It's easy for Atlanta rapper
Jeezy to sound serious. If he told you through his permanently strained voice
that he'd bust your head or saw someone die, you'd believe him. But the
downside of that rasp is that it doesn't allow for much introspection. It's
tough to sympathize with Jeezy because he sounds impervious to pain.
And while "Holy
Ghost," the fourth song released from Jeezy's upcoming Seen It All, seems
equally impenetrable; it isn't. Hiding behind Jeezy's chants of "we lust
for alcohol and we love women" and the detached alien synthesizer is a
glint of emotion. When he asks "where'd it all go wrong?" he's
confused and borderline scared. From an outsider's perspective his rise from time in a "boot
camp" for narcotics possession to Grammy-nominated artist is
improbable. And Jeezy's clearly still grappling with the improbability. He's
more concerned about the time someone stole a friend's brick than he is about
the current Billboard charts. So when he raps about reclining in his
Rolls-Royce Ghost it's not brazen consumption. It's an attempt to sleep
comfortably, to find one dream from the past among so many nightmares.
(You can listen to "Holy Ghost" here. Seen It All drops September 2 on Def Jam.)
Bass-music producer Shlomo has a free-pass to work with any R&B singer he'd like. "Don't Say No", the centerpiece of his breakout 2013 EP Laid Out spotlighted How to Dress Well's perpetually aching vocals up against a skittering background. Banks' seductive croon became even more exotic after her pairing with Shlomo's "tropical boom" on last month's "Brain". For such decidedly non-human soundscapes, he's able to ring out absolute pathos from his collaborator. Effectually, he's indie-R&B's "Horse Whisperer".
And over the course of the last year, there's no one's ear he's had more than Chicago's Jeremih. Already in the midst of a career-transformation with 2012's sorely underappreciated Late Nights with Jeremih, he completed the metamorphosis with the quiet storm of last summer's "Bo Peep (Do You Right)". That piece of airy bleeps and slow gurgles already seems staid though as soon as you hit play on "No More". Leaping out of the gate with scraping electronic sounds, "No More" writhes with trap-rap ticks and palpitating bass drops. Jeremih is similarly jittery, repeatedly wailing in his falsetto "I don't want to wait." "All I want is you now and later" he confesses at another turn; concealing agitation. By the end he descends into ghostly Auto-tune and everything is obscured. Waiting games are only "fun" for so long.
"No More" is the first taste of a new, as-of-now-untitled EP Shlomo and Jeremih have partnered up for. You can download the track through NPR and look for the EP out through
WEDIDIT/Def Jam.
