Coi Leray

One Liner:  Lady rapper biting everyone else's thing.

Wikipedia Genre:  Hip hop, pop

Home: Monclair, New Jersey

Poster Position: 2 (4) 
Both Weekends.
Saturday.

Thoughts: That is unfortunate.  When the lineup first came out, I had lamented the lack of rap acts and someone told me that Leray would be a great get for the rap crowd.  I must disagree.  I mean, yeah, some of this is rap, but this is not something that would interest me at all.

Anyway, being super negative nelly here.  I was just hoping this was going to be badass and not so derivative.  Her top hit yanks a sample from Grandmaster Flash's "The Message," which that has been used many times - Puff Daddy, 2Pac, Ice Cube, etc.  But the people are apparently liking it, as its got 350.1 million streams.  "Players."

Meh.  Grabbing a classic beat like that and then just spouting boring brags.  "Make My Day" steals the beat and a handful of the lyrics from "Pump Up The Jam."  "Bops" rips off the Neptunes sound. "No Angels" sounds so much like Cardi B I looked it up to make sure she wasn't working under a pseudonym.  "Bitch Girl" yanks a chunk of the Hall & Oates classic "Rich Girl."  "My Body" re-purposes "It's My Party."  This is like the 38th Marvel sequel of lady rap - super familiar and unoriginal and the joy is plastic and worn after one use.  

Her real name is actually Coi Leray Collins, and she got her start on Soundcloud in 2018.  By 2020, she had Lil Durk remix one of her singles, and that track ended up going platinum.  Let's take a gander at that one for context.  "No More Parties."  Strangely, only 44.7 million streams though.  That doesn't feel platinum.

I definitely like how she has created a new word of "MHM," which apparently has multiple meanings.  Lil Durk is apparently a terrible rapper.  Did he come to ACL last year?  His name sounds familiar.  I just re-read my review of him (he didn't end up coming, so not only does he suck but he is a quitter) and it was not complimentary.  But he was the guy who got hit in the eye by pyrotechnics at Lollapalooza last year, and so he had to leave his tour and get better.

She is the daughter of "rapper and media mogul" Benzino.  I have never heard of Benzino, but he apparently co-owned The Source, and was in a rap feud with Eminem in the early 2000's.  I'm guessing Em won since I've only heard of one of those dudes.  Wikipedia says that Coi first released a track in 2011 when she was 14, but quit rap, dropped out of high school, and got a job.  But after a few more years, she decided to try again in 2018 and worked with a bunch of low-level rappers I've semi-heard of.  Ski Mask the Slump God, Trippie Redd, Fetty Wap.  Crap like that.

Four albums - 2018's Everythingcoz, 2019's EC2, 2022's Trendsetter, and 2023's COI.  "Players" is for sure the hit off all of those, no other song comes close on streams.  The first albums has no track with more than a million streams, the second gets a little better, and the third album has four with over 30 million (three of which feature someone more famous).  The new disc has the hit and then almost all of the rest of the tracks are under a million streams.  I just think this stuff is very uninteresting.