Rapid Review - 5/12/2020

Hey music heads! Sorry for the silence on Thursday last week. I have decided that the Tuesday/Thursday schedule is too difficult for me to continue especially in such a motivation draining time. I will be changing to a Tuesday/Saturday schedule for now as I believe Throwback Thursdays will be too biased towards albums that are generally loved. I am going to focus more on giving coverage to older albums if they are more obscure and deserve the coverage. So, Saturday will be more for miscellaneous posts such as updates, rapid reviews, or reviews of older albums. Today I’ll just be replacing the usual conventional review for rapid review as it was difficult to decide on an album to review this week.

First, I need to mention the Black Dresses album Peaceful as Hell released a month ago but is gradually gaining some well-deserved traction. The noise pop duo released this as their fourth album, and without a doubt, this is an astounding pop record. Peaceful as Hell is abrasive, noisy, scary, but positive. It is one of the best albums this year (and I have heard ever) that pushes positive messages in such an experimental, aggressive, and passionate way. On paper, the album seems so conflicting with the album cover art and the track names. There are titles include Beautiful Friendship, Express Yourself, and Please Be Nice while also having titles like Bliss and Stupidity, Scared 2 Death, and 666. The album is filled with “screechingly” lo-fi distortion and extremely deep, low-pitched screamo yelling mixed with playful and poppy production. It is AMAZING. I cannot recommend this album anymore and would have given it a full contemporary review if I saw it earlier. I would give it a mid to high 8. Please check it out if you haven’t already.

Next, I want to cover the new NAV album Good Intentions as I have been keeping my eye on him as a trailblazer for “brown boys.” NAV is for sure one of, if not, the most influential and popular hip-hop/rap artists of his demographic. I personally have grown a niche liking to some of his songs as they are accessible and feature a “baby voice” that is pretty popular in the hip-hop/rap scene nowadays. However, I do agree that sometimes his heavy use of autotune along with his robot-like delivery can become annoying and seem redundant. I think his new album is slightly better than his previous Bad Habits as they seem to build off each other conceptually. He keeps a similar formula of features from really popular rappers (Young Thug, Lil Durk, Lil Uzi Vert, etc.), autotune vocals, and generic rap lyricism (women, flexing, gang association, etc.). However, I do believe NAV has evolved a little with more emotion-induced lyrics about love on tracks like Did You Wrong. The emotion also seeps into his delivery as more of his natural singing voice can be heard with the lighter autotune. Also, Brown Boy is obviously a more standout track, giving NAV an opportunity to actually talk about his ethnicity in a more serious light. It actually becomes a track where NAV raps in the third person, pretending to be one of his haters. This was fairly interesting to me as this is the opposite of what he usually raps about, and it seems like he’s not directly talking much about his ethnicity; however, I think he might be indirectly giving insight in different ways. The hater he was trying to impersonate hated his parents (maybe critique on rich white kids or even something brown kids are too scared to say), envied NAV’s lifestyle, and wished he could be as talented as NAV. It is a little convoluted the more you look into the lyrics, but I think it’s interesting that there is this vagueness on the identity of the hater, giving his words such different messages depending on his identity. However, nothing else is really pushing too much in the direction of musical progression, but I hope NAV will talk about his upbringing or identity more in the future. It’s definitely not an annoying or draining listen for 50 minutes, so I would give it a 5-6.

Lastly, some random music recommendations. I love The Voidz 11-minute journey into a cosmic, psychedelic world with the song Human Sadness. Also, the Liars’ song Mess On a Mission is an interesting dance-punk single and is very catchy and enjoyable for how repetitive it is. That’s all for tonight. Thank you all!