Here, “When I’m With Him” is a fragile, powerful rumination on an empty love that highlights the sad nature of such a situation.Ĭaptivating in a completely different way than the Us version, this new take on “When I’m With Her” is a perfect demonstration of two artists fusing their vision together for a result that transcends either of them. For his take, Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas translates some of the Spanish and slows down the emotional thrust.
In Rodriguez’s hands, the song is a bilingual, midtempo spiral in which she wrestles with being trapped in a romance that is overshadowing her own identity. Technically billed as a cover by Perfume Genius, it’s really more of a collaboration alongside Empress Of, who sings backup vocals, and the original’s co-producer, Jim-E Stack. Rae Sremmurd divide up along roughly Outkast-ish lines, with Swae Lee in the Andre 3000 role as a kind of romantic, psychedelic star-child, as given to crooning as he is to rapping the cover. Now, she’s teamed with Perfume Genius for a new reimagining of the track. The collection of gorgeous alt-R&B tracks took varying looks at relationships, including a distorted one on lead single, “When I’m With Him”. Still, at least album highlight Powerglide justifies its five-minute length, by dint of being equipped with a fantastic, propulsive sample sourced from Side 2 Side, a 2009 single by Three 6 Mafia (whose Juicy J makes a cameo appearance) and a chorus so brilliant and addictive it’s impossible to hear it enough times.Last fall, Lorely Rodriguez dropped her sophomore album as Empress Of, Us. The former in particular is a really great track, complete with a guest appearance by the Weeknd, that loses its force the longer it lasts. When it hangs around for five minutes – as on Bedtime Stories or Up in My Cocina – their talent is spread thin, and things become too repetitious for their own good. Take Close: concise and taut, based around a sinister keyboard figure and blessed with a surprisingly relaxed verse from Travis Scott, it is teeming with ideas. Brevity is currently having a moment in hip-hop – hotly-tipped Chicago rapper Valee’s tracks frequently clock in at under two minutes – and it’s certainly Rae Sremmund’s friend: good with tunes, but not big on lyrical depth or spellbinding storytelling, their music works best when it hits you with its hooks, then scarpers quickly. Neither of the albums are as epic a statement as the concept suggests, and the best tracks from each could happily live side by side on a single album.Ī similar desire for grandiosity also slightly undermines the collaborative album SR3MM. It’s just that the grandness of the presentation slightly oversells the contents. The emo future-R&B songs on Swaecation are lush with melodies, while Jmxto’s Mike Will Made-It authored beats are impressively tough, not least the electrifying Brxnks Truck and the swooping bassline of Keep God First. That isn’t to say that what’s here isn’t good: it’s frequently very good indeed. Once Rae Sremmurd have established their two distinct personas, they’re set: their respective albums continue in the vein the opening tracks establish without really throwing any curveballs (a bizarre appearance by Pharrell Williams notwithstanding, singing in an eerie, alien falsetto on Jmxtro’s Chanel). The problem with the Outkast comparison is that Speakerboxxx/The Love Below was one of those rare occasions when an artist maxes out the capacity of two CDs without longueurs or recourse to filler – it had to be two-and-a-half hours long to accommodate the duo’s multiplicity of musical ideas, which stirred everything from trad jazz to drum’n’bass to 60s sunshine pop into the mix.