Steve 'Flash' Juon“That’s a Girls Name” came out in 2018. Four years later Shelley Marshaun Massenburg-Smith announced he would go by Shelley FKA DRAM from now on. If you’re not already confused let me add another layer to the cake — DRAM stands for “Does Real-Ass Music.” Given that “Real-Ass” is hyphenated, wouldn’t that actually make his former name DRM, like the widely hated practice of digital rights management? Yeah I’m not going down that rabbit hole. Not today. Instead lets talk about what a fun song “Sundress” is.
Shelley FKA DRAM may hail from Hampton, VA but this song screams “Southern California” to me. It’s probably a dive too deep for this review but it reminds me of “Sunbeams” by Volume 10. Same playful energy. Same appreciation for the good life. Same relaxed funk. Same singing energy. This doesn’t sound like a rapper feeding his voice through a computer module. This sounds like a rapper who just felt like singing and wanted us to hear his real voice. It’s also charming how polite DRAM is on the track. He’s not swinging his dingaling around and saying how the girl should be riding his jock because he’s rich and famous. “I lost my cool but I don’t want to cause emotional harm” he quips, shy as a church boy at a Sunday social.
“Best Hugs” has a very similar vibe. There’s just a little bit of macking here, as DRAM is vowing that he could be the one receiving the hugs from the girl he admires if her man fucks up too badly. Still he can’t even bring himself to be more vulgar than “she wants the D from me.” That’s a level of restraint seldom seem in rap or R&B. Who told Shelley that he could be this charming? I mean really you don’t even need to explain “That’s a Girls Name” when you got game like this. I could listen to him sing-rap like this all day long.
Unfortunately “WWYD?” is the only other track here, making “That’s a Girls Name” an incredibly short EP at under ten minutes total. It was also a completely unexpected release in 2018, following his very successful major label debut with “Big Baby DRAM” in 2016. He didn’t have to put out a random release like this with no warning and could have just served us up another full pack, but as extended plays go this one is definitely worth going out of your way for.