Laurar's Blog Laurar's Blog
Posted on 05/08/2024
About a week ago I was on Spotify, looking through my recommendations, when it showed me a song called Saintlike by Jakey. I had my first listen to it and I was immediately impressed. I couldn’t easily tell if it was rap, something I am still somewhat on the fence about. Regardless, it was incredible, and I clicked on his artist link on Spotify to find the rest of his work. Atop a list of stellar singles, I found the true jewel of his discography: his album ROMCOM. Numbering only 8 tracks with a total runtime of 27 minutes, this is by no means a large album, but in even its medium-small runtime we see a shocking display of album-related skills in an artist’s first non-single release.
Looking at the tracklist while listening to the songs reveals the first point of interest. Near the end of the first track, we hear the name of the next song played as part of a lyrical outro. Upon progression to the next track, it’s made clear that something he uses to a great extent is using the next song’s hook as an outro. This skill is then geniusly applied on the final track, using the first song’s hook as an outro on the ending song. This does two different things: it (1) pulls the album full circle and helps maintain a consistent theme even in an evolving track progression (Linkin Park’s album A Thousand Suns is a good example of an album that does this) and (2) gives a listener with the album set on repeat a better transition from the end back to the beginning.
Another great example would be his genius use of sampling, which you see all throughout his discography. The most notable example would be the song Reeboks Or the Nikes (off of ROMCOM) which immediately throws samples from the movie 10 Things I Hate About You while simultaneously playing the hook from Corona’s The Rhythm of the Night (slowed and distorted, naturally). For whatever reason, every goddamn time he does this, it just works perfectly.
So on to the more opinion-based part of my review: how do I feel about this? Well, for one thing, this MF knows how to make a good beat. If nothing else, his actual compositional skills are impressive alone. Thankfully, they don’t have to stand alone, because he also sports a rather strong voice equally suited for rapping or singing, depending on the song. I wouldn’t consider it an opinion that he’s good at his music, but I suppose the extent to which I enjoy it is more subjective than otherwise.
I don’t feel like taking all of your time with a rambling, long-winded essay-style article filled to the brim with eclectic vocabulary usage and lingual pyrotechnics, so I’m going to stop here with the concluded, condensed review: very good, needs some more praise, and I will be watching this artist’s release schedule harder than an old white Floridian man watches a 5-year-old girl walking home alone from kindergarten out the back of his white van full of sour strips and gummy bears organized into apothecary jars. Alright, later.
My score - 11 Da Binqus Fergusson, the 45ths out of 10
Spotify - 4,171,951 plays on first track
My score - 10 Da Binqus Fergusson, the 45ths out of 10
Spotify - 17,428,639 plays