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(12/10/18 3:30pm)
Released November 16, 2018
RATING: 5/7
After an unusually quiet year and a half, Anderson .Paak is back with his third solo studio album, the long-awaited Oxnard. Named after his hometown, this new project is a bit of a switch-up. Paak has dropped a couple verses in the past, but on Oxnard he has traded in his usual hip-hop-tinged R&B for soul-infused, funky rap music. Other than a few forgettable tracks towards the end, it pays off very well throughout the album.
Paak sets the tone with some jams to start the album, like the smooth, vibey "Tints," released as a single featuring Kendrick Lamar. He follows it up with "Who R U?," a straight rap banger, and even focuses heavily on the current political climate with "6 Summers," a song going in depth about Trump’s possible reelection and gun reform. "6 Summers" does make some good points, even if it takes a bit longer to make said points. I have to give an honorable mention to the masterpiece "Headlow," a half-skit half-song about getting into a car crash while receiving road head. "Saviers Road" and "Mansa Musa" were other especially good listens.
None of the tracks on Oxnard are explicitly bad, except for the outro "Left To Right," which is just too weird and reminiscent of a congo line for me to get behind it. However, the track "Trippy" was bland and J Cole’s verse was forgettable as usual. Near the end is the track "Sweet Chick" featuring BJ the Chicago Kid, which pushes Anderson’s lyrical ‘tongue-in-cheekness’ to its limit with Anderson listing the various types of women he is with, until he is ratted out at the end of the song by presumably his fictional significant other for making all these claims. This is the most egregious example, but similar lyrical themes are peppered throughout the album, and sounded a little immature for 32-year-old Paak.
Overall, this was a great listen and a good step for Anderson .Paak’s ever-growing discography. I’m excited as always for what he does next.
https://open.spotify.com/album/3rqqwtJE89WoWvMyPTvbZc
(11/06/18 11:00pm)
Released October 26, 2018
RATING: 4/7
Ever since releasing two songs in secret from the rest of his Filthy Frank fanbase, singer/rapper/comedian George Miller has been gaining fame slowly but surely under his Joji alias. Heavily influenced by lo-fi and R&B music, he made melancholic, intimate, ambient songs that were rarely longer than 2 minutes and had vague, non-linear lyrics about love and heartbreak. After continually releasing these songs with the promise of the “Chloe Burbank Vol. 1” tape on the way (which never happened), Joji went quiet, until last year when he joined the 88rising label and released his debut major label EP, In Tongues. A continuation of his piano-driven, rainy style, it felt more focused and even though it wasn’t as good as those first two tracks he released in 2015, it made many, including me, excited for his album debut. Critics called In Tongues simplistic and pretentious. They were, of course, right. His music was pretentious, and it was all very, very simple, but it was incredibly evocative and emotional. It sounded like Joji really was attempting something new and original. And in the end, that’s what music is really about.
Which is why BALLADS 1 feels so... out of place? From the singles, it was clear that Joji was heading in a more poppy, polished direction. And it sounded really good. From the huge improvement in singing Joji displayed in "SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK" to the catchy, bouncy beat on "CAN’T GET OVER YOU," it appeared like the new album was a completely new sound, in a good way. Then "TEST DRIVE" came out, a watered down, boring track, and I thought it was just a fluke. In some ways it was. What ended up being the full album sounds like a weird halfway point between Joji’s repertoire of internet music and his new commercial endeavors. A clear example of this is the intro track, "ATTENTION," which features a downright bad piano part that sounds like a stock loop on GarageBand. This then leads into a gimmicky bassline and boring lyrics, and then... ends. After that, the singles are good still (except for "TEST DRIVE") but other than that I came away feeling very neutral to the album, and very unsure as to what Joji wants to sound like, let alone what he actually sounds like. Because for now he’s kept the simpleness and lyrical weakness of his old tracks and paired it with the boring and bland production of a lot of pop music today.
Best Tracks: "SDITD," "Yeah Right," "CGOY," "Wanted U"
Worst Tracks: "Attention," "RIP," "Test Drive"
All in all, I liked more of the tracks than I disliked them, so it gets a 4 out of 7 from me. In the future, I hope Joji can commit more to one sound (especially if it's like Chloe Burbank) and really try to develop as an artist because this new project doesn’t feel like a step forward.
https://open.spotify.com/album/34GQP3dILpyCN018y2k61L?si=wtxLVlfuTX6x-3JhGzIB2g
(10/12/18 4:00pm)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3Qzzggn--s
After a very quiet 2018, upcoming R&B star and former YouTuber George Miller, aka Filthy Frank, aka Joji is back with a brand new single, "SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK." The song is very much a departure from his previous work of mumbling, drugged out vocals and sampled beats, even from previously released "Yeah Right," included on the single. Featuring very lush, bright synth chords and arpeggios, "SDITD" is essentially a modern pop song and Joji switches up his vocal style to match with a much more energetic tone and higher pitched melodies than he’s ever released before. The song also came out with an accompanying video displaying young George being repeatedly shot with arrows while smoking, a very on-brand video for him.
I’ve been listening to the song a ton since it came out. I love the energy levels between the sections and the very passionate chorus, the anguished verses in which Joji reverts to his quiet, mumbly style. Overall it is a very well-constructed song in technical terms: It's catchy and has a very standard verse to pre-chorus to chorus progression, and sounds completely clean and blemish-free. However, this means it doesn’t have any of the experimental qualities that make Joji stand out to me. The lo-fi, grimy production and off-kilter song structure are gone and really makes Joji lose a lot of his character on this song. It could be anyone singing over this beat.
But my indie sadboi tastes aside, "SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK" is a huge step in Joji’s progression as an artist. If he can apply his own style a little more on this refined and more complex sound, then I predict the upcoming album will blow listeners away. Joji truly has come a long way since his "Human Cake" days.