unlike Scott, Lamar sounds like he’s previewing a new era of music, using an unusual variety of vocal inflections over the dark beat.

The first track on the album, “trademark usa,” starts with 30 seconds of Keem talking into the mic before a hard beat drop sparks his notorious baby voice. His flow is a little different — he uses a sort of iambic pentameter and stresses the last syllables of each line, a departure from his past work where he used trochaic pentameter and kept the last syllables unstressed. He keeps that sound till the halfway point of the four-minute piece but then tries some questionable verses in the latter half when he repeats “I’m a hot girl” in an even more high-pitched voice.

Still, Keem picks back up with “issues,” which has the same soft Keem voice as “scapegoats.” Keem talks about the complicated relationship he has with his mother, saying, “how could I resent you.” This marks one of the first tracks in his career that he’s touched upon the closest relationships he has and how his career impacts them.

Best track: “16”

With “16” following two hype workout tunes, the listener might expect the same kind of sound. However, Keem completely shifts tempo and transitions Lamar’s conclusion of the guitar-heavy “vent” into a gentle ‘80s romantic pop song produced by DJ Dahi and Jeff Kleinman. Dahi and Kleinman worked on tracks like “Chanel” by Frank Ocean and “90210,” both songs with similar emotional undertones.

When Keem finally introduces himself on the track, he opens about a story between himself and an unknown woman, saying “I’m the only one that know about your tragedy.” Keem pleads to this unknown person and dives into his own insecurities in the final verse, finally apologizing to the unnamed figure with the lines “I’m sorry for the things I said, I will be honest.”

Throughout this track, Keem reveals his vulnerable side, one that he was shying away from for the majority of the album.

It’s still uncommon for most rappers to talk about their own feelings with love and relationships, as they spend most of their tracks flexing about their new wealth or the multitude of cars in their garage. But in this album, you can tell Keem wanted to end on an intimate note. And finishing on “16” is the perfect finale, as he leaves all his emotions out on the table for the first time.

One skip: “south africa”

The different flows Keem puts on this beat makes the piano-heavy tune sound more like a free YouTube beat than something that should be on this album. The chorus is weak, and he literally just talks about going to South Africa.

His lyricism gets a little more cringe at the end of his opening verse with the lines “still don’t f*ck with ra-ra-ra.” Keem is trying to do too much throughout the rest of the song as he tries to use a nursery rhyme saying “eeny, meeny, miny, moe, and many more.”

Again, Keem shoots too high on this album as his rhymes don’t seem well thought out, sounding more childish than professional. But thankfully, this song marks the end of a sort of weak part of the album for Keem, as it transitions into “lost souls,” a more emotional and serious track.

Final thoughts:

Keem made a name for himself without using the fame of his cousin, but now he needs to maintain his new pedigree in future albums that have a more cohesive story, rather than just releasing a mashup of the top tracks he’s made in the studio.

But he’s only 20 years old. Keem has already made himself a big name in the rap game, as some of the most listened to tracks on this album have more listens than songs off other notorious late-summer releases “Certified Lover Boy” by Drake and “Donda” by Kanye West. “The Melodic Blue” feels more complete than both of those projects, which have a lot more than just one or two skips.

Rappers like West even know that Keem is the future in the genre, featuring him on “Praise God” alongside Scott, one of the best songs on “Donda.” As listeners, we’ve only seen less than three years of Keem. This is just the beginning of his journey to the top of the rap game.

Published on September 29, 2021 at 1:19 am