Squikee feat. Bill Breeze “I’m Really Hot”
Published in Break on a Cloud, The Blog. Tags: Music, Nashville.
As far as blends go, “femcee” is an odd one, if only that it remotely suggests that females can’t simply be emcees, but that they need to be relegated to a category of their own. But more than a catchy label, Gerrick D. Kennedy of the L.A. Times calls the femcee branding a movement of emerging female artists “that could prove as robust as that of the 1990s, when Missy Elliott, Lauryn Hill and Lil Kim topped the charts.” A movement or not, standing up for Nashville is the Mississippi transplant and femcee Squikee.
Rapping since the age of 12, Squikee’s early musical inspiration came from her love of writing, but her interest in pursuing the genre as a performer was born in the days of rapping with friends. “I quickly realized I could rap better than I could sing,” she says. “[So] I naturally gravitated to writing raps of my own.”
“I think Squikee has a very aggressive delivery and potent lyrics,” adds Bill Breeze, who jumps on the back-side of “I’m Really Hot.” Bill lends a solid complement to the femcee‘s flow and the very smooth snap of the Johnny Mo and the Crazy 88′s beat, but there’s no doubt here that this is Squikee’s track.
“So many imitators tryna be an incubator / For the heat that I release, tryna feast up off my vapors / But I shake ‘em, see me, nall, I don’t fornicate ‘em / Meaning I don’t fuck wit’ ‘em, I guess I’m masturbating / Cause I’m feelin’ myself, and um, it feels right / When I’m, on the mic I come so polite…” it just goes on and on. And that’s one of the keys that I take away from the track, it’s not only that the MC (you can keep that femcee stuff) can consistently deliver witty and fluent lyrics, but that she can do so with a cadence all her own. Squikee has a unique lyrical style and she plays to — I wish there were a movement focused on rappers who followed a similar aim, rather than this one, simply bundling artists based on gender. “It ain’t that I’m stuck on myself, I’m really hot.”
Squikee’s new mixtape (and it’s a mouthful) DIESEL Volume One: Don’t Let the SQUIKEE Voice Fool Ya will be released at the end of the month, but for the time being you can also check out “Play ‘em Off,” which features a solid guest spot from Mr. Ahmad Rashad & production from Bill Breeze. A video for that track is also set to drop soon.
[This article first appeared on Break on a Cloud.]