Album Review: Rosemary’s Baby by Tawobi
A record built from the wreckage of a year that nearly ended him. Tawobi turns the voicemails, withdrawals, and broken routines into the clearest mirror he’s held up to himself yet.
By early 2024, that identity was buckling. Taylor Thompkins (aka Tawobi) returned from an independent tour and promptly lost his job; health problems, heavy drinking, and a collapsing band followed. Streaming revenues dropped, he housed a friend who was spiraling, and he started talking about suicide. Before the collapse, he toggled between demented rap diaries and scratchy punk tirades. His band, Violent Highs, was noted for scratchy vocals that critique gentrification and racism.
The shift to Rosemary’s Baby reflects a move from posture to confession. A mentor’s voicemail in December woke him up, and he sobered up long enough to pull together songs he’d been tinkering with since 2018. He named the resulting album Rosemary’s Baby after his mother and the film, framing it as a meditation on how American culture demonizes its victims. He asked listeners and loved ones to leave messages; those recordings bookend tracks and root the record in community. The first song even ends with his mother greeting him by his family name, a snippet he captured during a conversation with her.
The opener, “Aaron Mingo’s Message,” catches a friend checking on him. That reassurance crashes into “Now That’s What I Call Music,” a bluesy, beat-driven self‑portrait. Thompkins admits, “I usedta never leave the house, held up in my room with a pill and an ounce.” Where earlier projects like Black Saturday cast him as a superhero avatar, here he sounds exhausted. There are jokes about Xanax and matrix‑walking, but the hook (“Get out my way now, I’ma get it”) carries menace. The raw honesty he flags in his notes becomes a dissertation, whereas this time, he’s showing the messy parts. In “Amerikkka,” the personal expands into social critique. He skewers racist mimicry with “Monkey see? Well honkey monkey do” and flips patriotism on its head: “America, I am the glue/America, I am the truth.” Over a sampled distorted guitar and heavy trap drums, he boasts about being “off the leash” yet warns that the country forces impossible choices. The song threads anger with humor, showing he can fuse punk energy and rap cadence without smoothing their edges.
But things wobble on “Real Shit.” Thompkins tries to ground the song in debt and exploitation (“Rap don’t make no money/Merch my wallet/Need some profits”) and local detail (“Bed bugs made me itch”). But guest RXK Nephhew crashes in with cartoonish brags about cars and guns, derailing the confessional arc. The track is fun enough, yet its trap boasts and misogynistic asides feel like the sort of meme‑rap Thompkins used to release as EP filler. A later song, “Sucka!,” slides even further into juvenile humor (“Suck it slow, suck it fast/Aye, sufferin’ succotash”). Those detours don’t ruin the album, but they do interrupt its momentum.
The voicemails restore that momentum by broadening the album’s emotional range. Gabi Sasse’s message is a cry for help: “I don’t know how to do a balance between work life and not work life ‘cuz I’m dying.” The exhaustion in her voice mirrors Thompkins’s own burnout and outlines the record’s theme of collective collapse. Later, we get one of the album’s best songs with “13.” On this record, Thompkins enumerates reasons not to commit suicide (“13 reasons why offing yourself is [redacted]/One you let them win if no one wanna see you prosper”) and jokes about fearing cops more than bad luck (“I heard 13 was unlucky but ion fuck wit’ 12”). That doubt hangs in the air long after the song ends.
The album’s most piercing commentary arrives on “Online.” Over swirling synths and a punk‑rock chorus, Thompkins mocks influencer culture: “Everybody wanna be famous/Don’t nobody wanna die nameless.” He admits he’s alive but wonders who would know if he weren’t posting, compares himself to Frankenstein’s monster, and lampoons our addiction to “black mirrors.” In the second verse, he confesses a desire to be normal but doubts whether rap can change servitude or drown him. Johnny Polygon’s cameo adds a sing‑song refrain that sounds less like a feature than a friend chiming in. It’s here that Thompkins’s negotiation between ambition and vulnerability lands hardest.
Rosemary’s Baby is deliberately chaotic. Producer Oldman stitches blues samples, punk guitars, and trap drums, letting them clash rather than blend. That friction suits an NC who spent months blacking out and waking up on the floor. When it works, the energy feels urgent and alive. And the voices recorded off phones give the record a diaristic feel. When it doesn’t work, it comes off as scattered. Those missteps, however, mirror Thompkins’s story. He didn’t compose a neat redemption arc throughout, but instead, assembled a collage of confessions and camaraderie.
The record also marks a shift in Thompkins’s stance. Earlier releases often positioned him as an outsider railing against an industry that ignored him. In Rosemary’s Baby, he seems to be speaking from inside the wreckage. He is still angry and funny, but he is willing to share credit, admit fear, and let his dad question whether his dream is worth the cost. The glimpses of peace—watering bamboo in “Amerikkka,” expressing a desire to be normal on “Online”—suggest he is trying to renegotiate his place in a world that has chewed him up and left him alive. Even the album’s title, drawn from his mother’s name, hints at self‑rescue: Rosemary’s baby is no demon, he’s simply her son.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Now That’s What I Call Music,” “Amerikkka,” “13”