When Joseph Badejo was a teenager, he closely studied Tyler, the Creator, a paragon for confused kids with contrived exteriors. A decade later, Badejo’s stage name, wolfacejoeyy, pays tribute to Tyler—the “wolface” isn’t “Wolf Face,” but “Wolf Ace,” a nod that almost feels at odds with his music. That the two artists seem so wildly different today is not only a testament to Badejo’s craft, but the way times have changed. In the early 2010s, Odd Future proffered a guarded take on romance, macking exclusively in ways that preserved their risque cool: Swag first, sex—if at all—second. As wolfacejoeyy, Badejo poses a thirsty-ass counterpoint to this model, and thank God, because the last humans do not need to be Supreme resellers. Sexy drill is, coastally and rhetorically, the dialectic opposite of last decade’s Los Angeles loiterers: shameless New Yorkers whose egos come second to their libidos. Fucking is more fun than pretending not to give one.
Case in point: Midway through “KIKI,” a standout of his new album, SUMMERSONGS, wolfacejoeyy gets so desperate, so shameless, that he crosses into delusion. “I know you like girls, boo,” he whines, staring down another rejection. “I like girls too!” It shouldn’t work, because it’s very stupid. But he knows this, and that’s what makes it so wonderfully absurdist: Desire and dignity are negotiating, and desire is beating dignity’s ass. Badejo has long mastered his performance of the relentless club rat, a slick-mouthed character whose persistence is so annoying it’s endearing. For a while, this effect was inextricable from his youth. When he rapped about being too young for the club, it gave him a bratty vibe, the air of a swagged-out kid with a fake ID flirting with everyone he saw. Some of this snark remains on SUMMERSONGS, a low-stakes LP for showing some skin to. But more so than his other projects, Badejo’s latest feels like a grown-up record, which is saying a lot for someone who name-drops porn stars.
It’s true: The horny 21 year-old who made “Alexis Texas” is hornier at 22, and yet, somehow, a bit easier to take seriously. SUMMERSONGS trades the overcrowded, strobe-lit nightclub feel of his earlier work for the intimacy of a back-patio kickback—congas, staccato rhythms, slower BPMS, the occasional guitar lick. It’s a snug fit for his sleazy sing-rap, but materially, the looser palette also gives him more room to refine his seductive craft: no longer an out-of-breath pickup artist but a self-assured charmer, buzzing from a margarita and feeling invincible. Take the sexy-drill slow-dance “4 ME,” which makes his dirty-macking feel like a business offer. “Don’t play me like 2K,” he warns at one point, “I might spend it on your sweater.” Even if it’s corny, it’s effective, because he’s deadass: a shameless player willing to spend, even if it means he’ll have to buy 2k26 on Klarna. The laid-back cadence of “THE BIRTHDAY SONG” aptly suits its premise of a hopeless romantic—lightly drunk, highly disciplined—sweet-talking his way into your sweater. His delivery camouflages his desperation, masterfully concealing his bug-eyed lust.
Drill music is fundamentally kinetic, and in Badejo’s New York, that energy has adopted a certain look: tattered jeans, subway-surfing nihilists, mayoral PSAs, vape smoke. SUMMERSONGS maintains that contact-sport ethos, but imagines the contact differently—less Timbs-to-asphalt than skin-to-skin, mouth-to-ear. In its simplicity, it strikes a crucial balance between the chaos of desire and the vulnerability of acting on it. When you hear Badejo’s drunken drawl on “KANYE KIM,” or his fly-to-fuck fantasies on “TRIP,” you can practically smell the beer on his breath, feel the words warming your face. The more I hear SUMMERSONGS, the more I imagine a golden-hour backyard party, all clattering glasses and loose arms slung over sweat-slicked shoulders. For the first time in his career, wolfacejoeyy sounds more like the host than the kid who snuck in.
