Music Review - Bodboy by Bobby Shmurda

Free Bobby! What, he’s out? Ok… Bump Bobby!

If you don’t remember the entire phenomenon around Bobby Schmurda getting locked up in 2014 for a whole slew of nefarious activities, then boy did you not miss much. Rappers would throw out a couple of “Free Bobby”s per project after Ol’ Schmurda did the omerta, refusing to tattle on the streets in a bid to reduce his sentence, and the world continued to spin.

Since his release in 2021, Bobby has been living it up in the most PG way possible, avoiding all contact with the law while performing live shows and cooking up his comeback project, Bodboy. Resting at nine tracks and an astonishing 19 minutes, it feels like he’s adapted to the fast-paced precedent set by artists like Lil Pump, XXXTENTACION, and Lil Uzi Vert on songs like Look at Me, Gucci Gang, and XO Tour Life, all barely scraping above the two-minute mark. 

Despite this refreshed delivery from Bobby, the tracks themselves remain distinctly unique due to the fact that he had an established style that’s been effectively locked in a time capsule while he was behind bars. No drill beats, trap tones, or mumbling can be heard from the New York native as he blazes his own trail for the length of an average episode of The Simpsons. 

I don’t mean to knock the lean nature of Bodboy, I was pleasantly surprised that he didn’t put out 29 tracks to placate the age of streaming. The EP has an identity and doesn’t outstay its welcome, with little-to-no filler, bar the suspect lead single Hoochie Daddy which certainly reflects his ambivalent attitude to what’s hot right now and I can respect that.

Bodboy is streaming now.