Latto’s ‘Sugar Honey Iced Tea’ Is a Cinematic Ride Through the South

After 15 years in the rap game (the 25-year-old started rhyming when she was 10), and about four in the mainstream, Latto’s gotten so good she makes it look easy. She knows how to switch flows and styles seamlessly, like the way she works some R&B into hard-hitting trap on her latest single “Big Mama” without a hitch. With hits like “Put It on Da Floor,” and its buzzy remix with Cardi B, she plays the mean-girl-bad-bitch role convincingly, especially after the sugary pop of her chart topper “Big Energy.” Though her third album, Sugar Honey Iced Tea, is a nearly frictionless listen, the intention and effort it takes to make something so cohesive, skillful, and succinct is undeniable. Throughout the album, she sounds confident, comfortable, and in control.

Perhaps she seems so at ease on Sugar Honey Iced Tea because she literally made herself at home on it, crafting a careful ode to her Atlanta roots and life in the South broadly. Before she was Latto, Multatto, and Miss Mulatto before that, Alyssa Stephens was raised in Clayton County, Georgia. That area is just outside of Atlanta’s city limits, but an undeniable and deeply intertwined part of its metro area and culture. (This is something she takes head on in the remix to “Sorry Not Sorry,” a song from another local rapper, Omerettà the Great, that caused a stir a couple of years ago by telling people from the city’s surrounding areas to stop claiming “the A”). 

Latto keeps the hometown love reverent and creative, with few moments that are too on the nose. Only three songs take their names from local relics — the excellent intro “Georgia Peach,” the uber-cool “Shrimp & Grits,” and the syrupy sex romp “Copper Cove,” named for a restaurant and lounge there. Yet the ATL allusions throughout the album give it a satisfying sense of place — there are references to ripping rubber bands off stacks of cash at the infamous Magic City strip club, moving like hometown legends TLC, acting like “New New,” a main character in a cult-classic film named for the city, and even a shoutout to Atlanta’s Real Housewives. 

Latto’s crew of featured guests are all Southern acts, too, most being from Atlanta as well. She landed an A-Town legend in Ciara, but also calls on newer voices Young Nudy, Hunxho, and Mariah the Scientist. The features list is rounded out by Coco Jones, who was raised in Tennessee and born in South Carolina, and Texans Teezo Touchdown and Megan Thee Stallion. However, what makes the album whole is the way Latto leans on Southern sound staples, with innovative but nostalgic trap beats, R&B that nods to the reign of LaFace Records, throwbacks to skating-rink sessions and Freaknik shenanigans, and home-cooked soul samples. (Most of what sounds old here isn’t; in fact, the most prominent sample is of Mike Jones’ “Back Then” on “There She Goes.”) 

What makes the album great, though, is the way her top-notch bars flow through super-smooth sequencing. “Georgia Peach” sounds like heavy, red, velvet curtains parting to reveal a play in three acts, revolving around the streets, the sensuality, and the heart of Atlanta. The jarring beat switch in “Big Mama” makes perfect sense as a transition into the gruesome “Blick Sum,” where Latto is the puppeteer of her gun-toting man. It’s an interesting take on gangster shit from a girlfriend’s perspective, but she goes on to fight her own battles on songs like “Settle Down” and “H&M” (not named for the fast-fashion powerhouse but the “hurt and miserable” bitches that hate on her). “Check a ho in person like the doc/Rollie, Richard, AP watch/Different Flava Flavs with the clock,” she brags cunningly on the cocky “Settle Down.”

“Copper Cove” kicks off a section that’s steeped in sex but sounds less like sex for sex’s sake than a lot of rap in this direction can. That song in particular is named for a small aside in it where Latto names the places where a real love affair began: “Copper Cove to the studio, I was plotting on your ass back then/ Let you hit it from the back then, week later, I was moved in,” she says demurely. “Ear Candy,” with Coco Jones’ searing vocals on the hook, is even more sentimental, but “Liquor” keeps things playful. While Latto is by no means a shy girl, it all sounds less explicit and more tasteful than songs like her own “Sleep Sleep” and “Like a Thug,” from her raunchy second album 777. Even more emotionally and astutely, she explores relationship ups and downs on songs like “Look What You Did” and “Prized Possession.” “I could be a player, but it’s not my truth,” she admits on the former, joined by another known lovebird, Mariah the Scientist, who’s currently holding down Atlanta royal Young Thug while he’s jailed in a controversial RICO case.

Sugar Honey Iced Tea is separated in to two discs, the second containing just the originals and remixes of well-liked, previously released songs “Put It On da Floor” and “Sunday Service.” After Disc One closer “S/O to Me,” they sound like a celebration of how far Latto has come. “I know I’m sexy as hell, and I ain’t denying it sells/ Stand in the mirror naked sometimes and admire myself,” she says, taking on the oft-cited and always boring disparagement of women’s rap (and music more broadly) as a desperate ploy for carnal attention. 

Throughout the album, Latto shows she’s more than a sex symbol, even if she enjoys playing the role. She is the whole package — charismatic, dexterous, and long prepared to make music that sticks. She sometimes even sounds like a disciple of Drake, from the melodic “Big Mama” to the lyrical miracle “S/O to Me.” Yet, unlike that falling superstar, few would reasonably question her authenticity, especially as she reps Atlanta not just as a place that she’s been, but where she’s from.