Baby Keem: “Good Flirts” [ft. Kendrick Lamar & Momo Boyd] Track Review

Unless you and your cousin share custody of a Grammy, Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar aren’t the most relatable relatives. But every new song they drop together sounds more and more like the archetypal kids-table hang: all shenanigans, no qualms. Whether they’re ad-libbing around Dodger Stadium or threatening to punch you in the face, their playful familiarity regularly results in their most fun work.

They continue this streak on “Good Flirts,” a track on Keem’s new album Ca$ino about an on-again, off-again boo that has a sweet, distinctly juvenile quality. It’s in the downtempo Motown beat, so FM-radio-ready it would bring a tear to Berry Gordy’s eye. It’s in the schoolyard call-and-response with New York singer Momo Boyd, who coolly inhabits her MC Lyte bag in the face of two exasperating musketeers. It’s in Keem’s warbly-to-the-max refrain, delivered in a cooed cadence that’s equal parts Fabolous on ”Shawty Is Da Shit” and The Chainsmokers’ “Closer” (I wasn’t kidding about the radio).

But it’s most apparent in Kendrick’s verse, which splits the difference between adorkable flirtation (“Fuck a friend zone when you hug like this”) and winking digs (“Shit, I gossip with my bitch like I’m Young Thug too.) “Never too late to meditate on emotional attachments,” he muses before complimenting his paramour’s wagon eight times. It’s as if, worn out from the giddy romp of “The Hillbillies,” Keem and Kendrick posted up back home, made sure their parents were asleep, and started talking about women, man.

In a documentary short Keem released during the Ca$ino rollout, Kendrick spoke on their family, describing “a warfare, psychologically, to try and change our generational curses.” In their solo work, the pair don’t shy away from tackling the heavier aspects of their shared history. But “Good Flirts” posits that healing can also look like kicking back, and showing some love to your inner teenager.