Archive by Author

Grimes: Art Angels

19 Nov

Grimes_-_Art_Angels

Art Angels is entirely the album of an auteur. That means a care and dedication to the craft that, while increasingly common in pop, is still rare and noteworthy. It also means a number of idiosyncrasies. This is very much an album of an individual. That should be fantastic and mostly is, but this is an album with personality and I have yet to find a person with nothing to dislike.

I love so much about this album though. “Kill V. Maim” and “Flesh Without Blood” for instance are just perfect pop, effortless to fall into and deep enough to keep you in. There are so many ideas in these songs and all of them are good. Grimes here presents an unapologetic idea of pop that she completely owns and that is both imaginative and exceptional.

For all of that though, the album has flaws. For one, the lyrics are throwaway. This is largely fine for an album that is clearly not focused on them, but it is hard not to be a little disappointed when they turn out insubstantial. Additionally, given the variety in the album, it would be hard not to find some things to kick against. “Venus Fly”, for instance, lets down an energetic chorus with a muddled and repetitive song. Similarly, “California” and “Butterfly”, while both great songs do have moments where they seem to try to skate by a little. Also, I honestly just dislike “SCREAM”. This is the album of a person and it’s hard not to find little things about people that grate.

Overall though, this is a great pop album and it fits neatly into the current advent of female pop auteurs. I would call it a mold, but given how individual each of these artists and their albums are, that just seems disrespectful. I highly recommend this album.

– @murthynikhil

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The Weeknd: Beauty Behind The Madness

6 Nov

Beauty Behind The Madness is the Weeknd striking out for more mainstream success. The is the end of the path that his Ariana Grande collaboration “Love Me Harder” started. This is still a Weeknd album and still has some interesting stuff, but feels something of a miss.

He had a specific emotion that he was emblematic of. The Trilogy is the feeling of walking home at night while knowing your relationship died at birth. His lyrics and his singular voice both pushed the theme to the point where the music became shorthand for the emotion. This has shades of that, and shades of a more mature look at it, in this album but it has missteps and diversions enough to distract from that core. This is not a bad album, but it is hard not to feel a little let down. “Shameless” and “The Hills” are where his music was always headed, both lyrically and musically and “Can’t Feel My Face”, while new ground for The Weeknd, is indisputably a great pop tune, but “Dark Times” for instance is just lazy tripe.

It’s hard to know who to recommend this album to. Weeknd fans will find some stuff to fall into and so will people looking for off-beat pop, but anyone looking for more than a serviceable new album is bound to feel disappointed.

– @murthynikhil

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Speedy Ortiz: Foil Deer

31 Aug

Foil Deer is an impressive step forward for an already impressive band. Their lyricism, always unparalleled, seems stronger than ever as especially seen in the posturing of “Raising the Skate” and storytelling of “The Graduates”. Complemented by the noisy, aggressive melodies underlying the lyrics, their entire album has a density of ideas that are rarely seen and are a pleasure, if an intense one, to listen to. This album exemplifies what has always seemed to be the Speedy Ortiz promise; well-crafted and intelligent indie rock.

– @murthynikhil

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Snoop Dogg: Bush

12 Aug


Snoop Dogg is as much of an institution as an artist. He’s been everywhere, knows everyone and now even does everything with what is legitimately a funk and R&B album, Bush. Sadly, as with much of his recent work, this quality is not quite all that it could be, but it is a very pleasant listen with some stand-out moments.

First of all, the music video for “So Many Pros” is excellent in all the right ways. Snoop Dogg has always been about personality as much as music and that is really what allows him to carry this video off. The simple density of imagery in that video is astounding. The song itself is also very good, continuing the trend of R&B/funk rap that seems to be making itself known.

Additionally, “Edibles”, “I’m Ya Dogg” and even “California Roll” make great work of their guest stars. Kendrick Lamar puts on a clinic in the latter, if a slightly antiseptic one, and while T.I. is quite overshadowed by Snoop’s inimitable laid back flow in the former, the song is wonderful. The album as a whole runs slightly dry after these brief spikes, but is never unpleasant to listen to. It’s only real fault is in the lack of an edge to the whole.

– @murthynikhil

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Earl Sweatshirt: I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside

12 Jun

I_Don't_Like_Shit,_I_Don't_Go_Outside_An_Album_by_Earl_Sweatshirt

Earl Sweatshirt is busy making his own music. I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside is dark, honest and minimal in a way that is almost anti-commercial. It is also much harder than any of its peers. With his last album, Doris, he was already far in his own lane. Now, he has set up home there.

This is a confessional of an album. The stark beats perfectly frame his tales of depression and make his paranoia and pain even more jagged. He cuts through it with struts, going from “Focused on my chatter, ain’t as frantic as my thoughts/Lately I’ve been panicking a lot/Feeling like I’m stranded in a mob, scrambling for Xanax out the canister to pop” to “Fishy niggas stick to eating off of hooks/Say you eating, but we see you getting cooked, nigga” in the excellent “Grief” and from “And I’m low and I’m peakin/It’s cold in the deep end” to the anthemic “Ain’t no bitch in my DNA” in “DNA”, but the core is dark. It takes a lot from the artist to bare himself like this, and the fact that most don’t dare makes this all the more powerful.

I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside requires work from its listener but this is a person laid bare, and a person who doesn’t require effort is a person not worth listening to. This album is definitely worth listening to.

– @murthynikhil

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Young Thug: Barter 6

4 Jun

This would be a unique album by any standard, but dropping The Barter 6 into the modern rap scene is almost iconoclastic. Young Thug does draw his fair share from Lil Wayne’s well, but his sound is very immediately distinct.

This album in particular does a masterful job of presenting what exactly that sound can be. His singing and rapping meld into each other smoothly, aided in part by his borderline unintelligible flow. There is just an awareness of sound here that is exceptional. His voice harmonizes with the beat enough to groove you in and then chops it to jolt you back up. While he lacks the awareness that normally comes with rap (despite a Mike Brown line in OD, this is not by any means a political album) this makes for a very new sound.

This is not a flawless album, some of the guest spots in particular leave a lot to be desired, but this is still a very good album and a very intriguing one as well. I can’t promise that you will like it, but you should definitely at least try it.

–@murthynikhil

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Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp A Butterfly

13 Apr

Kendrick_Lamar_-_To_Pimp_a_Butterfly

I really like To Pimp a Butterfly. It’s hard not to like Kendrick Lamar right now, good kid, m.A.A.d city was a classic and his work since then has been exceptional. While not quite the masterpiece that his previous album was, To Pimp a Butterfly can at least raise the question when it comes to sheer quality and most certainly surpasses its predecessor in innovation.

That’s part of what made the album so hard to evaluate. There is no doubt that this is a challenging album. It bends genre incessantly, “These Walls” could have come off a Prince album and “For Free” is more slam poetry than hip-hop. A jazz band backs the entire production. Yet, despite those things, this is a hip-hop album through and through. Songs like “King Kunta” or “The Blacker the Berry” are fire for even the most die-hard rap purist.

It challenges the listener with content as well though. The entire album has a running storyline of temptations from Lucifer and tests from God with Kendrick as a messiah. “u” tears deep into Kendrick showing him holding himself responsible for his failings and tears into the listener as a result. “Mortal Man” questions the listener’s dedication to him, but comes off as self-doubting instead of accusatory. For all of the lows though, there’s the positivity of songs like “i” and “Complexion (A Zulu Love)” both of which break up the intensity of the album very nicely while also just being very good music.

To Pimp a Butterfly is very simply what you should be listening to right now and what you will be listening to for a long time.

– @murthynikhil

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Drake: If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late

9 Mar

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It always takes a mixtape to get the best out of Drake, and while studio issues have pushed this into being a paid release, this album has a much more comfortable feel than his commercial work. There is a reason why Drake is one of the biggest names in rap right now and this is a much needed return to form for him.

Despite that If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late has a strange feeling set of flaws. The biggest one is that it doesn’t feel as individual as is normal for Drake. There are places where his beats and even his flow feel like they’ve come from someone else. It’s not surprising that Drake would pick up some of what is floating around rap these days, it’s just a little disorienting.

The album as a whole though remains distinctly his. There’s more menace in here than normal, but it’s a good look for him. It does require quite a profound suspension of disbelief when you hear him talking about threatening people, but that doesn’t steal the ominous nature that both his stellar production and lyricism carries here. Also, his shot at Tyga is one of the better disses in recent rap history.

All told, this is a solid entry from a top tier rapper. It’s not a classic, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be listening to it.

– @murthynikhil

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Run The Jewels: Run The Jewels 2

4 Jan

RunTheJewelsRTJ2

It’s nice to be treated like an adult. It’s somewhat strange to describe an album that is adolescent in its fury with that statement, but real talk is hard to come by. In a world that feels more and more bullshit, this is at least a flame to hold.

Killer Mike and El-P continue their screed against society with Run The Jewels 2 that their earlier mixtape set up and even if society has not improved, their music has. This album manages incredible consistency without sacrificing an ounce of passion along the way. This has the feel of vast work behind it. The lyrics are quotable to a fault, running such jewels as “We killin’ them for freedom cause they tortured us for boredom” and the excellent “You want a whore with a white dress. I want a wife in a thong”.

Their flow is exactly what you need for an album with this weight and like Outkast or Run-DMC the two rappers have a great feel for the other. The album moves between story-telling about police brutality in the powerful “Early” to long, explicit digressions like “Love Again” with equal comfort. They’re as comfortable posturing as ranting and that leads to an album that never feels stale.

Raw passion alone would be enough to make this one of the strongest albums of the year, but the craftsmanship that they have poured into this as well pushes this far above the normal cut.

– @murthynikhil

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SOHN: Tremors

14 Dec

It feels like the Weeknd’s House of Balloons is everywhere these days, and I’m really happy about it. Tremors definitely has its nods in that direction, even if it lacks quite the level of depravity of that or the more recent LP1 and with it, something of the punch of either of those albums. However, that doesn’t keep it from being quite good. “Artifice” in particular is a stand-out track. It looks like the present is tortured vocals wrapped in electronic grooves, and there are many worse things that it could be.

– @murthynikhil

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