Table Of Contents
Coming Home Review
Coming Home is the 9th studio album by singer-songwriter Usher and has 20 tracks for an approximately 66-minute runtime. The album features a mix of pop and r&b complimented by Usher’s characteristic smooth vocals. The project covers many of the themes ubiquitous to Usher’s music with an emphasis on love ballads. The production on the album is high-quality and varied with a nice mix of electronic synths and acoustic sounds, trap drums and dance beats. In this album, Usher does not explore much out of his comfort zone, but he brings a quality of performance to each song indicative of at least a modicum of effort which elevates the project overall. At the end of the day, a person would enjoy this album if they enjoy anything else from Usher as it can be seen as a continuation of his previous discography.
The album starts with the titular track “Coming Home”, which features Burna Boy, and has Usher crooning a whole lot of nothing but it doesn’t matter due to the cool beat and Usher’s ability to sell a tune. It must be said that the bridge melody is a nice touch. Next comes “Good Good”, a poppy track with an undeniably catchy chorus. The song sees Usher returning to his familiar messaging as he describes a mutually beneficial breakup. 21 Savage’s feature is mediocre at best and unnecessarily adds a minute to the song. The project continues with “A-Town Girl” which takes a risk by using a sample from one of the titans of pop, Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl”. While the song unsurprisingly does not surpass its sample, it is not an offense to the original and the chorus is ridiculously catchy. While the pre-chorus is criminally underutilized and Latto’s feature doesn’t do too much for the piece, “A-Town Girl” still is one of the better songs on the album. The next track, “Cold Blooded”, is a dramatic change of mood. It is turbulent and darker with the backing vocals and strings giving the song an almost orchestral quality. The fact that this song is somewhat outside of Usher’s usual comfort zone makes it a standout on the album, especially since it features some of the best vocals from the artist. When I first heard “Kissing Strangers”, it sounded immediately like an Ed Sheeran song. The track is entirely pop which means that it has a memorable hook that gets stuck in the listeners head immediately, but it doesn’t really vibe with the rest of the project. However, for most this can be forgiven on the strength of the melody. “Keep on Dancin’” is a perfectly good song but does not stand out in any particular way aside from the layered vocals on the tail end of the chorus. Next comes “Risk It All” featuring H.E.R. A slow piece with minimal production allows the vocals of both artists to shine through and it will be a welcome entry for those who are fans of slow piano ballads. The next song “Bop”, is rather forgettable with lyrics that are downright hilarious when taken seriously. The energy of the next track “Stone Kold Freak” is needed at this point in the album. While the melody is nothing special, the production with the upbeat tempo is refreshing in the tracklist. The soft understated-ness of “Ruin” combined with the heartfelt lyrics and gentle beat make it surprisingly endearing. Once again, the melody isn’t amazing but is fitting for the subject matter and Usher’s inflection make it even better. With “BIG”, Usher brings out some truly baffling lyrics as he apparently orders his McDonald’s drink and fries in, not small, but size big (I was under the impression it was large). In all seriousness, the brass backing and vibrating baseline are not enough to save this song from falling into forgettability in the middle of the album which probably a good thing given the cringe worthy lyrics. Next comes “On the Side”, which comes across as more boring than anything with a melody that can only be described as mundane and no redeeming production. “I Am the Party” is a slow r&b track, one of Usher’s mainstays. Unfortunately, neither “I Love U” or “Please U” standout on the album. However, “Luckiest Man” brings back some pop charm with a strong melody that is much needed at this point. The next song “Margiela” has some interesting production with minimal drums although there is almost no melody to follow which makes the song become tiring fairly quickly (a bad thing as it is a whole 3:44 long). “Room In A Room” is a standard adequately executed track and “One Of Them Ones” does its best to close the album (as it is the last Usher song on the album) however, the melody is a little weak to make the song great. Weirdly, the album concludes with a remix of a Jung Kook song called “Standing Next to You”. While the song is pretty good, it has a dance pop vibe which doesn’t really fit with Coming Home at all making it a weird decision to include on the album.
Vultures Vol. 1 Review
Vultures 1 is the highly anticipated album from the controversial Kanye West and Ty Dolla$ign. The album is a bit of a mess featuring some genuinely great production and sampling with some truly terrible rapping from Kanye himself. Unfortunately, at this point in his career, it seems that Kanye has stopped innovating his sound, opting instead to chase trends set by people like Travis Scott and Playboi Carti. It also must be mentioned that Kanye, while he did apologize for some of his abhorrent behavior, seems to continue to shirk full responsibility for his actions by repeatedly making reference and jokes toward his antisemitic actions.
Vultures 1 begins with “STARS”, a short and sweet opening track. It has a nice, simple production with a sample that showcases Kanye’s uncanny ability to find tiny musical gems in other music. A trend that starts with this song is the use of orchestral strings which effectively brings a certain amount of gravity and scale to the album. The next song, “KEYS TO MY LIFE” is another reflective piece with Kanye get out-performed by Ty Dolla $ign. The transition from Ye to Ty in the middle of the track is brilliant but Kanye’s rapping on the tail end just sound so lazy and uninspired. Kanye’s rapping used to be on point but at this point in his career, it seems he is content to create beautiful produced soundscapes and then phone it in on bars. Vultures 1 picks up the pace with “PAID”. The song has a bouncy intense beat which is brought down by the repetitive and boring chorus and Kanye’s weird and random lyrics. While Ty’s rapping is superficial and depraved oftentimes, at least it is coherent compared to Kanye who just spouts of random nonsense with no reason. Nevertheless, the production is excellent. North West makes her rap debut in the next track, “Talking” and although she outcompetes Adonis, her verse gets annoying very quickly. However, the second half of the song has Ty Dolla $ign rapping some heartfelt lines which thankfully aren’t crashed by Kanye saying something annoying. “ BACK TO ME” has potential but features some more of Kanye’s worst tendencies as the chorus is very basic and the sample is such a throw-away line. Once again Kanye has the worst lines on the track as Freddie Gibbs easily clears him. The album continues with “HOODRAT”. This song has some of the worst production on the album with the drums ending up being unclear and muddy and the constant “hoodrat” just being annoying. Underneath it all is just a basic chord progression and while Ty does his best to make an interesting melody, the song ends up being a weaker entry on the list. Next comes “DO IT”, which is probably the catchiest song on the album. The chord progression and production combined with the string melody that plays throughout make the song stick in the listener’s head. However, the song is meaningless and ends up ringing hollow with no deeper message. “PAPERWORK” is the next song and features an appearance by Quavo. The song does not have a chorus and the production is annoying with the same three notes repeated over and over again, sometimes made slightly worse by a harsh metallic sounding synth. Thankfully, the next song “BURN” is somewhat of a return to Kanye’s old sound with a decidedly old-fashioned sounding beat. Kanye also sounds coherent on his rapping and is not a complete trainwreck while Ty on the chorus is soothing and smooth. Next is “FUK SUMN”, a song where Kanye and Ty seem to be trying to make a Playboi Carti song. While the track itself is fine, it doesn’t sound like Kanye and ends up being kind of boring compared to the rest of the album. Also, it should be mentioned that the high-pitched voice in the middle of songs is a terrible production decision and is instantly annoying. The single from the album “VULTURES” comes next. Once again, Ty Dolla $ign carries the track after Kanye and Durk’s mediocre start. However, for being the leading single, the song is surprisingly one dimensional. The next track, “CARNIVAL” is one of the worst songs on the album. It has an annoying chant sound going on the whole time and sounds more like a Carti song than a Kanye song. The production is boring compared to the rest of the album and the chorus and rapping is not special either. This track is not even good on this album, let alone compared to the rest of Kanye’s discography. The album continues with “BEG FORGIVENESS” which reeks of some sort of sick dream of Kanye’s. The production on the song is intentionally underwhelming but the melodies aren’t strong enough to standalone. Next comes “PROBLEMATIC” which is at least true to its title and features Kanye saying some outrageous things. The turnaround of Kanye’s perspectives from Jesus Is King to Vultures 1 truly shows that the man deals in pastiche and aesthetics. As of this writing, the album concludes with “King” which has a classic beat although Kanye’s rapping leads much to be desired and is controversial as ever.
To conclude, Vultures 1 is a return to form for Kanye in terms of production and sampling although it is one of his worst vocal performances in a while. Additionally, it seems like Kanye has lost all purpose and meaning to make room for his enormous ego and his perverse addictions. While his outrageous character was tolerable when he was the underdog early on in his career or when he acknowledged the larger-than-life persona and its shortcomings, it now feels like he has been fully consumed by ego to the point where any and all self-awareness has gone out the window.
Bob Marley: One Love Review
Bob Marley: One Love is directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green and tells the story of Bob Marley’s from his leaving Jamaica, recording Exodus, and eventually returning to Jamaica. While the film delivers on containing lots of Marley’s music, it lacks a coherent message or focus making it seem more like a sequence of events rather than a fully fledged plot.
Obviously, the best thing going for this movie is Bob Marley’s music which is as powerful now as it was when originally released. From my limited knowledge, it seems that Kingsley Ben-Adir is doing a decent job at mimicking Marley’s movements and stage presence when he performs the songs in the film and this is commendable. Additionally, one of the most enjoyable aspects of the movie for me were the few scenes where Marley was in the studio, with his collaborators, writing music or performing that music on stage. While this is partially due to the movies problems in the characters and plot, I think it also speaks to the intrigue that is present in the creation of music, especially music that means a lot to people. Admittedly, I am no expert in accents but from what I could and could not discern it seems that no compromise was made on the accents of the main characters. Oftentimes, it was difficult for someone like myself who is not used to a heavy Jamaican accent to fully understand what the actors were saying.
Though it does some things right, Bob Marley: One Love has a lot of flaws. For starters, the movie doesn’t seem to know what it wants to say about Bob Marley or what message the audience can take away from his life. I think it is helpful here to draw a distinction between a documentary and a movie and what each needs to accomplish. In a documentary, it is important to be comprehensive and factual in order to present a complete and thorough examination of a particular subject. However, in a movie, the goal is to present a message through the medium of storytelling. Bob Marley: One Love neglects to do this and so it becomes kinda boring. This is mainly caused by the character of Bob Marley being incredibly one-sided. He seems to have no character arc and only does things because the plot needs him to. Any conflict that arises between Bob and his manager or Bob and his wife is almost immediately quashed in a simple, unsatisfactory way and given no time to grow, mature, and develop. This lack of focus on a theme or message from Marley’s life leaves the movie feeling like a collection of cherrypicked moments rather than a coherent narrative. While merely presenting events from the artists life is fine in a documentary, it will make a movie feel arbitrary and meaningless.
In conclusion, Bob Marley: One Love is a disappointing movie which fails to tell a compelling narrative through Bob Marley’s life story.