Evan Nabavian is working off that chametz
Alright, check this out. Ca$h Out is the guy who made the song “Cashin’ Out” in 2011. Everyone loved it for a few months, but you didn’t expect expect Ca$h Out to have any more longevity than Mims did with “This is Why I’m Hot.” And yet my computer tells me that I’ve listened to his songs more than 100 times in the last six months. How did we get here?
Last year, Ca$h Out rallied with “Let’s Get it,” once again drawing from Atlanta’s creative wellspring with DJ Spinz. Ca$h Out pivoted from club anthems to gaping sparseness and found a new voice in a murmuring croon somewhere between Lil Wayne and Nate Dogg. Soon, the track was affixed with brand name verses and released on eOne Music on an album meant to scrounge a few dollars off name association. Ca$h Out’s renaissance would have to wait until November when he would self-release his mixtape Kitchens & Choppas.
Trap rap aspires to be catchy, loud, and incontrovertible, but it comes out the most interesting when it blatantly breaks one or more of those rules. On Kitchens, Ca$h Out never raises his voice above a self-assured warble, half-singing over beats that patter, whistle, and chime in between 808 slaps. He follows minimal trap to its extreme ends and finds it fertile for flamboyant performances. Long since exhausted genre-tropes and bit characters get a second life in the stark atmosphere of Kitchens & Choppas’ trap noir. Ca$h Out stands as the gaudy host with the cheshire grin.
The sound is so potent that it brings out top performances in the guests, stars and unknowns alike. OG Maco and Skippa da Flippa rap like gravel-voiced Norse gods. Johnny Cinco delivers perhaps the album’s best verse, stoically intoned from the traphouse window in a stoned paranoia. Ca$h Out’s pimpishiness comes to the fore in a bouncy bonus track with Snoop Dogg where Snoop goes full-on whisper rap.
And then there’s this Dipset inflected smart-dumb humor where you’re not sure if Ca$h Out is in on the joke. The album has a skit where he receives an award for “Hustler Who Made The Most Plays This Year” and upon accepting the award, he salutes the other nominees who made so many plays this year. On another skit, an interviewer implores him to embellish his past. “Be as fake as you can be!” to which Ca$h Out heroically objects. Kitchens & Choppas perhaps singlehandedly revives the album skit.
Outside of this concept album, Ca$h Out revisits anthem-making with PARTYNEXTDOOR (“Don’t Worry”) and he teases a so-called R&B project (“WYD”). He co-stars with man-of-the-hour Fetty Wap on “Dopeboy” and drops a couplet that should have broken the Internet: “What’s my favorite movie? Blow. / What’s my favorite weather? The snow.” Ca$h Out’s career “ended” three years ago, which frees him from any and all expectations and lets him do whatever he wants. And he’s doing it all.
