Top$ide and Shaudy Kash have fostered the type of chemistry that you usually only see between detective pairings on Law & Order (à la Lennie Briscoe and Rey Curtis), where the beats of their relationship have played out on loop without a hitch. You’re able to set your watch to the way the Detroit pairing’s rhythms interact. The Monroe, La.-raised Top$ide sets the mood with morose, chilling funk beats—often representing a zig to the city’s pounding club production—letting Kash saunter under the radar with his conversational register and rambling rants. By the arrival of the fourth and latest installment of their On the Yeah Side series, the “feeling out” portion of Top$ide and Shaudy Kash’s partnership is decidedly in the rearview mirror.
Throughout On the Yeah Side Deluxe (the follow-up to 2024’s Vol. 3), the two artists focus on refining the formula they’ve cemented over the past three years. Where previous iterations felt largely insular, here, Top$ide and Shaudy Kash are set on inviting more and more Detroit voices into the fold with a slew of remixes. Some of the guests’ energies are misaligned with On the Yeah Side Deluxe’s tenor, but the pairing’s synergy remains undeniable, sometimes making you wonder why they ever stray away from each other.
Top$ide’s serene, gloomy production almost doubles as a soothing paint-by-numbers exercise for Shaudy Kash. These beats often feel like the soundtrack to a crime movie montage, backing the moment that someone admits to doing dirt of the highest degree: take “Logic > emotions,” where Shaudy Kash muses about shooting someone because they insulted his marksmanship as a muted, groovy bassline churns in the background. In another life, “Forreal (Top$ide Mix)” would stand out in the back end of a late ’90s No Limit tape, played exclusively in seedy basements and cellars clouded with cigar smoke. Here, it allows Shaudy Kash to get wistful about stealing your girl without breaking a sweat in a comfortable environment, where you can almost see him shrugging as he admits it. But the similarities between the softer beats cause some moments to run together and fall short, especially if Shaudy Kash and others aren’t on their game. Shaudy Kash lacks some of the sharpness of his other performances on “Chameleon,” where his bars get bogged down and the lines bleed together. It feels like YBN LIL BRO spends most of his cameo on “Stuck In My Ways” doing a balancing act, trying to find the right pocket while toeing the line between tough and sensitive.
