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Genre:

Rap

Label:

self-released

Release Date:

2026

Seconds into her debut mixtape, Karrahbooo steps out of the spotlight. “I don’t want to link, I stay out the way,” she explains on “Inside the Booth,” tone unphased enough to back it up. It’s a pretty diplomatic opening for an artist who has spent the past two years fighting her way off the bench. After emerging as one to watch in Lil Yachty’s Concrete Boys collective, Karrahboo cut ties with the crew amid a public label dispute that left her estranged from Yachty and unable to drop for two years. (Yachty has refuted claims that he held back her music.) Out of that limbo arises NOT DA 2, a set of low-stakes trap and plugg cuts too collected to convey frustration.

Karrahbooo first blew up thanks to a formidable showing on a 2024 On the Radar crew cypher. Flanked by a summer camp cabin’s worth of Concrete Boys jockeying for the mic, her dark gaze and blunt bars exerted a slick authority. Karrahbooo’s composure distinguishes her from various peers and Future progeny like Anycia, whose baritone raps could be delivered between rose-wrapped blunt rips, or Veeze, whose voice all but drips with promethazine. She tends to come off more like Wednesday Addams taking over Camp Chippewa in Addams Family Values, clocking everyone from a mile away with a remove that’s less icy than detached.

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Early single “No Hook” makes the strongest case for this ultra-nonchalant persona, and it only takes a minute. Playing out almost like a Rap Shit oner, the song tracks KB through a night of pit stops and party fouls over Halloween B-movie synth—thank God her driver lets her hotbox in the back. Somewhere between making sure the club owner knows she’s coming and her good-for-nothing man knows there’s “nothing to discuss,” she fires off direct-to-camera disses formatted like advice. A bouncer is “doing a lot for a job that’s not paying enough”; a girl with a problem “should confront me, you don’t want to keep it pent up.”

Karrahbooo may be pro-airing it out, but NOT DA 2 is pretty muted. Helmed by Mike WiLL Made-It protege Truebeatzz, the album favors more muscular, classic trap beats rather than the cloudier Michigan fare she often goes for (KB says she curated the production by imploring Truebeatzz: “Why you never give me no turnt shit?”). For every beat like “No Hook” or the infectious “Swerve,” there’s a cut that feels cribbed from another artist’s flagship hit: a too-treacly redux of the “Ron Artest” beat on “Do U 1 Better,” a thinner version of Flo Milli’s “Beef Flo Mix” on “WYD.”

NOT DA 2’s features feel more bespoke. The Tay Keith-type horrorcore piano driving “Keep Up W Me” pairs nicely with local aspiring duke of darkness Zukenee, whose sing-along cadence brings variety to a pretty cut-and-paste loop. Houston’s Monaleo imbues “WYO” with welcome bark, playing wingwoman and bodyguard with equal gusto. The Yachty drama even gets a rather unconvincing denouement: “Patched It Up,” where they trade verses about going back to work over a cacophony of chimes, bells, and 808s. It’s well-calculated to have Yachty in the cut attempting to parrot her subdued flow, since he keeps patronizingly telling any podcast host who will listen he wrote “all” KB’s songs. But there’s a much more compelling mentor-mentee dynamic to explore here, and “Patched It Up” feels less like a sweet reunion than a stint in the get along T-shirt.

For all the personal and professional drama baked into NOT DA 2, the tension that comes through most clearly is internal: between the Karrahbooo who wants to set the record straight and the one who wants to squash it. I respect the instinct to deliver a tape this laid-back when you’re trying to jettison a messy public beef, almost like a swerve onto the high road. But NOT DA 2 isn’t playful enough to joyride, nor ferocious enough to duke it out: This is mediation music. “I just feel like people don’t know what to think of me,” Karrahbooo recently told Rolling Stone about the trials of forced hiatus. It makes sense that a musician who spent the past two years gridlocked in gossip would be hyper-vigilant. But there’s a reason “No Hook” stands shoulders above the rest here: It has a real sense of place and a complex, charismatic person at the wheel. Enough cruise control.

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