I have an old 90s R&B playlist I built when I went down a rabbit hole one night and never came back up and Adina Howard’s ‘Freak Like Me’ sits right at the top. That song is an unabashedly self-aware slut-pride moment and every baddie with a pulse should have it on rotation. The drinks, the weed, and the guys, oh fuck yes, the guys. Women in that era knew what they wanted and took it without blinking. Adina gave girls permission to be that woman then and we have used it extensively and without remorse ever since. On ‘Baddie Like Me,’ Sheena-Rae has renewed that licence to be a baddie and I am here for every fucking second of it.
Sheena-Rae’s on the mic and owns the club with this decadent pop rap track, dragging every bad bitch out of hiding and straight onto the dance floor. Shots lined up, heels clicking, energy so hot every guy is bricked and standing at attention. The girls move like they know what they’re worth, and the room bends around it. Sheena-Rae wrote the manual on not giving a damn who’s watching while making sure everybody watches and every woman in that club just remembered who the fuck she is.
She opens with “Babe, babe, watch me elevate / I have that aura, make everyone snap their necks my way / Hey, hey, I glow up every day / You know I got the baddie energy” and okay, the aura line does something. Real talk, she’s describing a gravitational field that makes a whole room reorganize itself around one woman before anyone understands why. Then she drops into the breakdown – “You know I’m savage / The whole damn package / May hold some baggage / Still everyone wanna bag it / You know I’m savage / The whole damn package / I’m not your average / You know I will cause some damage.” She’s leading with her complications and watching the line get longer because of it. A woman who knows her damage is part of the appeal and owns it completely? That’s a whole year of therapy right there.
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See, the pre-chorus is where she gets surgical. “They always leave thinking grass is always greener / But I reinvent my look, my whole demeanor / I level up and I come back looking sweeter / Then they double back, oh it’s crystal clear / They don’t find nobody like me / They want a baddie like me.” We have all watched some man decide he was done and walk out, and then had the absolute pleasure of watching that realization roll across his face when he figured out what he actually left. Sheena-Rae delivers that verdict like she’s been holding it in her back pocket the whole time and pulls it out slow just because she can.
This is the verse that made me put my drink down and just stand there: “Everyone in a line / All of them on standby / ‘Cause they know I’m so fine / They all tryna be mine / Yeah, they waiting on time / I don’t chase, I assign / Center stage in my prime / I don’t pick, I decline.” “I don’t chase, I assign” and every guy in that club is throbbing before she finishes the line. She’s clocked which one she wants tonight and he has no idea he’s been selected. That one ended three fucking group chats. I felt that somewhere low warm and I am not ashamed about it.
She follows with “They can try, they can try, they can try, they can try / But they will not match this vibe / Then they’ll cry, then they’ll cry, then they’ll cry / When they realise.” The repetition is doing heavy lifting here. She’s pushing it in slow and deliberate like she has all the time in the world and zero interest in rushing. That’s the energy of a woman who has watched this cycle play out enough times to find it genuinely funny.
And then the bridge. Because listen, this is where Sheena-Rae gets specific about the combination that makes her impossible to replicate: “That they don’t find, when they don’t find / That mixture of sassy and sweet / Cute and sexy / When they don’t find, when they don’t find / That mixture of / Independent and needy.” She just described the thing men spend years trying to find again after they lose it. The woman who pulls him in close enough that he loses his footing and also walks out clean on her own terms. Every girl in that club knows what she’s talking about. We deploy that shit on purpose. Zero remorse.
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The outro closes it all the way out: “Don’t think I’m pressed about you / Be a fan and watch me move / Don’t think I’m stressed about you / Sit front row, enjoy the view / Enjoy the view / ‘Cause you won’t find nobody like me / You won’t find nobody like me / They want a baddie like me / Won’t find nobody like me / Won’t find nobody like me / They want a baddie like me.” She’s handing everyone a seat assignment and telling them the show starts when she says. And the view is her moving across that floor being clocked by every man whose eyes haven’t left her body since she walked in.
London-based and criminally talented, Sheena-Rae spent years earning this moment. She finished her degree in Musical Theatre, went deep into the London Centre of Contemporary Music, and spent time performing across Cyprus because she was building something, not waiting for it to arrive. She showed up on ITV’s ‘Romeo and Duet’ and pulled from a genuinely stacked influence list: Kehlani, Doja Cat, Nicki Minaj, Tinashe, Ariana Grande. You can hear all of them somewhere in her DNA but she sounds like none of them, which is the whole point. Her debut EP ‘Soul-ty Tiers’ came out in 2021, she followed it with ‘Come Alive’ and ‘Break From My Brain,’ and ‘Wasted Energy’ is out now alongside this one. The girl has been putting in work and ‘Baddie Like Me’ is the payoff.
Adina Howard lit the match thirty years ago and women have been burning the whole thing down ever since. Sheena-Rae’s ‘Baddie Like Me’ is the same goddamn fire in a brand new outfit, and the guys lining up outside haven’t figured out yet that they don’t get to decide anything about how this night goes. She already did. Same energy. Different decade. The licence is renewed and we are absolutely using it.
