Rap Blog: DaeMoney and Babyface Ray’s reliable excellence

Rap Blog is a weekly showcase of a standout rap song.

Collaborations between DaeMoney and Babyface Ray have the kind of consistent excellence you could set your watch to — as long as it's a Rolex, or better. The Detroit rappers have been working on songs together since 2018, and the tradition continues on DaeMoney's new project Rockstar Lifestyle 2. The tape sports a great new collaboration called "Earned It," a song that proves that the duo's resplendent chemistry is only maturing as time passes.

The beat, courtesy of LulRose and Hitmula, is given just over 23 seconds to play before Ray opens the song. It's a wise choice: the instrumental sounds like a portal to hell with heavy 808s over it, a vortex of backmasked horror movie synths that wail like lost souls. Such a tone is the perfect backdrop for Ray's verse, where paranoia and defiance are littered with vivid details about the circumstances that have kept his circle small: "They like, 'boy, you deserve it," he raps, "They see me, they getting nervous." DaeMoney matches this impressive balance of description and pure bars in a creaky deadpan. "All them scams, all them drugs, all them road trips I took / All that shit I been through, I swear that I could write a book," he raps, and by the end, you're eager for a copy.