Song You Need: Sexyy Red and Latto take a well-earned victory lap

The FADER’s “Songs You Need” are the tracks we can’t stop playing. Check back every day for new music and follow along on our Spotify playlist.

It’s Sexyy Red’s summer and we’re all just living in it. Where “SkeeYee” sounds like a wild night out, Young Nudy’s “Peaches & Eggplants [Remix]” is a wild night in. Sexyy sounds semi-relaxed when she says “Fuck me good n****, make me squirt / I’m an Aries that mean I’mma flirt,” like the perc just hit her. She might have bigger hits and harder verses, but victory laps aren’t about racing at full tilt.

It’s also been a great summer for Latto, who secured the best Cardi B verse of the year back in June. Already a raunchy rapper, Latto seems to think the best way to keep up with Sexyy Red is by getting ferociously horny, which pays off hilariously: “Gimme that neck like Benzino / Gimme that neck like, ‘where it go?’ / One thumb in my bootyhole.”

Latto’s lewd hand gestures in the accompanying video verge on camp, although you can practically hear critics gearing up to bemoan the state of women in hip-hop. But sex on camera has always been fraught for America; a 2019 survey indicated the 2010s had the lowest percentage of sex scenes per movie of any decade since the end of the Hays Code. Against this backdrop of cinematic chastity, the double standards levied against female rappers (nobody complained when 21 Savage did this) speak not only to sexism, but to a cultural deficit of eroticism.

Maybe that’s why “Peaches & Eggplants (Remix)” feels so good. The original is an onomatopoeic hit, but no one would call it a career highlight for 21 or Nudy. Latto and Sexyy aren’t afraid to get a little silly with it, yielding far more playful results, cheeky as the peach emoji. 🍑