I have always believed a woman can improve almost anything by making it more expensive and slightly more scandalous, and Paytra proves my point with ‘Ride Wit Me’. She walks into Nelly’s early-2000s cruise and starts charging room service to the nostalgia. The familiar hook still gives you that loose windows-down bounce, while her new verses bring modern pop-rap production and enough hot-girl swagger to make the whole ride feel considerably less innocent. The hotel suite is booked and Paytra sounds like the woman who already knows everybody is watching her walk through the lobby. Babe, if we are revisiting 2000s hip-hop, I fully support doing it in Dior with a fucking expense account.
She establishes the heat with one beautifully shameless wish list. “I wanna shine like diamonds and drip Dior / I wanna get good head on the 28th floor” puts luxury and pleasure in the same breath because apparently the penthouse amenities now include an orgasm. The sex works because she treats it with the same casual entitlement as the designer clothes. She wants something pretty on her body and something very talented between her thighs, then carries on with the evening. I respect a woman who can make tongue service sound like another item the concierge should have handled before check-in.
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The expensive-girl shit is every bit as fun. “Full-time job is being expensive / Drinks on me, so I can expense it” gives Paytra the energy of a woman whose budget meeting somehow ends with champagne, and “I wanna hear a loud clack when I throw my card down” makes the flex even better because she wants the fucking room to hear her pay. There is something deliciously obnoxious about turning financial independence into performance art. She likes the sound it makes and anybody bothered by that can stare at the receipt from across the bar. This is hot-girl economics, and I have no notes.
Paytra gets meaner in the best possible place when she sings “I got my lick back, baby, that’s for sure / And now you’re back for more? Hell no.” Revenge looks very cute on somebody who has already moved several floors above the people who doubted her, and she knows it. Then “It’s giving femme fatale, it’s giving diva” turns the comeback into a whole fucking aesthetic. She is not spending the verse explaining why she deserved better. She is busy being harder to reach and significantly more expensive than she was when you had the chance. There are few pleasures more feminine than realizing somebody who underestimated you now needs an appointment.
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The party-girl side comes roaring back with “if they wanna drop, drop it low with their hips / And if they wanna pop, then we’re popping the Crist.” That is the version of sexy I wanted more of here because the body gets involved without turning every dirty thought into the same bedroom joke. Paytra wants asses moving and bottles opening, with the whole room participating in her good mood. The song starts feeling like the hotel-suite pregame that accidentally becomes the actual party because nobody can be bothered to leave. If my hips are already doing that much work, somebody else can deal with the fucking Uber.
Paytra was born in Michigan and shaped by New York City, and that combination fits an artist whose music carries ambition with a little danger tucked into the lip gloss. Her catalog moves through dark pop and pop-rap, with millions of streams and multiple Netflix placements already behind her. She has history with this kind of reinvention too. Her 2018 take on the Spice Girls’ ‘Wannabe’ became her most-streamed song on Spotify, so ‘Ride Wit Me’ continues a thread she already knows how to make her own. The appeal is hearing a familiar record come back wearing somebody else’s attitude, and Paytra gives this one enough personality to keep the nostalgia from feeling like karaoke.
By the end of ‘Ride Wit Me’, Nelly’s invitation has turned into Paytra’s itinerary. She wants the suite and the card that makes everybody look over when it hits the bar while the soundtrack keeps enough bounce underneath her to make bad behavior feel completely reasonable. The best part is how much fun she sounds like she is having with all of it – she gets to be rich in the fantasy and a little filthy when the mood strikes which feels like a much more interesting use of nostalgia than politely preserving it behind glass. If the ride comes with Dior and a 28th-floor view, my ass is already downstairs.
