You Still Here, Ho? is more of the same for Flo Milli, but that same is littered with small pockets of joy and Milli’s reliably dexterous flow.
Flo Milli’s opening question to the public was a bold choice: Ho, Why Is You Here?, the title of her bouncy, major-label mixtape proudly asked to any and all hoes who had the gall or the gumption to listen. Her follow-up retort is equally as straightforward: You Still Here, Ho? For those who still happen to be “here,” not much has changed from the previous installment of Flo Milli’s idiosyncratic brand of ATL-styled shit-talking to this one here. If anything, she’s a tad more adventurous this time around with the direction she takes her debut studio project, instilling a vague thematic contempt to guide the album — as opposed to a concept album, which this decidedly is not nor has the rigor to be — and taking on the persona of a Tiffany Pollard-esque reality television star for most of the track list. While the shtick is a tad redundant in terms of what Flo’s been doing up to this point (not helped at all by an apathetic Pollard, who phones-in a 30-second intro and outro and makes the already lame joker even cringier), it’s all still more or less within the same wheelhouse that her listeners have become accustomed to. With how confident Flo sounds on a track-by-track basis, you’d be hard-pressed to even think that two years have passed since then.
Which, on second thought, might not be the strongest compliment one could draw for a follow-up record; after all, shouldn’t listeners demand more than the exact same? You Still Here, Ho? is, in essence, an identical release to Ho, Why Is You Here?, concerned with similar topics (slapping bitches, stunting on haters, etc.) and executed with comparable flows and cadences as well. The only discernible difference seems to be a budget increase, paying for the wasted likes of Babyface Ray to mope around on “Hottie” and Rico Nasty to scream a lot on “Pay Day”; other than those two, it’s all Flo’s show. The biggest mark of quality here, then, isn’t based on the product as a whole, but more the small pockets of joy that Flo’s dexterous flows can reliably bring out at a moment’s notice — which, for a 17-track run of primarily solo cuts, is an impressive feat in-and-of-itself. While regulated to the ghetto of bonus track territory, the zany “Roaring 20s” summarizes pretty well what those pleasures can materialize as: where plainly ridiculous bars like “They never should’ve fucked up and gave me money / Came straight out of ‘Bama, now ain’t shit funny” can be traded off with such brazen conviction, only to be followed up with, yet again, more shots aimed at these hoes (“I swear, all these bitches be makin’ me sick / Like shit, all that bitch do is eat up some dick”). If that doesn’t convince you of Flo Milli’s greatness, I don’t know what will.
Published as part of Album Roundup — July 2022 | Part 3.
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