Loe Shimmy Puts Women First on ‘Pretty Girlz Run the World’

Loe Shimmy was in a St. Louis hotel room, getting vitamins pumped into his arm, when he came up with one of the highest-profile songs of his career.

The Florida rapper was traveling as an opener on Sexyy Red’s tour when he recorded the original version of “I’m Spent,” a woozy meditation on money and loyalty that would eventually land on Drake’s Habibti. With him in the room, Shimmy says, was a woman who kept asking him to buy her things. He turned the moment into a song.

“I made it in, what, 20, 30 minutes?” Shimmy tells Rolling Stone. “I had a girl with me when I was making that song, and she was just asking me for some shit. So I just put that shit in the song.”

He was multitasking throughout the session. “I was getting an IV at the same time while I was recording,” he adds. “Just catching the vibe.”

“I’m Spent” is one of the quieter standouts from the three albums Drake released simultaneously in May. The song strikes a balance between the flexing bravado you’d expect on a Drake track and a relatable sense of impermanence. “What if I go broke and ain’t got no more racks to spend,” Shimmy sings in the song’s intro.

Drake initially reached out asking him to send a couple of ideas before landing on an early version of “I’m Spent.” Drake then reconstructed the track. “He put it on a different beat,” Shimmy says. “He did his little science to it, and he texted me and said, ‘We got a hit.’”

“I’m Spent” arrived this spring as Shimmy was preparing his own new album, Pretty Girlz Run the World, released July 24. The project offers more of those syrupy melodics, with Shimmy’s distinct, saxophone-like vocals guiding listeners through a romantic landscape.

Shimmy first made a name for himself with the gritty 2020 EP Zombie Land, which introduced him as a street-centric rapper whose music made more sense rattling from the trunk of a car than playing in a nightclub. He’s had flashes of a softer side, though. Zombieland 2, his 2024 follow-up, features “For Me,” a woozy, late-night plea for romantic reassurance that became his first Billboard Hot 100 entry when Brent Faiyaz joined him on a remix later that year. 

On “Run the World,” Shimmy is once again joined by Faiyaz, who pulls the song’s contemplative romanticism into a distinctly R&B register, floating effortlessly over drill-influenced drums from Smash David, Pooh Beatz, and Caleb Bryant. On “Too Exotic,” Shimmy returns to the punchy, menacing cadences that defined his earlier projects, only now he’s rapping about how he wants to treat the women in his life.

On “Everyday,” modern hip-hop’s Eighties dance revival continues with an interpolation of Cherrelle and Alexander O’Neal’s 1985 hit “Saturday Love.” Shimmy’s talents shine brightest here, his cadence balancing the beat’s bouncing 808s against the sample’s breezy melodies. On “Seduce You,” a West Coast-style funk beat ushers in Shimmy’s vibrant storytelling, conjuring a neon-drenched strip club that somehow manages to feel unexpectedly tender.

Shimmy sees Pretty Girlz Run the World less as a reinvention than an opportunity to bring one part of his sound to the foreground. “I’ve been pushing it, though,” he says. “If you listen to my old tapes and shit, I’ve been making soft shit for the women. I’ve been on the subject. I just knew I could capitalize off making an album focusing on that subject. I used to mix it up with that Zombieland.”

On the new album, he goes deeper into that sound, making songs with women in mind. “Put on a nice dress, get pretty, put their makeup on, feel sexy,” Shimmy says of the album’s purpose. “Just a vibe.” Like many savvy musicians, he understands which audience really counts. “When you go to the club, guys get what the girls want to drink,” he says. “You get in the car with girls; we’re going to let the girls play the music they want to play. They just run it.”

Shimmy says that perspective comes partly from his upbringing. He grew up primarily around his mother and sisters, without his father in the home.

“Most of my childhood, I only was raised in the house with women,” he says. “So I respect the women differently.”

Even as the album leans into his softer sound, Shimmy does not plan to abandon the murkier street records that first built his following. “I like both,” he says. “I’m going back home now. I’m going back to the trenches, but I’m still going to keep it melodic, saucy. It’s me.”