The Music Dispatch: July 26th, 2022
Inside: Flo Milli shit, bitch!, Megan Thee Stallion, Rico Nasty, bisexual people, and unserious lyrics
Welcome to The Music Dispatch! This is a weekly part of this Substack where I shortly review every new(-ish) release I listened to. Out every Tuesday. All mentioned songs are available on your streaming platform of choice unless stated otherwise. Is there an album you want to recommend me? @ me on Twitter or head on over to the Retrospring!
K-Pop has become absolutely huge. Back in my day — mind you, we’re talking 2010 here — your sole foray to K-Pop was the legendary illegal site k2nblog and YouTube, on which people took their time of day to subtitle varieties and appearances in nicely colored subtitles and cultural context. Twelve years since, there’s now K-Pop sections on my local bookstore, and it seems to have become the hobby du jour of white girls replacing the Jonas Brothers, One Direction, Big Time Rush. Even people that were uninterested in K-Pop at the time now tune in to various new releases. Sometimes time is a flat circle and other times it’s more of a spiral. This is why I believe the first Korean pop song sung entirely in Korean to hit the Billboard #1 will eventually be a meme song. And by the way, as much as K-Pop is about the music and its visuals nowadays, those albums, their sizes and their prices over here really let you know what it’s really about, and those CDs are surely not humongous. Here’s a very good insight as to how it used to be (and, in some cases, still is) pre-2015.
EPs and Albums
Flo Milli — You Still Here, Ho? This is an amazing debut, with Flo both improving in her pen (so many funny one-liners), delivery, and singing, and finally, finally she is also matched with beats that keep up with her and complement her rather than the same boring C2 piano note. It’s overall a very very fun experience. Plus: Tiffany Pollard opens and closes the album!
Rico Nasty — Las Ruinas It’s been years since I last tuned in to the DMC rapper but this felt completely left-field. Las Ruinas his has traces of hip house, hyperpop, electronic music, and a devastating final stretch of midtempo songs. (And a beat by Marshmello that seriously goes hard). Another major highlight is the remix of Jungle, on which Rico’s raps are mixed in the center of the beat rather at front. She is completely at ease with the ever-shifting beat. She’s seriously improved on her singing as well and has overall shifted her focus from rapping to both singing and rapping, whatever the beat requires at a given time. This consistency is what I wanted debut Nightmare Vacation to have and i’m so glad this has it.
Joey Bada$$ — 2000 Unfortunately this is not as interesting as the singles had it seem, the lyrics go kind of nowhere on the B-sides either, and the Chris Brown feature completely soured me on it altogether.
mxmtoon — rising Ditching her ukulele for straightforward pop and (you guessed it) disco production, this is a sound I can get behind. mxmtoon’s vocals always keep up too. Most notable of these is victim of nostalgia, lead single mona lisa, dance (end of the world) and — leaving best for last — coming of age, a breezy, pretty synthpop moment.
LE SSERAFIM — FEARLESS So much to “i’m sure it’s fine.” The only fine song on here is Sour Grapes, a predictable midtempo moment. Blue Flame is pretty good by itself, but The Great Mermaid. What an amazing electro pop song — others will say this is f(x), but the real ones know this is from the t-ara playbook. Why Le Sserafim couldn’t debut with that song, nobody will ever know. Fearless is fine too without the MV and if you ignore the emptiness of the chorus. I also started to think of this debut as a re-debut for ex-IZ*ONE members Sakura and Chaewon, which means the teenage members Kazuha and Eunchae got thrown under the bus, but it explains why the debut doesn’t sound like a debut.
Steve Lacy — Gemini Rights Steve Lacy is bisexual? Okay, hello! That was the first thought I had while listening to this record. Unlike Apollo XXI, this new record feels like an album where studio production was involved. There are a lot of good moments on this record and you’ll enjoy this if you like your guitars paired up with soft rock moments. It’s overall a strong improvement from his debut.
Julien Baker — B-Sides There is one song that is very memorable on here and it’s Vanishing Point that would’ve sounded immaculate on the album Little Oblivions. Guthrie pales a little to the other two songs here; the full band sound is just what fits baker best and makes for such an engaging listen. Mental Math was pretty good too, although it makes sense why this one got scrapped.
Billie Eilish — Guitar Songs Billie sounds better on a solitary guitar than Baker does — her vocal is just fuller and she’s a stronger emoter. The songs themselves, well, TV is not very interesting except for the hypnotic chorus near the end (and the lyrics are kind of unserious — the Roe vs Wade part? Come on). the 30th is a devastating ballad with a very strong climax.
Beach Bunny — Emotional Creature The good songs on here are the ones not about love, i.e Eventually and Weeds. The rest is more varied in sound, fuller in production, but nothing Honeymoon didn’t do better, plus the songs are catchier on the debut.
Singles
Creative visionary Min Heejin’s new girlgroup Newjeans has released three music videos, but as none of the songs are on streaming, I don’t want to talk about them just yet. That being said, I thought Hypeboy had the best chorus of the three, and Hurt is one of the most uncomfortable I’ve felt with a K-Pop video. Can somebody please get the camera a little farther away from these teenage girls’ faces? Please?
PRESSURELICIOUS — Megan Thee Stallion feat. Future Future works so well with Stalli, their energies match totally well. As for the song itself? Well, it’s no Plan B. It’s enjoyable and will go down easy in an album context, but I am uncertain if this is the Plan B follow-up we needed at this time.
Shygirl — Coochie (A Bedtime Story) The quite unserious lyrics are matched with extremely pretty production. So far it feels like the rollout to debut NYMPH is still hiding its best work.
Years & Years — Montero (Call Me By Your Name) One of the best singles of last year receives a cover by the PATD of pop music, Years & Years. The song is tailor-made for Lil Nas X (it’s right there in the name, Montero) and doesn’t work with Olly Alexander’s airy, clean vocals. It has none of the personality that the original had; besides that, I’m not sure why you would cover a song of an artist and don’t update the name in any way. Like it’s not like it’s being sung anyway, so just go for it? Yet another low point in a group-solo act that can’t afford more low points.
Tarkan — Yap Bi Güzellik I thought Geççek [It’ll pass] was a one-off, the kind of political statement Tarkan thought people needed, although it really only served Tarkan himself — no amount of nice songs will truly amend the fact that everything’s too expensive in Turkey. On a musical level alone, it also sounded like the same old pop music Tarkan has made since the turn of the millennium in its watered down variant (if you can imagine that in a discography that has Yolla too). But apparently this wasn’t a one-off and this has the smell of an album release (gasp!). Yap Bi Güzellik pairs Tarkan with his close friend and A-list producer Ozan Çolakoğlu, and much like the cover that is slightly uncomfortable and looks like an average Japanese magazine photoshoot for a K-Pop boyband, it doesn’t break any new ground. When Turkey will quit these reggaetón beats I don’t know, but it’s about high time it ended. To Yap Bi Güzellik’s credit, Tarkan’s vocals are always welcome, always stable and reliable and they emote properly, and the song tries to be a proper pop song with a solid chorus and listenable verses. You know who can’t say that to his credit? Edis. (And don’t make me talk about Edis, we’d be here for over ten minutes and you wouldn’t enjoy that.)
Beyoncé is coming back this week! Here are my favorite five songs by her:
7/11: The simplest Elif lore to know is that this is my all time favorite song. The trap beat, the playful vocal performance, hooks on hooks on hooks — there’s nothing else you can ask for. This is perfect to loop while working. Also, this has one of my favorite bridges of hers.
Standing on the Sun: This H&M ad song is the best of the H&M genre, and the song of the summer every summer.
Crazy in Love: A debut for the ages. Even the fact that a lyric says got me hoping you page me right now doesn’t change the fact how fresh, immediate, and grandiose it all sounds.
NILE: Beyoncé has a couple of these moodier tracks in her repertoire (the Frank Ocean-penned I Miss You is another), but the way the percussion kicks in midway through and the clever wordplay of the nile and denial makes for an engaging, albeit very brief, listen. This is also the best vocal performance of Kendrick Lamar’s.
Diva (Homecoming Live): The original is already braggadocious, powerful, and one of the best songs to loop when you need confidence injected to your brain via your ears, but the Homecoming version elevates it with the fantastic brass and the sample of O.T Genasis’s Everybody Mad at the end. (As a side note, my favorite song off the I Am Sasha Fierce ballad CD is Satellites. Subdued moody Beyoncé is one of my most favorite Beyoncés.)
I Care: This sweeping, grand ballad is already moving on its own in the studio version, with one of her most emotional performances (pretty much up there with Sandcastles), but every live version of this track features this insane guitar solo that Beyoncé harmonizes with, elevating the song by thousand. Beyoncé’s rock side can only be seen in flashes and glimpses, but her honeyed vocals sound right at home with this genre and its subsections. (Which means the third CD of Renaissance is going to be all rock and Beyoncé is going to start sampling Nine Inch Nails— no? Oh. Sorry. Okay. I’m working on that post, by the way — the research part is so much fun, it means, for instance, that I listen to a three hour podcast episode solely dedicated to Nine Inch Nails.)