Desiigner - New English

Desiigner
New English
2016
Spotify

With the massive success of "Panda" a Desiigner record was of course on the horizon, but which direction that album would go was a bit of a mystery. Getting the blessing of Kanye was almost a guarantee of stardom when Desiigner was featured on The Life of Pablo. The problem however with the 19 year old Brooklyn native is that He just does not have the chops to carry a full album. When He brings his unique delivery to a track for a few moments, it is novel and fun but when that same delivery is over a full album it is grating at least. Desiigner has made a name for himself largely by just repeating himself over and over. It is so incredibly annoying on this record it is almost unlistenable. I would name a few songs as examples, but the entire record is almost exactly the same. He never switches it up, never tries something new basically He re-hashes the same song track after track. "Talk Regardless" and "Roll Wit Me" are so incredibly similar that I had to check and confirm I was actually listening to two different songs. He also has very little to say with songs like "Da Day" being just about hanging out, that is all. It would be easy to call the record forced, because clearly they produced this as quickly as possible, but there is so little care put into each track I doubt anything was forced.

When someone is effortless it comes from an intense confidence and ability, they are able to create great things without thinking about them. Desiigner is effortless in that it seems like He put zero effort in to this album. He certainly is yelling and jumping up and down in the booth, but for what purpose? No one is feeling this with him. "Da Day" is also almost seven minutes long which is so fucking insane. The fact that people in the studio signed off on this, a record company signed off on this is simply baffling. Pusha T is a rare highlight on "Jet" but by that time it is far to little far to late for anyone to really care. "Panda" closes the record however you've heard some version of that song about 20 times so it's arrival is not met with all that much fan fare. When a record is bad but someone put their entire soul in to it, you can feel that and respect it, but when someone sleep walks start to finish how can you possibly give a shit? When it comes to New English i really don't.

1.9 out of 10