Vince Staples spent his last three albums going inward — cataloguing the weight of Ramona Park, North Long Beach, the block-specific gravity of a life. Then he made Cry Baby and turned the volume up on something else entirely. His seventh studio album, released June 5 on Loma Vista Recordings and his first as an independent artist after departing Def Jam, swaps the personal for the political and the minimalist for the loud: live guitars, blown-out vocals, hard-hitting bass, and a post-punk urgency that Complex called his most experimental work since 2016’s Big Fish Theory. The Long Beach rapper brings the full live band to Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater in Austin on Thursday, October 22.
About the Show
The Cry Baby Tour covers 16 dates across North America, kicking off October 19 in Atlanta and closing November 15 in San Francisco. The Austin date lands between a Houston stop (October 21 at Bayou Music Center) and Dallas (October 23 at South Side Ballroom). Staples will be backed by the same four-piece configuration he used for his NPR Tiny Desk Concert in July: guitarists Jennifer Haack and Mikaiah Lei, bassist Chloe Haack, and drummer Myles Martin.
Cry Baby‘s 10 tracks include singles “Blackberry Marmalade,” “White Flag,” and “Cotton,” and they operate differently from anything in Staples’ prior catalog. The album “shifts its focus outward, examining the recurring cycles of social and political unrest in America” — the same ground he planted his flag on at Tiny Desk when he stopped mid-set to ask the crowd if they knew George Jackson and Bobby Hutton. He framed the album’s release himself, plainly: “As the world burns, I have decided to release this album.” He also launched the release differently than most: selling tickets at El Rey Theatre himself, opening rehearsals at The Smell to fans, and streaming the sold-out LA release show for free. A full live band is not an incidental choice for a set built like that. No support acts have been confirmed.
Venue & Logistics
Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater sits at 801 Red River Street in Austin, an open-air room that has served as the city’s primary outdoor hip-hop and rock destination for years. Doors at 7:00 p.m.
Tickets
No ticket price was available from sources at the time of publication. Tickets are on sale through Ticketmaster. Buy tickets