EBK Jaaybo - "Don't Trust Me" (Album)

Every now and then in his songs, EBK Jaaybo will tell you that he can't tell you something. Any more detail, the Stockton rapper implies, and he could get put away. It's a confusing declaration, since Jaaybo's music is defined by its granular detail of gang life — dead rivals are mocked, live ones are warned, and blood is spilled with harrowing specificity. Don't Trust Me is Jaaybo's first project since his 2024 project The Reaper and as the cover suggests — with its cloaked, hooded figure — the project sticks to his formula. Go-to producer Yvnng Ecko churns out mostly gladiatorial and menacing beats marked with choral pads, blown-out 808s, and a bounce fit for a hydraulic car meet. But as always, Jaaybo crafts narratives that are as vivid as they are troubling, a certain fatalism wafting off the songs like sulpher, even when he seeks a change ("Hope I could leave this gangsta shit behind me one day, for real / Get that location we gon' come today," he raps on the Mozzy-flavored "Million Dollar Thuggin"). It's distinctly troubling music: his raps are written from deep within a rip current of endless loss and violence, and tragically, a weapon is the only purchase his seeking hands can find. via — Jordan Darville of The Fader