Hard Girls

There are days I’m fine with Ed Sheeran or whoever making me feel something deep, but most days what I actually want is hip-hop that doesn’t care about your feelings—something crude and mechanical, especially from women who’ve got more edge and style than I ever will. City Girls are exactly that. They don’t bother with the fake gangster routine. At least one of them has done actual time, which is the only credibility that matters when so many other rappers are just dressed up in a story. Their songs are straight autobiography. Where The Bag At, Sweet Tooth, Tighten Up—these aren’t invented narratives, they’re just how their life sounds.

Yung Miami and JT—Jatavia Johnson and Caresha Brownlee—met through friends, decided to make music together, and pretty quickly it was clear it would be hip-hop. Drake wanted to work with them, then everyone did. But what matters is they’re not interested in anything else. No experiments. No emotional bullshit. No songs they’ll regret in a few years. They just exist as themselves, completely, and if that’s too much for you, that’s the whole point.

There’s something about that kind of certainty that changes everything. You listen to a few tracks and you get why they land the way they do. They’re not clever or vulnerable or trying to be relatable. They’re just there—crude, unmovable, unapologetic—and if you can’t handle that, you’re missing the actual point.