Review Summary: I miss y'all
I was wrong about a lot of things when I was younger. Among the least flagrant was my belief that Friendzone’s
DX was superior to
Collection 1.
DX was the popular pick since it was a standalone album, rather than a compilation (some might say a
collection), but as I’ve aged I think there’s something about Friendzone that operates better in tight spaces. The tracks on
Collection 1 are largely beats for the rappers the duo worked with, pulled from places like Main Attrakionz’s masterpiece
808s and Dark Grapes II or the sprawling
Kuchibiru Network mixtapes, whereas on
DX they made an album all for themselves, untethered from the restraints of verse-chorus-verse structures and the like. It’s tremendous, no doubt, but nowadays
Collection 1 feels tighter and more focused, the melodies sharper and easier to sink my teeth into. Basically, I’m getting very old: I want my hooks nice and simple and I want them before my knees give out.
I was also heart-wrenchingly wrong in that I saw Friendzone as the leaders of a new regime. Back in 2013 when
DX dropped, Friendzone had started to flutter ever-closer to the mainstream rap scene as one of the more ubiquitous names in cloud rap. Their big break of sorts had come earlier in the year when they made their major label debut with the stunning “Fashion Killa” on A$AP Rocky’s
LONG.LIVE.A$AP. An album with a Friendzone-produced track going double platinum felt downright surreal; couple that with
DX sneaking its way onto a few best-of-2013 lists and it felt like the unlikeliest of breakthroughs was imminent.
Tragically, it never happened. Less than four years later, James Laurence, half of Friendzone, died unexpectedly at the age of 27. In the coming years, Dylan Reznick, the duo’s other member, largely stopped releasing music under the Friendzone name, and cloud rap began to seep out of the mainstream consciousness following its zenith in the early twenty-tens. The loss of Laurence was devastating on a number of levels: his influence on modern hip-hop (see: Rocky or Playboi Carti) may never go properly recognized, and the music world, by all accounts, lost not only a trailblazing artist but a beacon of positivity and love.
So when Reznick released a new Friendzone project earlier this month, it was equal parts a thrill and a tug at the heartstrings. “New” is a misleading word here, as like
Collection 1, the aptly-titled
Collection 2 is a compendium of a number of old Friendzone tracks. The aforementioned “Fashion Killa” makes an appearance, as does “Solarflare”, which closed out Yung Lean’s debut 2013 mixtape
Unknown Death 2002. Also like
C1,
C2 is Friendzone at their best, forced to operate from within the confines of three-to-four minute hip-hop tracks, often hazy and ambient rather than the grand, open-air glitchiness of
DX or
808s & Dark Grapes III. The best tracks here operate in a middle ground between the two poles: “+1UP” is a brilliant slow-burner that wobbles with a similar ambience to “Chuch”, while “SATFINAL” recalls
DX’s colorful looping keyboards, but in a more digestible sub-four-minute groove.
Collection 2 could very well be the final farewell from a duo that deserved more, or it could be a hint at another chapter to come – Reznick has suggested, here and there, that more material could be on the way. Most importantly, though, it’s a strong enough statement to be appreciated on its own merits – allowing us to momentarily forget all the sadness and the what-ifs, and focus on what an absolute blessing it is to be listening to a Friendzone tape in 2022.
