![]() ![]() But every beat |||||| works in the exact same no-budget vein: An electronic lope with barely-there drums and maybe an acoustic guitar or something. He forgoes rapping for entire songs at a time, preferring instead to sing in a surprisingly confident honeyed coo. "Still Comin'" is a song about grinding hard, doing everything you can to make a living in the music business- except Devin lets the entire song pass by without offering a chorus, just staying silent for a few bars between verses. ![]() ![]() ![]() After all, you can't remain in a state of bluntedness without losing some level of focus.Īs on his last album, 2008's Landing Gear, Suite 420 finds Devin in such a low-key mode that he's practically speaking inside his own head. His tracks, often self-produced, have felt like cheaper approximations of those warm, expansive older tracks, and Devin himself has sounded bored and distracted much of the time, never finding the storytelling groove he once had. (DJ Premier might've never made a track prettier than "Doobie Ashtray", Devin's classic lament about learning somebody's smoked his last joint.) But since parting ways with that Southern rap powerhouse label, Devin hasn't been able to maintain the sweep and lushness of those earlier solo albums. On the four solo albums he released on Rap-A-Lot Records, Devin found ways to spin humor and pathos out of that state of being, and the often-gorgeous production of those records didn't hurt. ![]()
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