An Acute Case: 2 February 2024
Three talented young women in country, a one-of-a-kind woman in rap, and two British blokes whose views on women require improvement
Carsie Blanton: Body of Work
Voice that can’t be quelled saves material typically passionate from acoustic settings too subdued. ** (“Fishin With You” “In the Middle of It”)
Blockhead: The Aux
Customised beats for a who’s who of alt-rappers. All are solid, none are keepers. * (“AAU Tournaments” “Mississippi”)
Dave X Central Cee: Split Decision
The difference between the beats on “Cench” and Dave’s four-song birthday gift to themselves and the UK rap played in my gym is a feel for timing and space that backs up the amapiano reference on “Our 25th Birthday”. “Trojan Horse” is the best example, though “Sprinter” clinched the biggest streaming week and longest-running rap number-one in UK chart history. Ultimately, though, this showcases two supremely talented young MCs who expect you to hang off their every line—so it’s a pity too many display a mean-spiritedness towards women Dave’s proven himself too decent for and both prove themselves too smart for. Their vocal qualities—Dave lugubrious and measured, Cench with the baked-in smirk and patois’d “ahh-righ”—and punchline-chasing make hanging on a thrill anyway. How much of a thrill depends on having an intermediate knowledge of European football. B PLUS
Homeboy Sandman: I Can’t Sell These Either
Complaints that everybody’s been brainwashed into—oh god—wearing Crocs make it harder for rhyme skills alone to save one of hip-hop’s better thinkers, as does the lack of novel beats. C’mon, you can’t sell them because you’re not paying for them. Aim higher than Khruangbin. *** (“Banned in the U.S.A.” “All AKA Ciao”)
Elle King: Come Get Your Wife
When LA-born/NY-resident biz kid King professes she’s “crazy, bona fide”, she’s referring to her younger self. And when she asks who’s doing lines, it’s only to tell them to take their petty-ass drama somewhere else. At 34, she’s a former bad girl who’s glad you didn’t know her before you met her and now she’s cleaned up her act is wondering if she should “Try Jesus”—like that, but also like that. Though she opens and closes with her soggiest efforts, this is mostly keyed to a hard rocking, boot scooting, rabble rousing mode she performs so easily and exuberantly that the Miranda hook-up isn’t even the sassiest song. That’d be the “Tulsa” pun she lets you to figure out for yourself, which beats the drinking pun she and Dierks Bentley think is “Worth A Shot” and surprisingly is. A MINUS
Nicki Minaj: Pink Friday 2
The dips on this 41-year-old’s inevitably underrated fifth album amount to a mere five songs, with three coming at the end, by which point she’s earned your clemency. Of the remaining 17, 10 are close to spectacular and half a dozen more are elevated by her inimitable flow. Naturally, her ability to provoke has diminished over time (though “post pic got him jackin like Jill now / break the internet at will now” might not be wishful thinking) but her diction’s still a sledgehammer, her command unimpeachable, and she’s got more voices than her competition combined. And after a decade spent accruing all the riches she ever dreamt of, she remains delightfully crass. Samples of “when the party’s over” (Billie’s itsy-bitsy whisper in tart contrast to Nicki’s talent show pipes), “Never Leave You” (took me forever to pin that “uh oooh” to Lumidee), “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” (what kept her?), “U Can’t Touch This” and “Super Freak” (ditto), “Heart Of Glass” (kind of works), and Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness are lavishly acquired and artlessly deployed. “I ain't nothing like you, you, you, or you.” “If they ask about me, tell em I was one of one.” She’s not wrong. A MINUS
Megan Moroney: LUCKY
After the intrusive-thoughts-of-the-new-girlfriend Insta song so terrific it’s worth reading along to the internal rhymes comes the tipsy-flirty title track followed by the silken breakout hit where “Georgia Girl” Moroney pledges her troth to her new man (who may or may not be Morgan Wallen) by wearing his Tennessee football colours—a sin so awful she calls mum to fess up. That opening triplet is so clever you might start wondering if this 26-year-old debutant with the almost too-lovely croak could be the fourth Pistol Annie. Though she doesn’t maintain that level, she has the good sense to follow up with the safety of a McKenna co-write, flaunts her swang on “Another on the Way”, and buttresses the middle with the iconography of Cash, Trader Joe’s, and God. A MINUS
Morgan Wade: Psychopath
Radio drums and ripcord guitars juice the Virginia twang of this sentimentalist who sums up her romantic tribulations with a domino metaphor up front. Last time out, her craft achieved a through-conceived completeness even though she was still figuring her shit out. This more scattered affair is probably a truer reflection, with the one constant the fire in her loins that refuses to dim even as “you can't outrun me” turns to “I don’t know what I want, but I want you” and “I’m gonna make you fall in love with me” gives way to “why the hell can’t I meet somebody?” Smart though she is on the idealism of 80’s movies that ceased giving her solace once she discovered its antidote in Alanis Morisette and Sylvia Plath, naked truth-telling remains her gift: “don't care where we are / push me up against the wall” on “Want”; "déjà vu, been here before / I fucked you on this hotel floor” on “Losers Look Like Me”. Having recently undergone a double-mastectomy aged just 29, let’s hope the bravery she exhibits in her music sees her through recovery and onto a stellar career that’s there for the taking now she’s past the “27 Club” she felt destined for. A MINUS