Review Summary: Yeah.
Make no mistake: Night Lovell is one of the best rappers in the game right now. While piss-poor aesthetes like
Lil Yachty and
Lil Uzi Vert supposed carry the torch of rap in the mainstream, figures like Lovell are making definitive statements and progressive music that moves the body of work forward. Lovell’s debut album,
Concept Vague, was a confident statement that painted in broad black strokes. Songs like “The Renegade Never Dies” and “Trees of the Valley” were ice cold, and forecasted the arrival of one of rap’s newest and best iconoclasts. Following up such a statement was always going to be a tall order, and unfortunately Lovell’s newest effort is colored a bit by the trappings (no pun intended) of modern rap.
That’s not to say that
Red Teenage Melody is a bad album, or even on the level of contemporaries like Vert and Yachty. This project is still head and shoulders above something like
Lil Boat. But the lethal and technical flows that Lovell seemed to be overflowing with on previous efforts have been replaced with sing-songy choruses and repetitive structures marked with more filler that belies an aggressively lazy flow. Gone are the bars that recall other technical rappers like
Bones or
Vince Staples. Just listen to lead single “Contraband” and you’ll see what I mean. The song barely escapes the chorus, and every sentence is punctuated with a yeah that serves as the only connective tissue between dissonant and unrhyming words. “Guidance” serves as another example of this quirk, where Lovell can barely pull together the chorus without the yeahs serving as an unnecessary lyrical crutch. This hampers some of the edge to the lyrics, and casts many of the more ambitious choruses as overly simplistic.
Lovell does get some good verses in, thankfully. “PP15 Interlude” goes hard as ***, and the menacing production (courtesy of Lovell himself and Dylan Brady) really helps it to lurch along. The track is way too short for how good it is. “Riot Ballad” has Lovell passionately defending his girl against an onslaught of other suitors, declaring “I know youse a snitch, but you can’t play my bitch.” The chorus from Wavy Draxler hews a bit too close to the generic leaned-up choruses of
Post Malone and the aforementioned, but Lovell’s delivery makes up for it. “Still Cold,” by far the oldest track on here, is still cold as hell (pun intended), and exemplifies the kind of bars-on-bars approach that much of this album lacks. “Problems” is another pretty good track, and the production is wild. Blank Body, one of Lovell’s frequent collaborators, lends this album some of its best tracks (he did that for
Concept Vague too).
The album’s sonic palette is one of its best features. While never deviating too far from Lovell’s general palette (icy), there are some welcome expansions that give this album character outside of “
Concept Vague 2.” “Barbie Doll,” another Blank Body production, takes the signature Lovell-Body sound and takes it into DJ Mustard territory without sounding too desperate for radio play. “Rideau Swing” has a bit more movement than most Lovell songs, and elevates Lovell’s flow too. “Boy Red” may be the biggest missed opportunity here. The beat is dissonant and jarring, making it perfect for the first track. The weird horns drag you into this world, and the bass is dirtier than anything you’ll hear on the radio. This is A1 Blvck Svnd work. But the verses on here often become repetitious and uninteresting, and the chorus is…interesting to say the least. “The niggas wanna start ***,” Lovell intones, after gleefully admitting to stashing drugs up his ass. *** indeed.
The best way to characterize this album is as an experiment. Lovell’s at the peak of his influence, and so it’s only natural that he play around with his flow and experiment sonically. And while this project ultimately fails to live up to the potential showcased on
Concept Vague, there’s no doubting Lovell’s talent or his potential for world domination. There is growth on this album, to be fair: the mastering and cohesion between tracks is studio quality; there’re no awkwardly tinny songs like “Material Female” here. Lovell’s managed to bring on people who contribute meaningfully to songs without upstaging him, and shining light on new talents like Dylan Brady and Nessly showcases an altruism that many up-and-comers looking to get theirs lack. The production is uniformly great, and oftentimes saves the songs from their own meandering or ill-fitting lyrics.
All-in-all,
Teenage Red Melody is a worthwhile project that deserves your attention. Even with its shortcomings, it’s definitely one of the year’s best rap projects.
