Review Summary: I've never heard a bad Blxst song.
About a month ago I had to get the timing belt in my car replaced (RIP to that $650), and had to borrow one of my dad's cars for a couple days for my commute to and from work. An auxiliary port was too far advanced for the sound system in this 2007 Chevy Impala (don't even think about Bluetooth), so the only option for music on my drives was the radio. I exclusively listened to the Hip-Hop and R&B channel, which is the only one in my broadcasting area that won't play advertisements for 90% of the day. There were two songs in the station's rotation that I quite enjoyed: the first was SZA's
I Hate U, and the second was Blxst's
Chosen. Having never heard of the latter artist, I listened to the album that
Chosen was from – the deluxe edition of
No Love Lost – and was thoroughly impressed with the consistency of quality in each of his songs. A few days later, Blxst announced that he would be releasing his follow-up album,
Before You Go, in two weeks' time. I listened to the album on my 4 AM drive home from work the night that it dropped in my newly repaired car, and was joyed but also unsurprised that Blxst had delivered yet another quality batch of songs with no duds.
Blxst is primarily an R&B singer, but there are many elements of hip-hop in both his beats and his vocal delivery. His approach to songwriting is very basic, but his ability to mold memorable verses and catchy choruses into tracks that rarely exceed three minutes is astounding. The beats, which are always up-tempo (Blxst is thankfully not about ballads), tend to have a nightlife aesthetic to them, more so than they did on
No Love Lost, making it a comparatively darker yet exuberant album. Lyrical themes on
Before You Go gradually shift from beginning to end, with earlier tracks such as
Never Was Wrong and
About You discussing matters of complicated love, and later songs like
Still Omw and
Talk To Me Nicely boasting of Blxst's continual rise to stardom.
There are a couple other minor details that make
No Love Lost such an effortlessly enjoyable listen. The guest appearances are four for four on quality in terms of giving their respective songs their own identity, with my two favorites being Rick Ross's verse in
Couldn't Wait For It, where he boasts, "What's 20 Million? I'ma spend that in a month", and Zacari's chorus in
Sometimes, which lead me to discovering the meaning of the slang term "chickenhead". Blxst also uses the producer tag and Tik-Tok meme "sheesh" with relative frequency, which will make his songs sound dated at some point, but also currently makes them endearing, especially when he ad-libs it after a particularly egregious line. Speaking of Blxst as a producer, he apparently has production credits on a few of these songs, but to my dismay
Before You Go does not have a Wikipedia page as of the time of my writing this review, where I can easily read and analyze the production chart, and praise all involved.
In the song
Pressure from Blxst's previous album, he begins the first verse with "Ayy, I ain't heard one bad Blxst song". Although he refers to himself in the third-person here as a way of copying what fans are saying about his music, I can't help but echo this sentiment. Blxst quite simply does not make bad songs, or if he does, he scraps them. Blxst is only interested in putting out quality music, and sparing fans from having to sift through and hour plus of garbage just to locate the few gems. While Blxst may not be the most innovative musician to grace the R&B playing field, he is the most consistent that I've encountered.
