SAMPLEDSha Ray & DJ Haram Join Forces on 'Critical Thot'
The Bay Area rapper and the 700 Bliss producer pair up for a cross-country collaboration interrogating power, sexuality, and feminine authority.
Sha Ray has spent years carving out space as a rapper and producer in the Bay Area, but Critical Thot marks the moment she steps into the spotlight with a full-length statement. For the project, she linked up with DJ Haram — the Philly-born, Brooklyn-based producer who also makes up half of 700 Bliss alongside Moor Mother — for a record that drifts between rap and electronic experimentalism without ever sounding like it is trying to please two audiences at once.
The collaboration started the way many 21st-century partnerships do: a live show, a follow request, and a DM. Haram caught Sha Ray performing in Brooklyn back in 2022.
"We spoke at the venue and after that I followed her on social media. She gave an incredible performance, so later on when she slid in my DMs asking for beats, I was already on board," Haram says.
An Armand Hammer and DJ Haram gig in Los Angeles served as the real catalyst. Sha Ray flew down from the Bay to link up, and though nothing was tracked that day, the meeting set the wheels in motion. From there, the entire record was built remotely — Haram cooking up instrumentals in Brooklyn, Sha Ray writing and recording on the West Coast, files flying back and forth until the shape of the album came into focus.
"Haram and I have had so many overlapping experiences working as women in the music industry, which really enriched our bond. That, and her very striking approach to production, really inspired a lot of the writing on this record," Sha Ray explains.
That bond is audible across the LP. Haram pulls from a wide palette — industrial clatter, trap bounce, spectral strings, blown-out bass — and Sha Ray navigates it all with a poise that rarely reads like a debut. Her writing homes in on power, sexuality, and the friction between self-determination and the gaze.
"As a rapper I'm pretty exclusively interested in interrogating misogyny and sexuality in my work. Critical Thot is a deliberation on unapologetic feminine authority, while being very honest about the complicated truth of being a participant in self-objectification, and sexuality as a social currency," she says. "This record focuses a lot on defining power in feminine sexuality as relational and ever-shifting, and thus inherently imperfect. However, it is a power that I have and I am going to use it."
The album also ropes in Nappy Nina, JWords, and Archangel for features. It is out now via Backwoodz Studioz.