The Vince Staples Show follows the titular Vince Staples living his life as a rapper and his adventures and trials as a decently successful and known rapper in Southern California. While this sounds pretty basic, what Vince goes through and how it tells these stories makes the show interesting and funny. With this being Vince’s first project of this type, writing is pretty impressive at just how smart and funny it is. I feel this show will be unfairly compared with Donald Glover’s Atlanta because both use influences of David Lynch’s work and surreality that both shows use to explore the ideas of what living life as a rapper is like within the greater society and in the Black community. At five thirty-minute long episodes, this show left me wanting more but very much satisfied with the story. The show follows Vince doing regular stuff like going to the bank, a family cookout, taking people to a theme park, and speaking at his old high school, but these things lead to wild outcomes. All with a tinge of violence that is shown pretty matter-of-factly.
The show’s humor is much like Vince’s dead serious delivery, like that you’ve seen him give in his many interviews or podcast appearances while promoting his music projects. His use of just being a character is based on himself and his life as it is now and how he reacts to the things happening to him. He seems a bit bored and overwhelmed sometimes, but he is also ready to get whatever this is over with most times. Two characters regularly appear in most episodes: his girlfriend, Jada (Andrea Ellsworth), and his Mom, played by Vanessa Bell Calloway. Calloway, as his mother, plays the no-nonsense Mom with the right punch of humor and authority. Through her limited time, you can see how the character of Vince became the person he is through how she reacts and comments on things. Her interaction with Deja is also very funny. It’s adding a spark to the usual combative Mom/Girlfriend dynamic. Ellsworth is funny as the girlfriend and feels like a regular sitcom-style banter between the two in some of the more outlandish happenings. All these people just treat the wildest stuff like it’s nothing, and even things that some might find alarming, like, say, guns, as a normal part of life.
It’s the last part that I feel ties this show with earlier works by Vince Staples. The fact that violence and the threat of violence at all times is a regular part of life. Much like his albums, his past as a teenager who was in the streets is always a presence. That you can’t always outrun your past and that it’s a part of you and something you have to deal with and look at straight ahead. Even outgrowing it and changing your life doesn’t mean those things disappear. That’s something I feel when this does get compared with Atlanta; it handles differently. I feel the show plays into his public persona in how he answers questions with very well-thought-out, challenging answers that, most of the time, the interviewer/host just laughs at. I’ve always wondered how Vince thought about that; while other rappers occasionally get it, most others just chalk it up to the fact that he’s funny. Well, he is hilarious, and along with the many others who worked on this show, they’ve made it one of my early favorites of the year already.
Score: B+
