Rapper Vince Staples played Cry Baby songs at the Tiny Desk

Vince Staples stopped after the second song of his Tiny Desk set on 21 July 2026 to run a small test on the room. He asked who knew who George Jackson was, then Bobby Hutton, and kept going through the names of Black Panther Party members who were killed. No hands went up.

He also named Larry Kimmons, who was shot and killed by a Pepperdine University security guard in 1969. The song that followed the question, Go! Go! Gorilla, is about the Black community's fear of law enforcement, and the tension of that exchange carried through the rest of the performance.

The Long Beach rapper has moved fast over the past decade. His interviews became appointment viewing on wit alone, and in 2024 he took that to television with The Vince Staples Show on Netflix. NPR's Bobby Carter, who produced the session, framed his last two albums as the work of a fully realised artist who has widened his subject matter to the things that have shaped his community and his own head.

The set drew mostly on this year's Cry Baby, with one selection reaching back to 2024's Dark Times. The running order was Blackberry Marmalade, Go! Go! Gorilla, White Flag, Shame on the Devil and Only in America.

Staples assembled a young band for it rather than performing over beats. Jennifer Haack and Mikaiah Lei played guitar, Chloe Haack bass and Myles Martin drums, and all four sang backing vocals behind him.

Staples has a September show booked at 26 Leake Street in London. Other sets from the series in our coverage include redveil rebuilding his beats for a band, and the rest of our rap reporting is on the hip-hop hub.