Vince Staples ‘Dark Times’ Review: A Hip-Hop Memoir Haunted by the Past

“Fans say they want 2015 Vince,” Vince Staples says on “Etouffée,” a track from his sixth studio album, Dark Times. While the SoCal rapper’s career is an undeniable success story, far removed from his experiences as a teenage Crip that’s inspired much of his work, he’s still haunted by the possibility that violence might lie around every corner.

The album’s cover depicts a barely visible noose against a black background, and paranoia abounds on tracks like “Government Cheese.” The song’s refrain, “Don’t forget to smile,” starts to feel like sarcasm when a dejected Staples takes a phone call from an imprisoned friend: “Told him I was good, wonder if he believed it/Couldn’t tell him the truth.” He raps in a numb monotone throughout the track, like he’s pulling the words from his mouth.

Staples’s trust issues extend to romantic relationships as well. Atop a melancholic piano loop and clattering drums, “Nothing Matters” finds Staples betrayed by a woman who won’t take his calls, while on “Justin,” he relates a story about getting picked up in a bar by a woman who brings him back to her apartment, only for him to discover that she has a partner.

There’s an undercurrent of misogyny in Staples’s distrust of women. “I know some hoes that’ll pull up to give me some pussy before they give me a hug,” he quips on “Shame on the Devil.” But he allows himself to be checked on “Why Won’t the Sun Come Out?” by guest Santigold, who calls him out for that exact lyric, and champions vulnerability over machismo: “It’s fucked up/I’m gonna say it, you don’t have to judge it/but I’m gonna judge it.”

Dark Times is peppered with samples, both spoken (a discussion between James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni provides the basis of the interlude “Liars”) and musical (bits lifted from tracks by DJ Screw on “Black & Blue” and Marvin Gaye on “Radio”). For the first time on a Vince Staples album, there’s even an R&B influence, with soulful backing vocals on tracks like “Shame on the Devil.” Elsewhere, “Etouffée” pays tribute to iconic hip-hop label Cash Money as well as Staples’s roots in New Orleans, as a brief passage of Mannie Fresh-inspired synthesizers and drum programming gives way to menacing police sirens.

On “Radio,” Staples reminisces about the solace music provided in his youth, when Smokey Robinson, the Jackson 5, and Roberta Flack serenaded his early experiences with girls. Indeed, Dark Times plays like a musical memoir, even if not all of its stories are entirely autobiographical. For a rapper who’s always leaned toward a cynical perspective, Staples shines when he leans into the struggle, using his experience as both an example and a cautionary tale. As he declares on “Little Homies,” “Life hard, better go harder.”