DEJ LOAF

“#AndSeeThatsTheThing”

(Columbia)

Every year since 2010 at the BET Awards, Nicki Minaj has been named best female hip-hop artist because, well, let’s just say hip-hop has long been inhospitable to female talent in all its varieties. Simply to be heard, it can take exceptional gifts, like those possessed by Minaj. She is indisputably great, and in this particular arena, indisputably alone. During her acceptance speech this year, she acknowledged her fellow nominees, but focused on one newcomer, DeJ Loaf, saying, “You’ve been very, very interesting to me, and super, super forward.”

Sixteen women have lost to Minaj in that category, but this was the first year when there was even a credible contender for runner-up. DeJ Loaf, from Detroit, has a child’s voice, round and small and not yet firm. Her breakthrough single, “Try Me,” which was released last year, sounded like getting threatened by a particularly needling child. “I might catch a body,” she sing-rapped, and it swung like a do-si-do.

Since then, DeJ Loaf has become a refreshingly chameleonic presence in hip-hop, slithering through songs about mean-mugging and sweet loving. Her new EP, “#AndSeeThatsTheThing” — her first major-label release of new material — has some of both, her saccharine voice sometimes blurring the lines between them. (When she’s rapping alone, her sneering is most alluring: Gritty songs like “Desire” and “We Winnin’” easily outshine simple love declarations like “Butterflies.”)

Most of the time, her soft and stretchy voice is spread atop oozing, shimmery production, and manipulated by machines; it’s a toy to be fiddled with and molded. She meets her match here on “Hey There,” a hazy, undeniably sweet duet (produced by iRocksays with J. Vaughn & the A-Team) with Future. He, too, uses technology to extract deeper meaning from his voice. Together, they’re like robots finally achieving sentience, androids melting into flesh and blood.

Being a female rapper invariably means all manner of collaborations with men, many unwelcome and retrograde, but DeJ Loaf has consistently used those opportunities to show new sides of herself, whether adding spooky kiddie menace to Kid Ink’s “Be Real” or ride-or-die insouciance to the remix of Lil Durk’s “What You Do to Me.” But she has never been more impressive than on the remix of Omarion’s “Post to Be,” one of this year’s most salacious songs, and one on which DeJ Loaf finally blends her aggression and her sensuality, asserting, “I’m a pimp by blood, ain’t no coaching me,” and later, cleverly shrugging, “I just got a checkup and ain’t no ho in me.”

On this EP, the duets are more balanced, be it “Hey There” or the rising hit “Back Up,” a back-and-forth with Big Sean. Both rappers are from Detroit, and the quick-stepping song samples DJ Clent’s “Back Up Off Me,” a ghetto house and juke anthem that was the first release on Michigan label Juke Trax. Big Sean is a whimsical, witty rapper, and while DeJ Loaf can’t quite match his energy, she’s happy to double his attitude: “You got to promise not to stress me / Don’t be blowing up my phone and don’t be leaving voice messages.”