Today’s windfall of new hip-hop music continues. Another new entry comes from Chicago rapper Queen Key, who’s coming back after having triplets in March of 2020 after dropping her last project — the raunchily-titled Eat My Pussy Again in 2019. Now, after a year off, she’s gearing up for a strong comeback, employing a clever strategy to ensure the success of her bouncy new single, “Too Hot.”
Over the years, songs have gotten shorter and shorter to accommodate the increase of streaming and the increasingly saturated market. The mischievous Key takes full advantage of this effect with “Too Hot,” which clocks in at a trim — but endlessly replayable — 90 seconds. The beat, the rhymes, and the video are also all primed for maximum TikTok viability; the beat is bass-heavy like “Savage,” “Buss It,” and “WAP,” with quotable lyrical asides that practically beg to be culled for meme-ing (“He gon’ chew this pussy like it’s chimichanga” is my early bet). Finally, there’s a whole choreographed routine performed by a team of dancers at the beginning and the end which TikTok users are almost guaranteed to try to replicate in their own videos on the star-making platform. While making songs specifically for TikTok dances is a risky business as pointed out this week by Uproxx contributor J’na Jefferson, if the song does hit, it’ll be a long time before anyone gets another year-long break from Queen Key’s music again.
Watch Queen Key’s “Too Hot” video above.