SZA Finally Takes Control on 'SOS'

Top Dawg Entertainment, RCA • 2022

SZA SOS

Throughout her decade-long career, SZA has been remarkably transparent about her struggle with anxiety and depression. In November, she opened up to Billboard about the stress of meeting ever-rising expectations, describing herself as “emotionally [and] energetically unequipped” for the pressures of celebrity. She announced her sophomore album back in early 2020, but its actual release seemed uncertain; as recently as last month, she expressed reservations about meeting her label’s deadline. But she’s cleared similar hurdles before, conquering self-doubt to the reward of immense artistic growth. In 2013, she became the First Lady of Top Dawg Entertainment, the imprint that played host to Kendrick Lamar until early this year. She shrouded her early work, such as 2014’s Z, in dense clouds of reverb and big name features. On her breakthrough, 2017’s masterful Ctrl, she pushed her persona forward - “once you strip everything down, you're forced to say something.” This incarnation of SZA was irrepressibly clever, deceptively shy, and selectively brutal - “lemme tell you a secret,” she teased on “Supermodel,” “I’ve been secretly banging your homeboy.” Embracing the full spectrum of her personality and talents, a star was born.

In the five-year absence of a full-length release, SZA’s grip on the millennial and Gen Z audiences became evident. She reached the Billboard Top 10 three times in 2021 alone; steamy Doja Cat duet “Kiss Me More” holds the record for longest standing all-female success in the chart’s history. Her fan base is rabidly dedicated; a demo for the Darkchild collaboration “Shirt” floated in circulation for almost two years before its official release in October. Upon the release of SOS’s tracklist, the prospective appearance of it-girl indie rocker Phoebe Bridgers on “Ghost in the Machine” sent the internet into a tizzy. The singer’s appeal is well-defined - she’s the girl next door, the you-can’t-sit-with-us girl, relatable, untouchable, and more than a little unhinged.

Since her last studio album, SZA’s vocal abilities have sharpened significantly, imbued with the versatility of a pro-vocalist and the dexterity of a rapper. She comes out swinging on intro “SOS” - “this ain’t no warning shot,” she threatens, “[in] case all you hoes forgot.” She remains one of pop’s craftiest, most insightful songwriters, exploring several novel modes here; “Kill Bill” is a murderous revenge ballad, “F2F” explores thrashing pop punk, and “Smoking on my Ex Pack” largely eschews singing in favor of full-force spitting. The biggest success here is “Blind,” a masterclass in unrestrained, self-realized soul-baring. Stripped of all excess, the song hovers around SZA like forcefield, a space in which she can reckon with her own destructive behaviors and underlying insecurities. She sounds poised, unguarded but not broken; “it’s so embarrassing,” she confides, “all of the things I need living inside me, I can’t see it.”

SOS feels like a document of personal maturation as much as artistic growth. She sounds assured on bittersweet kiss-off “Gone Girl” and content on stunning Travis Scott duet “Open Arms.” “Bad as I wanna be yours, I can’t get with your program,” she sings on “Love Language,” an ocean’s leap away from the quiet daydreaming of Ctrl’s “do you even know I’m alive?” Despite her apprehension, she’s created a work that forges past expectations, prioritizing her own desires and emotional needs. Closing track “Forgiveless,” which incorporates a verse from Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s 1995 debut, feels like a passion project made by SZA for no one but herself. She’s no longer concerned with being a “normal girl” - “now that I’ve ruined everything,” she sings on “Seek & Destroy,” “I’m so fucking free.” B+

On 'Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,' Kendrick Paints an Imperfect Picture

Kendrick Lamar Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers

     Internal conflict has long been the crux of Kendrick Lamar’s music. His best work is tangled in layers of contradiction and dissonance, as unvarnished in its transparency as it is scrupulous in its articulation. Previous efforts have painted staggering, textured portraits of internalized racism and generational trauma, all colored with the toxic allure of institutionalized violence. This emotional push-and-pull is Lamar’s bread and butter, so when he deadpans “I been going through something” in the early moments of his fifth album, it feels like an intentional oversimplification.

    Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is the rapper’s most explicit exercise in duality, structured in two distinct halves. It’s an ambitious concept; in the era of the long hip hop album, a throughly engaging double-length project is an imposing task. Lamar has shown us he’s capable of captivating for imposing stretches of time - his 2015 classic To Pimp a Butterfly surpasses Mr. Morale’s runtime by only a few minutes. That album’s indulgent, overflowing brilliance left ample room for excess, but here, nothing feels gratuitous or out of place - each element is carefully placed, every interlude an essential piece of scenery. The record’s first half is tougher, more confrontational, often brimming with hubris - single “N95” seethes with understated aggression, one of the least transparent moments here. Its latter half, however, is softer by design, searching and open-ended, seeking closure but reaching no easy conclusions.

    Lamar is arguably the greatest rapper of his time, an accolade that has graced his standing for so long as to be uncontroversial. He’s respected by diehards and casual listeners alike, famously garnering hip hop’s first Pulitzer Prize for his standing opus, 2017’s DAMN. His albums are structured with the artful hand of a novelist, skillful at foreshadowing and interweaving coexisting themes and motifs. This is his most thematically complex and morally complicated work to date, rewarding deep focus and repeated listens - even at its daunting length, the details whiz by, and intricate patterns float just out of focus. In between its labyrinthine rhyme schemes and dynamic instrumentation, Kendrick grapples with attitudes towards therapy and emotional hygiene, the ramifications of abandonment, misogyny, “lust addiction,” and transphobia. All of it gushes forth in overwhelming volume - “writer’s block for two years, nothing moved me,” he confides on “Worldwide Steppers,” “[I] asked God to speak through me.”

     He often approaches thorny topics from polar perspectives, not so much playing devil’s advocate as he is navigating the struggle to do right. In the period since his last effort, Kendrick has gotten engaged and fathered two children, an evolution that imbues Mr. Morale with an increased urgency. He spends much of the album deconstructing his own evolving attitudes towards women, acknowledging and working through his prejudices. “We Cry Together” is an unsettling listen, a harrowing screaming match between Lamar and actress Taylour Paige that grapples with generations of unhealthy gender dynamics. It’s one of the few moments in which Lamar employs a woman’s perspective to amplify his own distortions, a welcome shift away from his pointedly masculine point of view.

     The confounding presence of Florida rapper and abuser Kodak Black adds an extra layer of discomfort to the album’s narrative - he appears here three separate times, an uneasy specter of misogynistic violence. Assuming Lamar’s best intent, he’s meant as a moral foil, but on an album that name checks Harvey Weinstein and R. Kelly as notable perpetrators of abuse, Kodak’s involvement is curious. On “Mr. Morale,” Kendrick muses out loud, “I think about Robert Kelly / if he wasn’t molested, I wonder if life’ll fail him,” which might register as a defense if not followed by a moment of greater empathy: “I wonder if Oprah found closure / the way that she postered the hurt that a woman carries.” The rapper’s fiancée Whitney is a guiding force here, empowering him to unpack years of trauma. This dynamic runs the risk of enabling the black woman savior complex - see Jay-Z’s 4:44, which transferred the weight of the rapper’s guilt to Beyoncé. But Lamar makes no qualms about owning his shit; “some people put it on the devil when they fall short,” he raps on “Count Me Out,” “put it on my ego, lord of all lords.”

     Kendrick takes great pride in his newfound stability, emerging with a series of moving personal truths: “I grieve different,” “I can’t please everybody,” “I choose me, I’m sorry.” It’s a fundamental shift from his early work, replacing the bottled, misdirected rage of good kid, mA.A.d city with patience and self-respect. He extends this compassion to the women in his life, reckoning with resentment towards his father and his own patterns of abuse in order to take accountability and make amends. The much-discussed “Auntie Diaries” is the most affecting self-critique here, a deeply complicated love letter to two transgender family members that tussles with his own misconceptions, inching from denial to acceptance, from acceptance to protective embrace. The frequent misgendering and liberal use of the “f-bomb” is unnerving, and many in the queer community have take taken objection. Ultimately, black trans voices should control the conversation about its impact, and his delivery is subject to criticism, regardless of its intention. But “Auntie Diaries” is most striking for its vulnerable, imperfect execution, allowing him the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them.

     More direct but no less nuanced is “Mother I Sober,” the record’s emotional peak and consummate breakthrough. Here Kendrick peels back layers of anguish, denial, and repressed hurt, unearthing generations’ worth of trauma. He combs back through the ways in which sexual abuse has haunted his family lineage, bearing the weight of his mother’s own abuse since his childhood. Her misguided attempt at protection instills in him a searing self-doubt; “they accused my cousin,” he recalls, “‘did he touch you, Kendrick?’ / never lied / but no one believed me / when I said he didn’t.” Familial trauma has a way of burrowing itself deep into the psyche, manifesting through addiction, depression, and self-destructive behavior; on “Mother I Sober,” Lamar contextualizes his ugliest inclinations, intoxicating diversions from his darkest fears and insecurities. This the bravest, most immersive piece of music he’s ever made, and in its unflinching honesty, Mr. Morale’s message finally takes shape.

     The pantheon of hip hop masterpieces is littered with flawless records - think Biggie’s Ready to Die, Nas’s Illmatic, or, more recently, Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Mr. Morale is not flawless, but willfully imperfect; perhaps greater artistic forebears are 2Pac’s scattered All Eyez on Me or the Beatles’ spastic White Album, ambitious double albums that succeed not in spite of their messiness and missteps, but because of them. In its warts-and-all presentation of its star, Mr. Morale becomes a necessary addition to Lamar’s catalogue, a deconstruction of his larger-than-life persona, and a flawed, deeply human piece of art. A-

(Note: portions of this review have been rewritten since its initial publication, corrections to a fundamental misreading of “Mother I Sober.”)

Kanye’s 'Donda' is a Messy, Complicated Step in the Right Direction

Kanye West Donda

If the surprise release of Donda last Sunday felt surprising at all, it sure was anti-climactic. It’s a story we’ve seen before: three different unveilings, shifting release dates, and conflicting reports on the album’s degree of completion made for an exhausting rollout that brewed frustration in diehards and skeptics alike. West’s tenth studio album finally materialized last week (with or without the artist’s approval), and reception has been mild to say the least. But after years of disappointing fumbles and false leads, Donda is a respectable, if complicated, step in the right direction.

It’s a predictably messy affair, bloated by ambiguous ideas and crowded with too many guest spots. Collaboration has always been an essential part of Kanye’s art - his group writing process has drawn criticism from hip hop traditionalists over the course of his career - and the list of performers and producers here far out-shoots his brimming opus, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. But where that album felt guided by West’s unyielding presence even in its most ridiculously overstuffed moments (“All of the Lights” famously credited fourteen guest vocalists), Donda often feels like a showcase of other, hungrier artists. Some of the features are truly awe-inspiring: “Remote Control” is piloted by a tirelessly creative Young Thug, and “Praise God” lends almost half its runtime to an ever-improving Baby Keem. There are duds too: the almost obligatory, posthumous Pop Smoke feature is rote and ill-fitting - the Brooklyn drill quota is filled twice over by Fivio Foreign anyway - and Griselda emcees Conway the Machine and Westside Gunn sound conspicuously out-of-place on the otherwise excellent “Keep My Spirit Alive.”

The extra creative padding is not always a bad thing; Kanye has a way of putting his foot in his mouth when he’s given the chance to do so. He’s uncharacteristically well-behaved here, though, coming across as a Kirk Franklin-type worship leader, hovering, encouraging, and often embarrassing. There is notable lack of explicit language - West’s mention of panties on “Off the Grid” might be the coarsest lyric here - and its pious, sanitized posturing feels fairly contrived coming from a man who has mused freely on anal bleaching. But Donda is pointedly less preachy than Jesus is King, where Kanye played televangelist to a crowd of lost souls no one asked him to save.

When he shines through the gimmickry, it can be magnetizing - West sounds particularly inspired on “Keep My Spirit Alive” and centerpiece “Jesus Lord,” and solo number “Believe What I Say” feels victorious for its sample credit alone - centered around the intro to Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing),” the track recalls Hill’s clearance denial for a sample on 2004’s “All Falls Down,” and its inclusion is a marker of just how far Kanye has come since his debut. Late highlight “Come to Life” is reflective, almost pastoral, adding layers of delicacy to an overly muscled body of work, and title track “Donda” drops the floor out of the cathedral entirely, resurrecting his mother’s voice in warm, choral light.

For all of its holy grandeur, Donda is not without its controversial moments. “Jesus Lord” ends with an affecting treatise on mass incarceration from Larry Hoover Jr., son of the infamous leader of Chicago’s Gangster Disciples. Kanye pled to Donald Trump for the commutation of Hoover Sr.’s sentence in 2018, a moment of vulnerability buried in the jumble of pro-Trump antics and ass-backwards conspiracies. It’s difficult not to be moved by Hoover Jr.’s personal account of the generational torture enabled by the prison industrial complex, even as it nudges towards pardoning the actions of one of America’s most despicable figures. It’s a complex, loaded moment that speaks to West’s undying love for his hometown as much as it does his warped moral compass.

Infinitely less forgivable is “Jail, Pt. 2,” which features Marilyn Manson, who has been accused of rape and sexual assault by multiple women this year, and DaBaby, now known best for his homophobic tirade at July’s Rolling Loud Festival. Shock value has always been part and parcel of Kanye’s artistry, but his deliberate inclusion of Manson and DaBaby feels vile. Perhaps the attempted arc here is forgiveness and empathy, but for two of the year’s least repentant hate-mongers, it feels misguided and wholly undeserved. It compromises the album’s vision and reminds us why we’ve been so down on West the past several years.

The nearly two-hour runtime is too ambitious for its own good, but it works against concerns of the hasty, Ye-era sketch-work many assumed West was doomed to repeat. Donda ends up being his best project since The Life of Pablo, and its scattershot execution reaches for that album’s kitchen sink eclecticism. While it falls short of excellence, the result winds up being as confounding, complicated, polarizing, and selectively brilliant as West himself. C-

Playboi Carti Colors His Idiosyncratic World on 'Whole Lotta Red'

Interscope • 2020

Playboi Carti Whole Lotta Red

Few rap releases in recent history have been as hotly anticipated as Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red. He first teased the title of his sophomore album in 2018, sending SoundCloud rap diehards into a tizzy. When its earliest incarnation began to leak in pieces, however, the rapper scrapped the project entirely, leaving fans scrounging for crumbs. In the wake of its initial destruction, the project’s legend began to grow - several lists of the best Playboi Carti leaks held forth that it would be his best work yet, and the sudden announcement of its Christmas release last year felt like a mirage.

But even among his most dedicated followers, Whole Lotta Red has garnered a polarized reaction. It’s a considerably less polished effort than his mumble rap manifesto, 2018’s Die Lit, cramming twenty-four explosive tracks into its generous, hour-plus runtime. But all of the rapper’s charm is intact, and his voice remains a uniquely engrossing instrument - he stretches syllables into extended melodies, drilling repeated phrases into post-hypnotic suggestions. He drops several double take-worthy one-liners (he generated early buzz back in November with “New Tank”’s “I got me some thots / they thought I was gay”), but lyrics have always been somewhat of an afterthought for Carti. He’s unparalleled in his gift of making lines you wouldn’t blink twice at into dizzying mantras - on “JumpOutTheHouse,” he rotates the titular phrase until it loses all discernible meaning.

For an album two-and-a-half years in the making, Red’s haphazard aesthetic can feel alienating - several of the tracks here sound like they were finalized in a single take, and small inconsistencies like the bizarre five-second gap at the start of “Place” suggest a hasty scramble at getting the project out to the public. Red yields an executive producer tag to none other than Kanye West, whose increasingly unpredictable (if wildly inconsistent) output offers an unruly creative precedent here. But even in the shadow of giants - personal idols Future, Kid Cudi, and, yes, Kanye offer contributions - this is Carti’s show. He brings out the best in his collaborators, adorning their verses with syrupy ad-libs, melting them into his own singular vision. In its stylistic pivots from violent, distorted freestyles (“Stop Breathing”) to poppier experiments (“Slay3r,” “Control”), the album’s scattershot approach becomes part of its appeal.

What ultimately makes Red Carti’s most enthralling effort yet is its penchant for the rawer and more vulnerable. “Ever since my brother died,” he seethes on “Stop Breathing,” “I been thinking ‘bout homicide,” eyes bugged out and bloodshot. He wears his heart on his sleeve on “ILoveUIHateU” and closer “F33l Lik3 Dyin,” sounding uncharacteristically wounded and introspective - “don’t get too close,” he warns on the former, “what you don’t know / it won’t hurt you ‘cause you you don’t know.” On “Closer,” he sounds lovestruck and sincere - “basically, what I’m saying is I can’t change / but for you I would do things that… / maybe one day I’d get on my knees and give you a diamond ring.” These are new and enthralling modes for Carti, and a stark contrast to the chilling paranoia of cuts like “No Sl33p” (“when I go to sleep I dream ‘bout murder”).

Adding to its complicated reputation, Red lands in the middle of a muddy PR moment for the rapper. The heavy inclusion of satanic imagery in the album’s artwork and pre-release merch has turned heads, arguably by design. But the details of his crumbling relationship with Iggy Azalea has inspired more valid apprehension - on the same day as the album’s release, Azalea revealed that Carti missed the birth of his child, absorbed in his PlayStation 5 with Lil Uzi Vert. It’s a troubling peek into the rapper’s interpersonal world, one in which codeine, diamonds, and violence are a welcome distraction from deep suffering. It’s often a dark one, but Whole Lotta Red paints an absorbing, more human portrait of an artist whose image has always seemed just beyond earthbound. B-

At Long Last, Jay Electronica Delivers His 'Written Testimony’

Jay Electronica A Written Testimony

Jay Electronica has always been something special. His impossibly sparse catalogue and treasured guest appearances have lent the rapper somewhat of a mystical air, making him a reclusive but mighty force in modern hip hop. His standing masterpiece, 2009’s “Exhibit C,” acknowledged as much with startling foresight: “I used to get dizzy spells, and hear a little ring / the voice of an angel telling me my name / telling me that one day I’mma be a great mane.”

Thirteen years after his breakthrough, the rapper delivers on his promise with A Written Testimony. It’s his formal debut, but it feels more like a long-awaited return, as regal and assured as his stately lyricism. Eight out of the ten tracks here feature notably uncredited contributions from Jay-Z, who plays a sharp and uncharacteristically zany foil to the billed MC. It’s astounding to hear Hova play the sideman - in his early ‘10s slump, he was outshined by descendants like Kanye and Drake on their collaborative efforts, but his performances here are nothing short of stunning. It’s just that frontman Jay Electronica is an immensely commanding and scene-stealing presence, his poetry effortless and profound in equal measure. Testimony was reportedly stitched together in 20 days, with the obvious exception of “Shiny Suit Theory,” which was leaked an entire decade ago. It’s remarkable that a debut the world had started to think might never come is so vital and timely, almost like the rapper knew all along when we’d need him most.

The production on Testimony is flawless - it’s handled largely by Electronica himself, with a few key exceptions (Swizz Beatz, The Alchemist, No I.D., and Khruangbin are notable contributors), and the scenery here is just as important as the sermon. Highlight “The Neverending Story” is stripped down to its absolute essentials, Alchemist’s swirling instrumental a playground for the rappers’ twisting philosophy.  The scene-setting “Ghost of Soulja Slim” is thrashing and colossal, and closer “A.P.I.D.T.A.” is gorgeous and tender, all supple territory for the album’s brand of lived-in grandeur. Electronica’s flow sits comfortably in the center of it all, textured and knowing.

There’s a thematic chain of biblical doom that holds the album together. Intro “The Overwhelming Event” features a sermon from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who gestures towards the second coming, asserting that black Americans are the “real children of Israel.” Testimony’s centerpiece, “Universal Solider,” opens with a description of the team responsible for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, a foreboding invocation of the oft-utilized idiom about being doomed to repeat the past. Across the record, Electronica mourns the present but finds calm within scripture, weaving seamlessly into Arabic, Nigerian, and references to the New Testament. His religious convictions pilot the album, but also veer into what radio host Peter Rosenberg called out as anti-Semitism, an accusation very much in line with those commonly directed towards the Nation of Islam. Regardless of Jay’s intention, the anti-Semitic rhetoric is an error in judgment, one that reminds us that even our sagest disciples are human and susceptible to the power of prejudice.

Even in its frequent, other-worldly clarity, A Written Testimony is a very human piece of work. It draws heavily from feelings of fear, sorrow, and regret. On “A.P.I.D.T.A.,” Electronica offers a final benediction: “the flesh we roam this earth in is a blessing, not a promise / I bow with those who bow to the creator and pay homage.” This is the spirit at the core of Testimony - in horribly uncertain times, we all crave wisdom and honesty. Some find those in the word of God; others might find them in the word of Jay Electronica. B+

'Music to Be Murdered By' Is Exactly What You Think It Is

Eminem Music to Be Murdered By

Eminem is like a magician out of tricks. He’s tried just about everything he’s got up his sleeve: big name pop crossovers, awkward sequels, meandering freestyles, and surprise album drops. But it’s all smoke and mirrors - the truth is that nothing can make up for the fact that Marshall Mathers is simply not the artist he was twenty-five years ago. His most recent sneak attack is Music to Be Murdered By, and rest assured, the only surprising thing about it is its sudden release. It’s a double album (goodie), chock full of tired violence, rambling tongue-twisters, and embittered diatribes. There are exactly zero revelations to be had here, and the album goes down much easier if you abandon all hope that you’ll find any. In its own perverse twist, Music might be the most listenable Eminem album since 2004’s Encore, and that’s not because it’s predictable, but because it’s consistent in its predictability.

With groan-inducing opener “Premonition,” Em picks right back up where he left off on 2018’s Kamikaze: “they said my last album I sounded bitter / no, I sound like a spitter.” The verse that ensues is muddled, largely nonsensical, and yes, bitter, a state-of-hip hop address that confusedly name checks LL Cool J, Tech N9ne, JAY-Z, 2 Chainz, Michael Jackson, and Tom Brady. It’s the sound of Mathers throwing everything he’s got at the wall and hoping something sticks, a technique that works to varying degrees on the rest of Music. The most convincing tracks are the ones where he settles into the caricature he’s become, lobbing one cringey, overcooked punchline after another. It helps that his work is padded by contributions from more vital artists, including Young M.A., Travis Scott associate Don Toliver, and the recently departed Juice WRLD. The production is also consistently engaging, bolstered by input from longtime mentor Dr. Dre.

The worst moments here are the ones where the rapper tries to break loose of the formula he’s constructed for himself over the last decade-and-a-half. Single “Darkness” is legitimately painful to listen to, a grossly incompetent take on America’s gun culture, structured around a cheesy “The Sound of Silence” sample. It’s cheapened all the more by the Manchester Arena punchline that arrives several songs earlier, a glaring signifier that Eminem is hopelessly detached from the world around him. His concept of “real hip hop” hasn’t evolved since the nineties (as evidenced by the irritating presence of Royce da 5’9”), and the violent misogyny of his lyrics has aged even worse than you’d think (see grating Ed Sheeran collab “Those Kinda Nights”). He’s a legend in his own right, but he’s stuck in his own time.

For this reason, Music to Be Murdered By will not change any minds on Eminem. It’s not a great album, and it’s probably not even a good one. It just happens to be the first in a long time where the rapper sounds comfortable, steadfast in his refusal to change. Let him keep yelling at clouds. D-

'Charli' is Pop at its Most Honest

Charli XCX Charli

The five years since Charli XCX’s last studio album, Sucker, have seemed to flex in and out of time and space. In 2014, the British songstress was moving steadily from the fringes of pop music into full-blown superstardom, pulling two of the year’s biggest hits (Sucker’s “Boom Clap” and the Iggy Azalea collab “Fancy”) with magnetic apathy. She held the unmistakeable poise of an icon in the making, fully aware of the trends she was expected to follow but unwilling to play by anybody’s rules but her own. As she approached universality, she was forced to reckon with a dilemma as old as the industry itself: is the star that Charli was becoming the star that she wanted to be?

Her response was 2016’s Vroom Vroom, an extended play that aligned her vision with that of the critically contested PC Music collective. Up to this point, the industrial bubblegum of masterminds A.G. Cook and SOPHIE had clumsily straddled the line between novelty and next-big-thing, but Charli knew exactly what it took to push the movement in the right direction. In fact, Vroom Vroom gave PC what it was missing so desperately, a face onto which the collective could tether its polarizing aesthetic. The EP itself proved a formative, though underdeveloped, stepping stone in the paths of both Charli XCX and PC Music, even if these paths wouldn’t converge entirely until 2017’s Pop 2. Pop, which was marketed as a mixtape, remains Charli’s soaring opus, a fully-realized vision of popular music in the year 3017 and an unmistakably human transmutation of PC’s cold-blooded sugar rush.

In the scope of such an evolution, it seems bizarre to frame Charli as the singer’s first “official” release since 2014’s Sucker. It’s an unquestionably polished effort, aiming for cohesion where Pop 2 reached for unpredictability. But its greatest success is its focus on vulnerability, a feat that would seem much less rewarding without context. Sucker sported a punk-wise veneer, one that masked the growing pains of a star-in-the-making unsure of her direction. Charli, however, wears its most difficult emotions on its sleeve, a luxury that comes only with resilience. Highlight “Gone” (which features a predictably stunning turn from Christine and the Queens) reads like a direct reflection on her struggle though the pressures of fame: “I have to go, I’m so sorry/But it feels so cold in here.”

Charli is a pop album through and through, packed to the gills with hooks and show-stopping features. But it’s all on Charli’s terms - if the five year wait suggests anything at all, it’s that Charli is a labor of love, a decidedly mainstream manifesto from one of music’s most valuable left-fielders. There are certainly forays into the radio-ready here: lead single “1999” pairs Charli with Australian pop star Troye Sivan, and “Blame It On Your Love,” a dancehall-tinged reimagination of Pop 2’s “Track 10,” features a strung-out verse from it-girl Lizzo. But the most successful tracks here stray further from the beaten path. Most of Charli’s big name features (which include Sky Ferreira, HAIM, CupcakKe, and Clairo, among others) feel like the product of genuine friendship and admiration rather than concessions to record label pressures. Accordingly, even the album’s brightest contributions feel like communications of the same vision, like transmissions from a future where everyone is a bad bitch and A.G. Cook provides the soundtrack.

The most striking points here, however, put the spotlight directly on Charli. Album centerpiece “White Mercedes” feels almost intrusively personal, a diary entry of song that finds universality in the deepest corners of the mind. “Silver Cross” is finds unbridled catharsis on the dance floor, and “Thoughts” settles into rage and mania like they’re comfortable feelings. Of course, these moments of clarity are anchored by Cook’s masterful production work, which gives even the project’s darkest moments a gorgeous sheen. But Charli’s greatest success is its offering of self in magnanimous proportion. Even in its less successful moments, the album is remarkably open,  a feat that puts a career’s worth of searching and refinement into towering perspective. C+

'Hollywood's Bleeding' and Post Malone is Still Famous

Post Malone Hollywood’s Bleeding              

The ascension of Post Malone has been grippingly awkward. His narrow escape from the recesses of YouTube cover hell would be somewhat less remarkable if he hadn’t somehow emerged as one of hip hop’s most controversial figures, warbling his way into collaborations with Justin Bieber and Kanye West with bewildering ease. Even by today’s warp-speed standards, Austin Post’s rapid celebrity is baffling, a pop culture predicament that inspires both awe and cringe in equal measure. Post is a marginally gifted singer with a penchant for the cliched, a haphazard hip hop star that thinks hip hop sucks. In turn, his work has inspired widespread cultural criticism - even in a pop landscape that positively thrives on cultural appropriation, does the world have room for a star like Post Malone? Furthermore, is his music somehow good enough for us to look the other way?

The answer is no. Even if you, like me, thought that Post Malone’s death-defying 2018 might have added some depth to his frustratingly one-dimensional shtick, Hollywood’s Bleeding is confoundingly, if reliably, dull. Framed as a grim reflection on the pitfalls of fame, the record offers little but worn out one-liners and Twitter-era tropes. “Enemies” goes exactly as deep as “used to have friends/now I got enemies,” and the Kanye-assisted “Internet” lives and dies by the term “Instalove.” It’s an unquestionably angsty affair, but Malone’s musings on fame ring spectacularly hollow. Hollywood’s title track conjures up a city drawn of all life by hungry vampires, the kind of concept that succeeds only through total conviction or extreme camp. Malone commits to neither, settling instead for the tepid and ultimately meaningless.

This said, the most engaging aspect of Hollywood’s Bleeding is Malone’s sizable disregard for expectation. He trudges willfully in the direction of pop punk with “Allergic” and gets Young Thug to play his blissfully emo counterpart on “Goodbyes.” Weirdest of all is “Take What You Want,” which paints Ozzy Osbourne and Travis Scott as feasible contemporaries, and it succeeds only through the fact that it somehow exists. The album’s most enveloping endeavors suggest that Malone is best skilled as a tastemaker of sorts, á la Travis Scott himself, and in turn, its least tolerable moments are its most conventional - features from Future, Halsey, Meek Mill, Lil Baby, and SZA are all wasted on the kind of paint-by-numbers radio fodder that makes Hollywood a tiring listen. 

If Hollywood’s Bleeding does little to elevate Austin Post to a greater level of artistic relevance, it makes his continued success all the more puzzling. His presence on the pop charts verges on suffocating, and he still sounds like he couldn’t be less interested in being here. Most of Hollywood suggests that Malone is ready to leave the party, spamming his social media feeds to pass the time. He has talents to cultivate yet, but the question remains: if Posty is so sick of fame, why is he still famous? F

Taylor Swift Succumbs To Her 'Reputation'

Reputation               Taylor Swift

Earlier this week, the news broke that Taylor Swift’s legal team had threatened action against a music writer who penned a scathing analysis of reputation’s lead single, “Look What You Made Me Do,” back in September. The piece posited Swift’s victim-role polemics as akin to the alt-right’s underdog platform, likening lines such as “I don’t like your kingdom keys” to neo-Nazi ideology. The pop star’s attorney decried the article as “malicious” and “baseless fiction,” arguing that its sole intent was to tarnish Swift’s image. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has defended the author’s piece as an exercise in free speech, and is currently awaiting a response from the singer’s team.

This story gives reputation, Swift’s sixth studio album, glaring context. Over the years, Taylor has gone to painstaking lengths to mold the public’s perception of herself. Even her acts of self-deprecation (take 1989’s “Blank Space,” for example) have been calculated, crafted with the intention of controlling the conversation. And therein lies the essence of Swift’s distinct distastefulness; in the pursuit of a scrupulous desire to preserve her likability, she has cast herself as one of pop music’s most unlikeable characters. Even apart from its alt-right undertones, “Look What You Made Me Do” is strikingly spiteful, an unnecessary swipe at any and every critic of her public image, and in her disavowal of its dubiousness, Swift has only distanced herself from sympathy.

On reputation, she attempts to escape the quicksand, primarily through playing the villain that she wants us to believe the media has created. She’s “New Taylor,” breaking hearts with intention and taking axes to detractors. She also experiments with hip hop here, a go-to move for pop stars that want to up their “edginess” (here’s looking at you, Miley Cyrus), collaborating with Future and letting Ed Sheeran rap. It sounds ridiculous on paper, and it doesn’t work much better in action; while tracks like “…Ready for It?” surely benefit from the extra bounce, Swift’s pimping of hip hop here recalls the sociological criticism that the video for “Shake It Off” inspired, and comes off as deliberate rather than the product of natural progression. 

The album’s only saving grace is the undeniable talent that lies at its core. Swift recruits Max Martin, Shellback, and Jack Antonoff to craft glossy soundscapes for her to glide over, and her own songwriting abilities remain towering over her contemporaries. “Delicate” and “New Year’s Day” hint at the vulnerability of her best songs, and tracks like “Getaway Car” and “Dancing With Our Hands Tied” retain the massive hookiness of career highlights “Style” and “I Knew You Were Trouble.” None of this, however, excuses tracks like the ridiculously petty “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” which rewards her “real friends” for disregarding the tabloids. Significant errors in judgment such as these mar an otherwise salvageable piece of work.

Perhaps reputation works best in a bubble, free from interpretation and apart from reality. But unfortunately for her, Swift’s music exists in the real world, where stars aren’t spotless and fans are free to draw their own conclusions about their intentions. If “Look What You Made Me Do” adds fuel to the neo-Nazi fire, it’s Taylor’s responsibility to address it. As long as she doesn’t, she is a part of the problem. Her reputation is what she has made it. D