DIllon Francis - Wut Wut

Dillon Francis
Wut Wut
2018
Spotify

The concept surrounding this album is a valid one. take some pretty well known Latin performers and employ them to make a Spanish language concept album. Dillon Francis in interviews has said WUT WUT is a combination of reggaeton and dutch house, that enjoyed some popularity on festival stages in the past, but never really broke through to the mainstream. Other producers of Francis' ilk have done the same recently with DJ Snake releasing "Taki Taki" and David Guetta collaborating J Baldvin on a couple of tracks earlier this summer. However in concept is really the only place this record works. Instead of some modern hip fusion this album sounds like EDM's last ditch effort to entice the Latin market. EDM has always been a major trend follower instead of a trend setter, chasing the sounds that are hot right now, and Francis is trying to do that here. His productions here are so on the nose EDM though that the inclusion of Latin voices doesn't do much but cause confusion. There are times where He hits some nice rhythms like on "No Pare" which features this nice little guitar line at the end, but the drop totally ruins it. Throughout the album Francis finds little nice moments, great sounds and interesting ideas, but as with much of music there is always something that takes you right out of it.

"Sexo" for me is the biggest offender. iLe raps "quiero sexo" about 10,000 times and for those of you who don't know what that means He is saying "I want sex". Sure about 90% of songs are actually about sex, but just saying it over and over is maddening. The song also has this reggaeton beat that sides much closer to dancehall and feels like it is totally out of Dillon Francis' wheelhouse. These songs truly feel like they should be changes of pace for live sets rather than a full album, but this is the first LP Francis has released since 2014. He is able to mine some gold from "Never Let You Go" because it doesn't feel like such hard EDM, but more atmospheric and housey. That doesn;t however make it any less pandering, but Dillon Francis would likely never claim He wasn't trying to pander in the first place. For all his faults, DIllon Francis does seem to know what sounds good, and can often convince you something is better than it actually is. This record however just feels too icky, too much like pandering to truly enjoy even the good moments. The dub step tracks round out the close of the album and are just as bad if not worse than everything else. This music may be for someone, somewhere but I think they might live in 2015.

4.1 out of 10