As this album’s cowl art work suggests — it seems to point out a restaurant desk with one man consuming tea and consuming baked beans, and the opposite consuming syrup — a full-length collaboration album between British avant singer-songwriter James Blake and psychedelicized Atlanta rapper Lil Yachty may not have been on anybody’s prediction record for 2024. However even realizing each artists’ predilection for the surprising, it’s a surprisingly symbiotic alliance.
For years — and to his ongoing astonishment — Blake has been a featured visitor of selection for a number of the world’s high rappers and R&B singers: His sprawling discography contains collaborations with Kendrick Lamar, Beyonce, Frank Ocean, Andre 3000, Travis Scott, Vince Staples and a number of others. In the meantime, Yachty was pushing the boundaries of lure even from his early days within the mid-2010s — and burst out utterly with the full-on psychedelic rock of final 12 months’s “Let’s Start Here” album, which mainly did what its title acknowledged: Since that album dropped, he’s made stylistically far-ranging songs with everybody from rappers J Cole and Flo Milli to electronic-pop savant Fred Once more.
Which is a long-winded approach of claiming these two envelope-pushing artists are far more musically sympatico than it might sound at first, and their personalities offset — and full of life up — one another properly on “Bad Cameo,” their first joint album. Their singing voices, whereas fairly completely different stylistically, are in the same excessive register, so Yachty’s often-autotuned verses match comfortably alongside Blake’s lush synthesized textures and ping-ponging beats. Right here, Yachty sings extra usually than he raps and Blake typically leaves him to it, chiming in with otherworldly harmonies or melodic interjections, though he takes some lead verses on “In Grey” and “Save the Saviors”; they usually even (type of) duet on “Midnight,” with Blake taking a beautiful verse that then seamlessly shifts into Yachty’s.
The duo have described the album as ambient and experimental, and whereas that’s definitely the musical vibe — there undoubtedly aren’t any bangers — it’s extra song-based than that description may recommend. Every track has a powerful melody and construction; “Red Carpet” is partially a capella, with Yachty delivering verses over a ghostly refrain overdubbed Blake voices that carry the track’s musical melody.
The vocals are sometimes closely dosed with results, which makes the lyrics onerous to know, though some ear-grabbing Yachty verses float previous like “I told my agent I wanna be treated just like a slut” and “I rock more [something] Rolexes than John Mayer” (“Save the Saviors”) and “My dog’s hooked on ‘phetamines” (from “Woo,” which is mainly the hardest-hitting observe right here).
Whether or not this might be an ongoing partnership or ships passing within the evening stays to be seen, however regardless of its expectation-lowering title, “Bad Cameo” is a powerful addition to each artists’ discographies.
