Hitkidd Lets The Girls Shine On 'Renegade'

Though the city is home to legendary female MCs like Gangsta Boo and La Chat, Memphis rap has historically been something of a boy’s club. Amongst the post-Megan Thee Stallion deluge of viral hot girl rappers, GloRilla stood out not just because of her gruff flow and cut-throat bars, but because she brought a whole team with her: almost as soon as Glo found an audience outside of Memphis, she used that new platform to put over an entire new wave of defiant female talent from the 901 beyond just herself.

Since producing GloRilla’s break-out anthem “F.N.F. (Let’s Go),” producer HitKidd has made supporting the girls a priority. Even more than a showcase for his own beats, new album Renegade is a stage for Memphis’ toughest female talent to talk smack and do business; GloRilla is joined by a proverbial bad girls’ club that includes regular collaborators and fellow Memphis natives Gloss Up, Aleza, Slimeroni, and K Carbon. Renegade is like being a freshman listening in on a posse of senior girls cutting class to smoke in the bathroom: you’re too intimidated to join in yourself, but dream of the day you too can be that effortlessly cool.

These five girls don’t necessarily need each other, with relatively effortless flows that could stand on their own, but they’re stronger together; there’s a natural double-dutch chemistry to how they figuratively pass the mic back and forth. The hook of “We Outside” is quite literally a chorus, with everyone spitting in unison family style, while “Shabooya” is inspired by the familiar call-and-response chant heard on playgrounds across America.

Aside from the appearance of GloRilla’s “F.N.F.,” the only member of this loose crew with significant solo time is Areza, who tears up the track by her lonesome on “Luv A” and “Mmm Mmm.” The boys are mostly left on the outside looking in, but Juicy J talks his way into an invite on “Freak Junt (Ext).” While Juicy J’s late-period flow can sometimes be robotic and repetitive, and he can risk coming off like the creepy uncle in the club that no one wants to ask to leave, Gloss Up brings the best out of him by holding her own as a credible tag-team partner,

Hitkidd’s beats are built on the pounding 808s part and parcel to the Memphis sound, but there’s an inventiveness to how he plays with samples. On “Doin Too Much,” he works in creepy-crawly horrorcore keys, while “No Comment” makes the childlike innocence of a music box toy piano downright haunting. The beeping dial tone on “Calling Me” is disarming at first, but it becomes uncannily hypnotic with each loop, naturally working its way into the beat.

If there’s anything that holds Renegade back, it’s how much of the material has been previously-released: in addition to the original versions, which both dropped in 2022, the album includes remixes of “F.N.F.” featuring Latto & JT and “Shabooya” with Lola Brooke. While these guests aren’t unwelcome, it’s a little bit like trying to integrate newcomers into an existing social clique—the five Memphis girls already know all their own flows so intimately that their collaboration is effortless and fluid, almost like long-time friends finishing one another’s sentences.

In an industry that so often thrives on interpersonal conflict and pits female artists against each other, Renegade is a necessary antidote to the entitled isolationism of other albums, offering an invigorating feeling of genuine sisterhood.