Rauw Alejandro has been teasing Trap Cake Vol. 2 for months, promising to build on the sludgy, trap-soul sounds from his first iteration of the project, which he released back in 2019. The EP finally dropped last night and while it’s a quick, 33-minute ride, it refuses to be limited by brevity. Rauw does a lot with a little time, churning out music that’s more grim and provocative than his last full-length album, Vice Versa, but he’s great when he’s lurking in darkness. There’s a bleak disaffection in the guitar-drenched “Gracias Por Nada,” and he lands a steely, down-tempo coolness on the lusty “Red Velvet,” featuring the Jamaican artist Shenseea.
And as good as those songs are, one of the album’s experimental peaks happens on “Wuepa.” The dim and dubby track is powered by a thudding beat you’d find in a vampiric nightclub, and it features what, at…
