The club-orientated tracks stand out, particularly the Swizz Beatz-produced "At the Club" and the DJ Quik-produced "Buck Bounce," both of which pair Eightball & MJG with non-Southern big-name producers for the first time. This album, Eightball & MJG's first non-Suave House release, returns to the space-age pimping that had been the duo's stock-in-trade for years. 1 (1999), which had cast Eightball & MJG as been-there, done-that Southern rap sages and earned widespread acclaim in the process, the duo responded with the lighthearted Space Age 4 Eva. The sound alone says more than the forgettable clichés of Bourne’s lyrics, demonstrating that the producer, for now, does his best work behind the boards.After the thoughtful reflection of In Our Lifetime, Vol. Nowhere is that more obvious than on standout track “Guillotine.” The beat sounds like Bourne looped a creaking screen door a warped sample breathes with the beat, groaning ruefully every four bars. There are some catchy hooks as well-on “Racer,” Bourne croons nimbly alongside some late-’90s R&B keyboards-but for the most part, the beats on Pi’erre 4 speak the loudest. On “How High,” he dives into his formative years in Queens (where he split time between South Carolina): “Just a college nigga, honor roll/I dropped out of college, lost my home.” On “Try Again,” he speaks of the loneliness that comes with his sudden rise in fame: “It’s just me, and I’m alone again/Spending all my money on my own again.” All the obvious tropes are here-money-chasing anthems (“Doublemint”), odes to jealous exes (“Feds”)-but he hints at a more interesting story in between. Which is a shame, because Bourne puts effort into his lyrics.
Add this to the fact that none of the songs evolve much over their runtimes -put Pi’erre 4 in waveform, and it’d look like a bread loaf, a hunk of sound with no peaks or valleys-and you start to tune out. His voice often drowns in the mix as a result. Unlike the MCs who buy his beats, none of which are featured here, he fully saturates his voice in Auto-Tune, more akin to T-Pain or Fetty Wap than Uzi. Once you get past the initial dopamine rush, Bourne starts to run into trouble. Most of the tracks are accentuated by over-the-top sound effects-a lion roar, or a reworked vintage DJ drop (“ Damn Pi’erre, where’d you find this?”)-that give the project the momentum of a street-bought mixtape. The fuzzy synth notes on “Be Mine” sound like they were played on an electrified toy piano, while “Romeo Must Die” turns on a distorted refrain that sounds recorded 500 feet below the ocean surface. Bourne’s beats hum with the same off-kilter melodies that made “Magnolia” so thrilling, and the edges are filled with interesting noises. The answer is not quite-his heavily Auto-Tuned vocals have a tendency to get washed out by his hazy backdrops, and Pi’erre 4 is one-note as a result, more vibe than statement.Īt least the vibe is enticing. Which brings us to The Life of Pi’erre 4, his major-label debut and the first real test of whether he can carry a project. Rather than continue to feed hits to stars like Carti, Lil Uzi Vert and 21 Savage, Bourne has put all his attention into his solo career as a rapper.
0 kommentar(er)
