The new album “Rolling Stone” by singer-songwriter Brent Fires has a beautiful and rugged song in the middle of “Wasteland”. The synthesizer is running full pounding, it sounds like winding flutes coming and going, and there are no identifiable drums. Fires begins with a word of mourning. “I’m a rolling stone / I’m too wild for you to own” and become defensive, “First exciting, then I’m a gas lamp / make your heart” complain increase.
He has a serious and sturdy voice, sometimes with an uneasy scream that is subtly reminiscent of Raphael Saadiq. But unlike its classicist singer, Fires is Impressionist, alternating his vocal tones, providing powerful and distant lines. “Rolling Stone” is spacious and airy, but has no direction. It is R & B that prioritizes the mood over the structure and feels softer than the authoritative belt.
“If you’re disappointed, I’m sorry in advance,” Fires sings with energy that sounds more like regret than resignation. I know he definitely did.
“Wasteland” is an album about the failures made by someone who is currently at the peak of his success. It just made its debut at # 2 on the Billboard album chart, reflecting expectations for R & B singers since its last release in 2020.
But Fires’ ambient approach also encapsulates something about the state of mainstream R & B that has found new creative sweet spots in the last few years after a difficult decade. However, that is not always a commercial reflection. Billboard R & B Album Charts have very little sales. Of the current top 25, only seven were released last year, many of them years ago.
This stagnation is interested in the older, with Drake and his unofficial cache of protégés incorporating R & B melodies and emotional gestures, seamlessly blending them into hip-hop at the turn of the 2010s. It is the result of leaving a generation of pure singers. Hurry up and R & B mode. Fires is part of a new wave of reverse engineering Drake’s alchemy and applying it to R & B (see also Bryson Tiller). For Fires, it means trippy, fit, and good-mannered soul music. There are few classic soul arrangements, not even the hard swings of 1990s hip-hop soul.
“Wasteland” shows the limits of its approach as often as its strengths. The album is often offensive detail, equally explaining fame wages, bragging and self-loathing juggling. Fires sings with confidence, but he is rarely grounded. Instead, he lives somewhere in the universe — a man about his experience from afar.
Zigzag, wheezing, and soothing works are rarely stable and can tell stories more effectively than he does. “All Mine” sounds like it’s being delivered via an electrostatic shower. The “Price of Fame” sits on a bulbous, slippery, resonating wrinkled bed. “Loose Change” has an urgent string punch, and “Jackie Brown” has a new wave sparkle. (Faiyaz is the producer of most of the songs here, and there are also some regular collaborators, including JordanWare. Interestingly, Saadiq is also the producer of two songs.)
However, the story of Fires does not change as the production progresses in various directions. He is CAD and is disappointed by the woman who has been exacerbated by success and promised to love. “When I look at me on TV, it probably fades. It can’t be helped, but just playing cards gave me a bad deal,” he said, “Ghetto Gats, one of the best songs on the album.” By ”(Alicia Keys guest rap can be ignored). Here he goes beyond emotional calculations like Drake and leans towards the fall that characterizes early mixtapes from the weekend.
It follows a series of skits across an album that catalogs the desperately broken relationship between Fires and a woman who is pregnant with his child. They are uncomfortable, cruel and end up with a terrible cliffhanger. Taken together, they are almost as anxious as the suffering tête-à-tête “We Cry Together” from Kendrick Lamar’s latest album.
This album has sex, but not so much joy — most are ego tools. The Fires are abstractly proud of his extraordinary conquest, but apparently few are carnal. A reference to leaving “love stains” behind Uber in “Ghetto Gatsby”, flirting aggressively with “All Mine”. There is not much room for ecstasy in Fires in-focus and out-of-focus modes.
However, the slack has recently been picked up by a female singer who is reviving erotica in R & B. Summer Walker and SZA’s candidness is probably paged from the unfriendlyness of recent class female rap stars, including Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B, and one of the most thrilling moves in pop music in the last two years. It is one.
When it happened on TikTok at the end of last year, Muni Long’s “Hrs & Hrs” felt like a logical continuation of the phenomenon. With sensual sensuality, Long sings about how time becomes elastic when you’re crazy. “Order the shrimp and red shrimp towers / but I’m the one who devours them,” she sings patiently and desperately to buckle in uncontrolled humidity.
The song originally appeared on Long’s self-released 2021 album “Public Displays of Affection”. This is the third album she released under that artist name. (She used to make music as Priscilla Renea.) It was one of her several songs — “Thot Thoughts”, “Bodies” —emphasizing the importance of desire.
Her new EP, “Public exhibition of love” Concise and tart. Her songs are crispy in the 1990s, emphasizing sharp vocals and nodding her head. She has one up-tempo song, “Baby Boo,” which nods to ghost town DJ Atlanta’s bass classic, “My Boo,” and she and rapper Saweetie praise her partner.
But skepticism suits you much better, and the rest of the songs thrive with the tension of coveting those who are separated from you. In “Another,” she resolutely told her partner, “You bought the roses, you weren’t focused.” “Cartier” combines generosity with awakening. “If you try the cuff / I want to see the diamond when I’m in love”
The most vivid track is “Crack”, the most explicit song released by Long. “I didn’t know that if I took off my dress / what was between my legs / I could be so absorbed in it” it was also her most relaxing moment, taking her desires firmly and having no time to worry. It’s also someone’s sound.
