The album is definitely something I noticed after I made it, like me and my friends kind of realized I’m going through a quarter-life crisis and making music for it. And for me, yeah just the past couple years have been kind of, are like the making of my manhood I guess as an adult. I mean just with age as well, like the older you get, the wiser you get sometimes, at least for some people. How do you think you've grown as an artist since you first started working on it?Īminé: I think I've grown a lot. Either way, they show that even with the fame and success since his first single took off, he’s still figuring everything out and working through his personal limbo.Įsquire: You told Preme that this album took two years to finish. These songs reflect different times, feelings, people, and places over the past few years for the rapper, but ultimately reflect growth, or as Aminé described it in a phone call with Esquire, a quarter-life crisis. After taking breaks in between to make the EP/LP/mixtape/album ONEPOINTFIVE, complete a world tour, and break into acting, he’s back with 14 new tracks. Now at 26 years old, Aminé is back with his second studio album that took him years to perfect. It is a wonderful examination of an issue that seems to be relatively forgone in rap, and the line “I’m fed up with the looks we get in restaurants, and no, it’s not a law, but you know we ain’t the same, I’m fed up with a world I know I can’t change” is a hard hitting line on the record that shows you that Aminé is very capable of writing emotionally potent bars.Aminé emerged when he was just 21 years old with the debut single "Caroline," which made it to No. This track tells my favorite narrative of any cut here, with Aminé writing descriptive bars about an interracial relationship in his teens and how it affected his home life and the people around him. “Becky” is another lyrical high point on the record. With the recent passing of Groggs, his verse about wanting to be a good father to his daughter is truly heartbreaking, and adds to the narrative of the track in a melancholic way. “Fetus” is a beautifully written track about the pros and cons of bringing a child into the world, and it hits much harder emotionally with the Injury Reserve feature on the track. In general, though, the lyrics are well written, especially on tracks like “Fetus” and “Mama”. The verses on tracks like “Easy” and “Riri” are a bit weak, typically because they feel a tad underwritten, as if more descriptors could have been used to tell a more interesting narrative. Similar to “Woodlawn”, the record boasts a common theme of smooth production that feels very glittery while also retaining a trap-ish feel to it, like on “Shimmy” and “Can’t Decide”. The verses are tight, with some signature tongue-in-cheek bars. The track “Woodlawn” features an incredibly groovy and smooth flute sample, complemented by the bouncy hi-hats plastered all over the mix. The beats are smooth, with a lot of simplistic piano and guitar samples plastered all over the record. With the two past styles put together, Limbo manages to feel incredibly distinct in its own style. The singles for this record borrowed from both of his previous styles, with “Shimmy” being more of a banger reminiscent of ONEPOINTFIVE, infused with a boom-bap vocal sample and some tripped-up drums, but “Compensating” showed a more vulnerable side of Aminé, with a Young Thug feature on the track as well. His newest album, Limbo, is anything but what the title suggests, with Aminé adopting both distinct styles from his previous records and combining them for a greater outcome than its predecessors. Songs like “SHINE” and “BLACKJACK” were charismatic and showed a sort of playful demeanor to his style that made the entire record incredibly infectious to listen to and upped the replay value greatly. This album showed Aminé ’s knack for more clean cut rap tunes, no matter the subgenre. A year after his debut album, Good For You, Aminé released ONEPOINTFIVE, a much more trap based record. Caroline is a smooth, colorful love song, with incredibly catchy pulsing synths and Amine riding the beat with ease. Aminé ’s ability to write catchy R&B infused rap cuts has always caught my ear, with his initial breakout single “Caroline” peaking at number 11 on the Billboard charts. One thing Portland has not typically been known for, however, is producing popular rappers, and over the past few years Portland rapper Aminé has been trying to change that. Portland, Oregon has long been known for many things, whether it be the brilliantly funny portrayal of a hipster hotspot on Portlandia or the lucrative indie rock scene within the city.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |