Favorite Track: "Woodlawn" Least Favorite Track: "Riri"
Portland, Oregon has long been known for many things, whether it be the brilliantly funny portrayal of a hipster hotspot on Portlandia or the lucrative indie rock scene within the city. One thing Portland has not typically been known for, however, is producing popular rappers, and over the past few years Portland rapper Aminé has been trying to change that. Aminé’s ability to write catchy R&B infused rap cuts has always caught my ear, with his initial breakout single “Caroline” peaking at number 11 on the Billboard charts. Caroline is a smooth, colorful love song, with incredibly catchy pulsing synths and Amine riding the beat with ease. A year after his debut album, Good For You,Aminé released ONEPOINTFIVE, a much more trap based record. This album showed Aminé’s knack for more clean cut rap tunes, no matter the subgenre. Songs like “SHINE” and “BLACKJACK” were charismatic and showed a sort of playful demeanor to his style that made the entire record incredibly infectious to listen to and upped the replay value greatly.
His newest album, Limbo, is anything but what the title suggests, with Aminé adopting both distinct styles from his previous records and combining them for a greater outcome than its predecessors. The singles for this record borrowed from both of his previous styles, with “Shimmy” being more of a banger reminiscent of ONEPOINTFIVE, infused with a boom-bap vocal sample and some tripped-up drums, but “Compensating” showed a more vulnerable side of Aminé, with a Young Thug feature on the track as well. With the two past styles put together, Limbo manages to feel incredibly distinct in its own style. The beats are smooth, with a lot of simplistic piano and guitar samples plastered all over the record. The track “Woodlawn” features an incredibly groovy and smooth flute sample, complemented by the bouncy hi-hats plastered all over the mix. The verses are tight, with some signature tongue-in-cheek bars. Similar to “Woodlawn”, the record boasts a common theme of smooth production that feels very glittery while also retaining a trap-ish feel to it, like on “Shimmy” and “Can’t Decide”.
The verses on tracks like “Easy” and “Riri” are a bit weak, typically because they feel a tad underwritten, as if more descriptors could have been used to tell a more interesting narrative. In general, though, the lyrics are well written, especially on tracks like “Fetus” and “Mama”. “Fetus” is a beautifully written track about the pros and cons of bringing a child into the world, and it hits much harder emotionally with the Injury Reserve feature on the track. With the recent passing of Groggs, his verse about wanting to be a good father to his daughter is truly heartbreaking, and adds to the narrative of the track in a melancholic way. “Becky” is another lyrical high point on the record. This track tells my favorite narrative of any cut here, with Aminé writing descriptive bars about an interracial relationship in his teens and how it affected his home life and the people around him. It is a wonderful examination of an issue that seems to be relatively forgone in rap, and the line “I’m fed up with the looks we get in restaurants, and no, it’s not a law, but you know we ain’t the same, I’m fed up with a world I know I can’t change” is a hard hitting line on the record that shows you that Aminé is very capable of writing emotionally potent bars.
As I mentioned before, I also think the production on this record is excellent, with a few exceptions. R&B infused cuts like “Compensating” and “Easy” have beautifully smooth instrumentals, rivaling the production of mainstream R&B artists like SZA or Kehlani, while the bangers of the tracklist can sound like anything from BrockHampton to JID, the latter of which is actually featured on the smooth rap cut “Roots”. Aminé’s mature sounding voice is mixed very well over the top of the instrumentals, and in most cases here it doesn’t sound as though he is getting overshadowed. On “Easy”, the sung vocal harmonies between Aminé and Summer Walker do fall a little flat for me, and it feels as though they could have been done a little better or been completely left apart. Young Thug’s vocals also don’t mesh with the beat of “Compensating” too well, not to mention his lyrics on this track are a little corny and underwritten.
Overall, though, Limbo is a super tightly wrapped, 14 track rap record with few duds in the tracklist, and even the duds aren’t enough to fully bog down the record. Aminé’s distinct style and attention-grabbing voice are on full display here, and it even shows him experimenting around a little with some more complex vocals and meaningful bars. I like the direction he is taking with this record, and I feel the worst thing about it is that it leaves little room for improvement upon his current sound without some significant experimentation and comfort-zone pushing. Nonetheless, this is easily his best record, intelligently combining his past styles while also creating something distinct in its own right.
