Archive | August, 2024

Ice Spice – Y2K!

11 Aug

Ice Spice appears to be on the way down and Y2K! is not going to change that, even if it is a better album than the moment. It’s just that she doesn’t seem to have enough interest in wanting to stay at the top. The second move is the hardest one, the one that proves that you have legs beyond being a momentary sensation and Ice Spice had clips of her looking bored while twerking and ads at her concert as the run-up. Y2K! is not the album to overcome that.

There’s some stuff here that I really like. “Gimme A Light” has her working well in her comfort zone. Ice Spice was a revelation when she came out. We all feared that New York drill’s crossover moment had died with Pop Smoke and Ice Spice delivering the breakout while evolving the form was huge.

She brings in a couple of interesting evolutions over the album. There’s great storytelling in “Plenty Sun” which is a nice development for her. Even more interesting is “Did It First” where she takes the role that I would expect to see from someone like PinkPantheress even to the extent of a Central Cee feature.

There’s not that much of interest here though and that’s made worse by her softening her music in what may be a misguided pop turn. Her voice just felt deeper in “Munch” and her beats were more submerged. It’s all toned down now and that loses the best part of her music.

Y2K! is not a great album but it’s not a bad one either. It’s just that at this point in her career, Ice Spice needed something more than ambivalence.

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Lupe Fiasco – Samurai

7 Aug

It feels like one of the big questions of the past few years is how can a rapper age? 3k decided to make a flute album rather than “rap about colonoscopies” and Em continued to fail at any kind of growth. Lupe just seems to have relaxed.

The complaint with Lupe was always that he had great flow but horrible beats. Samurai suits him though. These are airy, jazzy beats and he works well with them. They give him plenty of space to stretch out on his rapping and are never less than pleasant. That’s really all that I’ve ever asked for with his beats; that they don’t distract from his flows.

The flows are still great. His rapping isn’t going to turn heads the way it did in his prime and he doesn’t really have any of the storytelling her that marked his best work but he’s still a pleasure to listen to. Lupe’s old. He doesn’t need to set the world on fire with a new album. He can just relax a bit, have some fun and give us something to spend a little time with.

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