Steve 'Flash' Juonwolfacejoeyy’s “Cupid” wastes little time trying to grab your attention with cover art that automatically caused a “safe search” filter to kick in on my web browser. (Who asked for that? Not me.) In truth it tiptoes right up to the line of being pornographic but stops short thanks to the clever use of the model’s elbows and some blue gaffer’s tape. I have a feeling most social media platforms will feel the same way about it, so even though there’s nothing wrong with the cover I’m using a picture of the artist from his Instagram instead. Feel free to use that as an excuse to follow him.
joey (born Joseph Badejo) hails from Staten Island and has named Tyler, The Creator as an influence right down to the fact he put “wolf” in his rap name. It would be hard to not name Tyler as one if you were born after 2000 (joey was born in 2001) and aspired to succeed in rap, television, internet clout or entertainment in general. I appreciate joey being that up front with his inspirations but I don’t hear it on tracks like “number” or “finsta.” It’s not just that he doesn’t have Tyler’s gravelly voice or the ability to upstage anybody he does a cameo for. Tyler may dabble in singing from time to time but he’s still a rapper at his core. joey on the other hand is a singer who dabbles in rapping.
His heavily synthesized and manipulated vocals walk up to another line without crossing it — AI generated singers. Take “nympho” featuring BEAM for example. The song is a banger without question. The bass hits hard, the singing is hypnotic, the light snare and the “pew pew” sound effects all work. The problem I’m having is that it feels suspiciously like you could feed the prompt “sing these lyrics in an emo rap style” into any AI vocaloid and have it spit out this result. As much as I enjoy it I’m suspicious of it not being real. It sounds too much like an amalgamation of every viral artist from 2018-2025 who came before him.
Speaking of cameos though A Boogie wit da Hoodie is the lone name I would consider a certified star to appear on joey’s album on the song “Dallas.” Boogie is almost as well known for his legal troubles as his music, but multiple TV appearances and guest appearances plus a BET Award have firmly cemented himself in the rap diaspora. Unfortunately Boogie’s bars on “Dallas” are just as AutoTune and synthesized as joey’s. I’m not telling you that you can’t tell who does verse one and who does verse two, but the homogenization of singing rap does make their vocals closer than they need to be.
The persistent feeling I get from a half hour listening to “Cupid” is that this is background music for shopping at the mall. Even with an attempt to be subversive or shocking with the album cover, the actual content found inside the cover is anything but. It’s almost indistinguishable from R&B. In fact I see no reason not to call songs like “bad gyal” and “fav girl” exactly that. He’s crooning. This is the sound of a department store that wants to be hip and appeal to the youth (“how do you do fellow kids“) without offending the old white people. That’s where the idea Tyler is an influence really falls apart. On multiple occasions Tyler Gregory Okonma has gone out of his way to offend people with his language, his pranks, his fashion choices and his flippant attitude. Those things combined with a ridiculous level of talent at everything he does makes him a star. I won’t say wolfacejoeyy isn’t or can’t be a star, but he’s exactly the kind of star the music industry loves, because he’ll never piss off anybody.