Known for his hypnotic, dark, and witty rhyming style, Houston’s Maxo Kream inspires a cult following with his outsized personality and absorbing music. Riding an ethereal instrumental with a stuttering rhythm section, Maxo gets druggy with “Pop Another,” the latest single from critically lauded album Punken. The song finds Maxo at his most lyrical and descriptive, weaving internal rhyme and metaphors for his success, contrasting the opulence of his life with his grimy drug habits: “Everybody know what I do with a package/trappin’ like a heathen I’m a vegan with the cabbage/Hit it on the shake, I put the Caesar on the salad/Young Anne Frank Imma hide it in the attic.” The visuals complement the complex wordplay with equally heady overlays of scrapbook illustrations of Maxo and deluges of pills.
Titled after one of Maxo Kream’s childhood nicknames, Punken takes a deep and revealing look into the rapper’s past, with Maxo mastering his storytelling ability and hypnotic flows atop forward-thinking production. Featuring appearances from Trippie Redd, 03 Greedo, and D. Flowers, and with production from The Wlderness, Beatboy, Sonny Digital, Ethereal, Honorable C Note, $uicideboy$, Tommy Kruise, Wolfe De Mchls, Teddy Walton, and MexikoDro, Punken builds upon 2015’s Maxo 187 and 2016’s The Persona Tape with emotionally and sonically diverse tracks sitting side-by-side with insane drug-dealing bangers. In their glowing review of the album, Pitchfork praised the album as “full of unsparing storytelling, pusher anthems, and a dynamic array of trap production over which Maxo delivers some of his most effective writing.”
