Pusha T doesn’t waste a beat or bar on new album ‘It’s Almost Dry’
Charlie Lake dissects the fourth studio album from Virginia rap legend Pusha T.
Four years have passed since the king of coke rap, Pusha T’s critically acclaimed album ‘DAYTONA’ released. A solid seven track, no-skips masterpiece, it was nominated for Rap Album of The Year at the GRAMMYs in 2018 and was awarded Album of The Year by music outlet Complex, amongst several other commendations.
So, how does one top that? Well, Push believes that he has. With six songs produced by Pharrell, and six by Kanye West, the artist had almost created a competitive arena within the framework of the album, with the two producers battling it out to have the better song compositions. ‘It’s Almost Dry’ is the near perfect successor to ‘DAYTONA’. Despite being five songs longer, it is laser focused and surprisingly sonically coherent, even when combining the fundamentally different production styles of Ye and Pharrell. Whilst Kanye’s production style is more focused on bars and lyrics and prevalent sampling, Pharrell took a more ‘tedious’ approach, honing in on details such as choruses, cadences and more rigid song structures, Pusha told Jimmy Fallon on ‘The Tonight Show’.
Unlike ‘DAYTONA’, Pusha’s new album is to some degree conceptual, with the rapper embodying the persona of The Joker from the Batman universe, as advised by Pharrell, who thought that the character matched his dark sense of humour. On songs like ‘Brambleton’, ‘Call My Bluff’ and ‘’Let The Smokers Shine The Coupes’, the menacing laugh of villain Arthur Fleck from Joker (2019) can be heard sampled in between the polished bars. Other Pharrell-produced songs are ‘Scrape It Off’ with features from Lil Uzi Vert & Don Toliver, ‘Open Air’ and ‘Neck & Wrist’ featuring none other than Jay-Z.
The rest of the album is helmed by fellow G.O.O.D. Music member Kanye West, alongside a few other co-producers. He graced songs like the lead single ‘Diet Coke’ and the five remaining tracks. The very best of Kanye is enrapturing…on first spin, the minimal, Colonel Bagshot-sampling ‘Just So You Remember’ is reminiscent of the ‘DAYTONA’ finale ‘Infrared’. ‘Dreamin’ of the Past’, which finds its foundations on Donny Hathaway’s studio rendition of John Lennon’s ‘Jealous Guy’ is a rarity for Pusha, in that it is upbeat and celebratory, and not half as louring as much of his catalogue. Push and Kanye both reminisce over luxurious moments from their life that past versions of themselves never thought they would experience. This, to me, is the highlight of the album.
One record that regrettably slightly counterpoises the rest of the tracklist is ‘Rock N Roll’, starring Kid Cudi and Kanye. In the context of the two features’ very public (and very petty) feud on social media, the track doesn’t hit like it should. The vocoded chorus, sung by Cudi, is chaotic and is at odds with the composure with which Pusha goes bar for bar in the main body of the song. Perhaps this was the intention, however it just didn’t click with me like it may for others. This is without mentioning the almost totally inaudible, raspy verse from Ye.
The record’s finale, ‘I Pray For You’, begins with smooth, soulful vocals from Labrinth over a humming church organ, before the beat kicks in to allow Pusha’s brother NO MALICE (who together formed 90s hip-hop duo Clipse) to lay the best feature verse on the album, with just as many coke references as are found in Pusha’s verses. The duo reunited last month for a track on Nigo’s ‘I Know NIGO!’ collab album, but it didn’t touch anywhere near the heights that this latter song does.
Whilst the album oscillates between Pharrell’s plinky, candied keys and Ye’s hard-hitting, soul-sampling cuts, there is a succinct preciseness to the 12-track record. Pusha’s lyricism is in no way less chiselled than it was on ‘DAYTONA’, and with a narrative weaved into the tracks that its predecessor did not have, it is packed with even more detail and personality. The 44-year-old demonstrates he is still in a lane of his own, and in many ways still drilling closer to the core of his style; ‘It’s Almost Dry’ is a unique blend, seeing Pusha push himself (no pun intended) as an artist with the help of Pharrell, whilst simultaneously staying true to his old style, as supported by Ye. It doesn’t take a genius to work out why it is projected to debut at #1 on the Billboard 200, possibly making his first chart-topper.
