🎶 2022-04-22 15:25:00 – Paris/France.
Once upon a time, the alliance between Pusha T and Kanye West made perfect sense. Clipse was adored by critics and cultists alike – tough, literary rappers who could lovingly portray street economies with verve, specificity and biting humor. After their debut album, however, Clipse found themselves trapped in record label hell and struggled to connect commercially. Kanye West, meanwhile, lived a commercially charmed life, but he always radiated little brother tendencies. He wanted to be known as one of the best rappers in the world, but even Kanye's critical praise had to mention every punchline punch. Clipse was cool and they wanted to succeed. Kanye made it, and he wanted to be cool – or cooler than he already was, anyway. When Clipse and Kanye first got together to quote Presenterthey seemed to approach the collaboration from opposite angles.
Shortly after this collab was released in 2009, Pusha's brother Malice found religion, changed his name to No Malice, and decided he didn't want to be part of your coke-rap genre. Pusha, alone for the first time, joined Kanye West's GOOD Music empire as it grew into a force. Suddenly, Pusha's label issues disappeared and he immediately jumped into a more high-profile plane of existence, excelling whenever he got the chance to shine. Kanye West, meanwhile, gained some credibility by associating himself with a certified rap freak whose aesthetic aligned with his own. (Kanye also had access to some great ghostwriting; Ab-Liva, once part of Clipse's extended Re-Up Gang team, wrote credits on many of Kanye's best tracks of the past decade. ) By all accounts, Kanye and Pusha are close friends, but theirs was also a mutually beneficial relationship.
In his early releases for GOOD Music, Pusha struck a balance between the cold, calculated precision of Clipse's classic mid-2000s mixtapes and the demands of an evolving market. With Kanye's imprimatur, Pusha could work with big stars - Kendrick Lamar, Future, Chris Brown, Rick Ross - and bring them into his world. These records never turned Pusha into a commercial juggernaut like Kanye, but they did give him a niche. If you loved rap music, you just had to recognize Pusha as a master of his craft. Around the same time Kanye West began his spiral into ignominy, Pusha hit his peak in public life, getting into a feud with rap's biggest star and winning brutally and decisively. That same summer, Kanye produced Pusha's entire brief and hellish album. Daytonawho proved that Kanye West, despite all his considerable flaws, could still make cold-blooded rap music, especially if he had Pusha T with him.
Four years later Daytona, it is less and less obvious that the Kanye association of Pusha is doing him a favor. Kanye is still one of the richest and most famous people in all of music, but his public life is a series of increasingly gaudy car wrecks, and music no longer seems to be his focus. Pusha has always seemed relatively comfortable in the whole circus, but his reputation as a rapper is pristine and he needs Kanye West less than ever. This ever-changing balance of power is one of the most fascinating things about It's almost dryPusha T's new album released today, just days after Pusha announced its existence.
To hear Pusha say it, It's almost dry is a work resulting from a competition. Kanye West produced (or, more accurately, co-produced) about half of the album, and the other half came from Pharrell Williams, Pusha's first rainmaker. Clipse debuted on the Neptunes' Star Trak label, and the Neptunes produced all of the first two Clipse albums flawlessly. For It's almost dry, Pusha worked closely with Kanye and Pharrell, playing them against each other and pushing them to surpass themselves. This process apparently took some time; in a recent tweet-and-delete statement, former Kanye collaborator Kid Cudi says he recorded his appearance on "Rock N Roll" a year ago. (Cudi also says he's cool with Pusha but not Kanye. Some of us can relate.) The result of this process is a fast and mean record that attracts some of the best work from these two super-producers. aging that we've heard for years.
Make no mistake: It's almost dry is very much a Pusha T album. That means he spends most of the brief running time reflecting on his drug-dealing memories, basking in his escape from poverty, and expressing contagious distaste for anyone who is unable to do as he did. Pusha defines her own magnificence in mythical terms. (On an anonymous associate with no clue: "Get a million answers, had no clue / Why Michael kissed Fredo in Godfather II. ") This is nothing new. Really, there's not much new on the album. Pusha plays with a few different flows, but there are no drastic digressions. Pusha is here to talk his shit, and he no longer has the urgency of youth or an impending feud with a rap titan. Instead, it happily accelerates into its own lane, never running the risk of crashing. He does what he does, and he knows it: "Like Brady, gets better with time / Didn't have to reinvent the wheel, just design better." »
But the design is awesome. Pusha is always rapping about the coke in the ceiling and the hidden chambers in the back of a bodega, but he's probably better than anyone at rapping about those things. Pusha has trod this ground for 20 years, and he hasn't worn it down yet. There are times on It's almost dry where I wonder if Pusha should come up with a new concept, a new idea. It's not exciting, for example, for Pusha to flaunt a tired, just OK verse from Jay-Z as a status symbol on "Neck & Wrist." But every time Pusha's approach starts to tire, he comes up with a line that forces me to make involuntary faces: "Kilogram Kickstarter pushes a brick harder / Left my elbow in the pot à la Vince Carter." »
Pusha also gets a great job from Kanye and Pharrell. On “Just So You Remember,” for example, Kanye and co-producers BoogzDaBeast and FNZ construct a spacey, ghostly track from Colonel Bagshot’s bizarre 1971 anti-war psych-rock lullaby “Six Day War,” the same track that DJ Shadow once used as the basis for "Six Days". Pusha uses this ominous floater to ruminate revengefully, "Just so you remember who you're dealing with / The purest snow, we're selling white privilege." (I can't believe Pusha still finds fiercely poetic ways to describe selling cocaine, but he does.) watch the Fresh prince and pray the house is mine / Could she have bought it, but I don't like the way the kitchen was designed.
But Pharrell's tracks are where the album really comes to life. These beats don't sound like the funky, playful Neptunes beats that Pusha used to annihilate on a regular basis. Instead, they're sparse and grim and average. Pusha said he and Pharrell go to work early every day at Pharrell's compound, repeatedly watching Joker for inspiration: “If the music didn't feel this evil, if it didn't have this character, we wouldn't use it. » Joker is a terrible movie, but if it put Pusha and Pharrell in the right headspace, then maybe the movie justified its existence. Whatever it takes to bring these old friends into this lineup, it's worth it. At his best, Pharrell uses empty space better than almost any other producer in rap history, and Pusha uses that empty space to project gleeful malevolence: "You know the guy, I was always trying to get into your photo/I was trying to get the drugs through your sister. »
Unless he's at a campaign stop with Tim Kaine, Pusha has never been one to pound us over the head with social posts. Instead, Pusha prefers to sprinkle his music with vague hints of tragedy and regret. He will flex on his cars and clothes all day, but he also has pain and trauma in his life. He doesn't want to dwell on that stuff, but it comes out anyway. Consider this: “AMG in auto-cruise/ Wrist sings in Auto-Tune/ Dope game destroyed my youth/ Now Kim Jones Dior my suits. In the middle of those sharp lines about material possessions, you might just walk past that part about destroyed youth, but it's still there, its presence casting everything else in a slanting shadow.
At the very end of It's almost dry, Pusha's big brother shows up to highlight those dark moments. “I pray for you”, the last piece of It's almost dry, is not Clipse's first meeting; what happened on "Use This Gospel", the song from Kanye's religious LP Jesus is king which also featured Kenny G stirring up a storm. "I Pray For You" false head in the sense of gospel, with its title and with Euphoria the soundtrack guy, Labrinth, sings in church. But "I Pray For You" is not gospel, and Pusha's brother, you'll notice, is no longer No Malice. He's introduced as Malice, and he looks like Malice.
Malice gets the final verse It's almost dry, and it is a head divider. Malice begins with a masterful reintroduction - "tell me what I missed" - and goes on to nod to his past as both a drug dealer and a microphone destroyer: "Vietnam flashbacks, I get triggered when I sniffle / Today's top five only reinforces my myth. In a few lines, Malice, speaking with down-to-earth patience, describes his own struggles and makes clear that he is still himself: Working on stoves as if I were rubbing sticks / Paving another road for my soul to can coexist / But God knows I'll dig another ditch.
"I Pray For You" is a song about these two brothers who find themselves, on the return of the Clipse. Pusha: “Harold Melvin without the Blue Note/ The last 10 years, shouting 'Uno'/ Then get back in the duo. Malice: "Get back on my high horse, it's still chariots/Put the ring back on his finger, remarry him." Listen: I could read too much into this. When I received my promotional feed from It's almost dry, "I Pray For You" was not on the album. The song could be a last minute addition. It couldn't mean anything. Yet, ending with this Clipse meeting, It's almost dry tell a story.
Pusha T is his own man, and he doesn't need to be a supporting actor in Kanye West's numbing, never-ending tale. It may be wishful thinking, but I hear It's almost dry as Pusha ending one chapter of her career and starting another – moving away from Kanye and towards the return of the older, wiser Clipse. If this is the end of Pusha's solo, then the man came out strong.
It's almost dry is now available on GOOD Music/Def Jam.
SOURCE: Reviews News
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