Mixtape Review: Her, Actually by Bankroll Ni
The Atlanta rapper builds every song out of money owed, men taken, and women told exactly where they stand. On her debut mixtape, the joke-writing holds the whole way.
Six years in singles (with a viral “I’m So ATL” last year) from Atlanta’s Bankroll Ni, and in that time she’s refining her focus to who he got it coming from, who he crossed, and who’s man is in the passenger seat this week. She’s never once seemed to want to give any of that to anyone. On Her, Actually, the debut mixtape, she writes in punchlines almost exclusively, at a clip most of her peers can’t keep up for three songs, and the best of those is great.
On “Tab,” the verse cracked them all the way down to the last time she paid the favor, the hair all the way down her back, the nigga wire in the money, the Chanel bag, the dinner she just paid for, the car she just took off the lot. Then the chorus wraps it up with the last line, “He gon’ give me my gaps and I’m gon’ knock off his top.” A new verse on the same theme (a new verse in the same song, really), starts the candles, lays the roses, pours the bottles, turns the red lights on, fixes it to a real scene, not just a dollar value, “Do You Need That” completes the same transaction with a slight variation in the taunt, directed to a woman who, it seems, can’t look away, and she punches three or four more in the stomach just like they was nothing, “I start thinkin’ ‘bout some steak when these bitches bring up beef,” then immediately follows it with, “I’d be mad too if I had to bag you,” rolling the window down, throwing you out, and bidding you farewell, bye bye, boo. The price on “Poses To” includes the gratuity, and the verse is out of town, out of town talkers, word is that she tacked on a few questions, if you got any inquiries.
Further upon her gift for endless misdirection, when she gets the jokes flowing, they flow one after the other, so the “Bounty” story she tells where she isn’t Macaulay Culkin, not home alone, feels like Kevin, and always has two phones, covers a Christmas film far from the logistics of cheating on your partner. She mentions the habit again on “Kai Cenat,” where the move from show to show makes her feel like a baker getting all the dough and where she drops so much coin in the mall she can’t get back through the door. On “Cocky Asf,” her game plan is to buy a Lamborghini, name it Mary, and marry her man in order. Her deadpan one-liner is on the same track, “’Cause ain’t no bitch topping me/Unless a bitch actually topping me,” which dashes itself to bits before she mumbles on.
Even the fire department bit is worn away to “Firefighter,” brunt tire the fire hose cookie thrown. He’s singing about the fire needed someone to pass me your helmet, even her chorus becomes more rapid, two stabs where one finishes before the other has: “Made him come put on this suit/Then ripped him out his clothes.” She’s done something minor twice. Men go through the pathway by which vendors work a stadium, one after the next, none there long. She takes one on “I Got Yo Man,” apologizes, sends him away, mentions that he had already been warned to keep it in his pants because the word of him was bad, and robs him by checking his pockets before she gets rid of him.
The man in “Addressing Me” is more aggressive about the texting and can we talk this out now and is more easily dismissed with “Want talk/But this ain’t therapy.” Get too excited, not worth it, leave him alone, and if he behaves like he’s the catch, get rid of him, is standard protocol, and if he knew how, he would be Rashad, and she would be New New from ATL. He don’t know how to act. On “What We On,” there’s the same minute desire, armed Drum touching a dome, Margielas, and a sneaky girl she was with who was not supposed to be in the first verse. She hands over the chorus of “dATE” to a man that just wants to take her out, then by the time she reaches the second verse she’s the one pulling up in the SRT, wining and dining women on her own dime, telling them not to waste any time about it.
She’s in the section on “Chosen One,” can’t decide between two girls, and solves it by knocking two girls into each other and taking both home. She calls herself a girls girl on “Inside,” then offers to eat bitches the next line, and what’s really on her mind is that people talk about her all the time and never respectfully. The writing dips down on “Walk,” where the hook takes up most of the song, and the verses address it. She even has a scolding for other rappers stealing her lyrics, then suggests she should patent the peel.
A man is dead on “Again,” and the party wasn’t even good. She puts two of those things side by side and then leaves them, instead of choirs, back on their ass, running up a bag; these women mad. Her rival’s man is her little doormat, the only thing on earth that she will put down that line, and you would’ve thought he saw a ghost how he hit four flat. It’s about me out-earning my father, the only thing I ask for on this song that doesn’t involve my having to bring someone else down. Then it always back onto the money and she’s finger-fucking it like it’s her. No man in any of her songs gets called that.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Bounty,” “Firefighter,” “Do You Need That”