CupcakKe @ SWG3, Glasgow, 21 Jan

Far from greeting the audience with a conventional “Hello Glasgow”, Chicago-born rapper CupcakKe lives up to her reputation by opening her show with “Who’s sucking dick tonight?”

Of course, the crowd bursts into unanimous cheers. This is exactly what they’re here for: after all, CupcakKe is known for her provocative, hyper-sexualised lyrics, and she does not hold back during the show. 

Glasgow-based Rahul.mp3, who has been supporting CupcakKe during her stint around the UK and who is noticeably excited to have landed back on home turf, gives off a similar vibe of queer wholesomeness to the noticeably young crowd, opening their set with fan favourite 365 by CupcakKe’s once-collaborator Charli xcx. Many of the excitable fans bobbing around SWG3 have clearly dressed up for the occasion, from kink-friendly leatherware to T-shirts sporting the slogan “Your dad is my cardio”.

It is more than obvious that people feel free in their self-expression here, and this is proven again and again throughout the show. In spite of CupcakKe’s famous NSFW-rated lyrics – with the setlist jumping from Queef straight to Vagina – there is something joyful and pure about the way she interacts with her fans. More than once, she invites people up onto the stage to dance with her, handing her self-declared favourite dancer $1000 as a prize and asking another to be in her next video. 

Image: CupcakKe @ SWG3, Glasgow, 21 Jan by John Mackie

Her frequent breaks to chat to her fans, take selfies and point out her favourite outfits of the night do interrupt the flow of her set, but no one seems to mind – audience participation comes in handy, too, when she declares to have lost her voice from “sucking too much dick”. She seems unphased by her own need to take breaks from rapping, frequently turning the mic around to face the audience, who are all too keen to burst into a cacophony of moans during CPR.

There is nothing polished about the set, which consists mainly of CupcakKe rapping along to a backing track. Of course, this suits the audience just fine, who seem to prefer singing along to listening raptly anyway. The whole affair seems more like an excuse for CupcakKe and her fans to hang out together, to bond over their shared delight in the absurdity of her lyrics. 

CupcakKe, during her 2019 hiatus and publicly-shared mental health crisis, declared that she was worried about children singing along to her admittedly raunchy lyrics. She seems to have moved on from this: her Glasgow set proves to anyone that what makes her music so appealing is its unflinching acceptance of sexuality. Her performance, rather than seeming dirty or promiscuous, only exudes joy and acts as a celebration of queer culture, as evidenced by the chant of “L! G! B! T!” the crowd erupts into in lieu of a call for an encore.