A shimmering swash of pop, rock, and R&B. Monae's pulls the Prince thing off -- Make Me Feel and Americans swerve just wide of ripoff* and find their own greatness. And the flowing 5-7 sequence is intoxicating, kicking off with Screwed, which goes beyond double entendre into a broad, clever rollaround in the worry//fuckit knifedge we're riding.
But it's an album that takes a bit to find its footing. Dirty Computer's a glorious, layered opener, but then there's Crazy, Classic, Life -- an overproduced Coke-commercial Royals-wannabe
that Prince would've been embarrassed repeat the name of, a pop
trainwreck of empty verses, tacky basslines, and cringey raps. I guess you gotta sell records to children. Take a Byte (oof) only fares a little better.
If you can get past it though, you'll find an 11 song sequence that's assured and subtly strange and absolutely worth your attention 4/5
* edit: Prince was involved in the record, so ripoff is probably the wrong word, but overwhelming similarity is still real distracting
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Prince was a mentor and involved with the production of this album...
ReplyDeleteMakes sense! It cuts awfully close to being puppeteering, but I think she adds enough of her own voice
ReplyDeleteI mean, those two songs are, in the small detail and the bigger picture -- really really really really similar to specific Prince songs. At some point it's a disservice to Monae's own unique talents to Prince out that hard
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