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Album review: dvsn - SEPT 5TH


GLOSS

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TL;DR hack: just read everything that's bolded! jj2 

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In an era where payola is the key to success and Twitter overhypes anyone who's seen the top 10 of the hot 100, when is not refreshing to discover a new artist? DVSN is a Drake-approved and Drake-signed Canadian duo made up of the producer Nineteen85 and the singer Daniel Daley that I discovered sometime last month after letting YouTube go wild with it's whole autoplay feature. Never really went back to listen to their stuff after that night but I was bored and had figured they had an album out by now because unlike RCA, :), Drake knows he has a flop label and doesn't mind letting his flop signees provide the world with some tunes!

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THIS ALBUM CAN BE DESCRIBED BEST IN CONSIDERATION OF IT'S DICHOTOMY:

THE GOOD AND THE UGLY

The Line and With Me are probably the most notable tracks on this album, both being singles and both being 7 minutes long. With Me is the better of the 2. The lyrics are repetitive trash that can be summed up with the line, "Fuck with me now", but where the song exceeds is in it's sound. Showing it's true roots in R&B, it almost creates a feeling of rolling around in the sheets with someone who you're blindly in love with. It's probably the shortest 7 minute track known to man, the production just leaves you wanting more.

In complete contrast, you have The Line, which is one of the most boring, try-hard "I want to be PBR&B so bad!" songs I've heard since that ugly song Blue from Beyonce's self-titled! Though the lyrics are much much better than With Me and most of the tracks on the album, the sound is so cringe, so bad, and so long. One of the best things about With Me is when a female vocalists and a choir of sorts sneaks in with a cute "yeah yeah yeah yeah" adlib that creates such a heavenly feeling because it is simply done right. But The Line literally takes that adlib and makes it a sample, looping it for at least 6 WHOLE MINUTES which doesn't sound bad until you realize that the sample sounds like some obese lion seal sending out a depressing mating call or better yet!! :) like they drugged some poor guy and recorded him trying to sing while choking on a dick! How come Sampha isn't credited for his OBVIOUS appearance on this album? :) Not only does it just sound horrible but it often crashes with the the verses and no level of synth can hide that! I don't even care about any of The Line's good qualities because every single one of them were done better on With Me. 

The bottom line is that from the start, it's very important that you know DVSN is capable of perfection but just as capable of trash. They show it best in attempts to remake their golden tracks. This can be seen in a song like Hallucinations, where the lead singer's falsetto is used to create this amazing atmosphere of tranquility. You can feel the song get better and better with every wave of synths, making an effortless slow jam but this same falsetto is taken to lead Try/Effortless and falls flat in the aspect of what it could've been, only ending up sounding like some rejected Nick Jonas demo that got bamboozled with a bunch of trendy sound effects. 

 

SEPT. 5TH'S STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS IS BEING FULL OF DRAKE DEMOS

Don't get me wrong, of course I love my fave but everyone knows that all Drake has done with his OVO sound label is sign people who remind him of himself. I support him and everything he's done/is doing for urban but he is more than likely an egotistical maniac who is aware that every male in R&B/rap wants to sound and be their own version of Drake. DVSN is one of Drake's many clones, they've just added their own unique flavor to the formula. A lot of this can be credited to the fact that the producer of the duo is Nineteen85, a longtime producer of Drake who is responsible for bops like Hotline Bling, Truffle Butter and One Dance.

While at many points in the album you can hear similarities in the production, all of the songs are taken to a level that Drake's production usually shies away from. Unlike Drake's amazing but usually repetitive beats, DVSN's production is very interactive with the lead singer but often times can feel overdone. It doesn't change the fact that Angela's instrumental sounds like a calmer version of the second half of Drake's Furthest Thing and Too Deep sounds like it could be an extensions of How Bout Now's hook. The good thing is that if all else fails in a Drake song, you will always have a great beat to jam out to. The bad thing is that if all else fails in a Drake song, the lyrics ripped directly from the man-diary of a fuckboy was 100% the main reason why! Throughout the 10 songs on SEPT. 5TH, the lyrics fail to vary from your everyday, "I guess I actually might've hurt my ex", "sex will fix all of our problems, lol its not a big deal" and my personal favorite "you're different from the rest, I guess I'll be a decent person!" 

In a way, it's not exactly hard to love the lyrics in songs like Hallucinations, The Line and Angela where the effort put into the lyrics are more than evident, they try to tell a story, they attempt to paint a picture and it's executed. You can even appreciate the lyrics in songs like Too Deep and In + Out where they at least sound sexy and completely fit with the atmosphere that's created. And yet, you'll never cringe harder than when you sit back and try to make sense of the writing in Sept 5th, With Me and Do It Well, the latter serving Drake's stripper fetish better than he has himself!

 

DID I MENTION THE LEAD SINGER SOUNDS LIKE IF A PART-TIME TREY SONGS AND PART-TIME AUGUST ALSINA IMPERSONATOR HAD A STROKE?

Just putting that out there. Though Daniel Daley's falsetto is truly ear candy, his enunciation sucks ass. Usually, I don't mind that. I stan Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, FKA twigs, Ariana Grande and Tinashe and though they are all known for being talented, none of them are exactly known for their ability when it comes to pronouncing the English language. What makes it so bad on this album is that he mumbles every chance he gets because someone told him that was his signature sound but was cruel enough to make him believe that was a good thing!

His vocals can actually add to the music in a song like Too Deep, where he depends on ad-libing and chopping his parts up for the sake of our ears the beat. Daniel's voice could even be useful when he actually sounds like he's not on his deathbed, like in SEPT 5TH and Try/Effortless. But the philosophy of mumbling equating to sounding sexy, one that has been popularized by the likes of Justin Bieber, proves it's own theory wrong once again. Even when he's mumbling he's so nasally and it certainly doesn't help. He's probably only had one octave his whole life and that wont change no matter how much he attempts to scream in the second half of With Me and The Line. The fact that he can half-ass screaming but can't half ass his voice cracking :) No like we seriously need to reflect on this, he wouldn't let himself scream full out to make up for his lack of vocal ability but he still cracked harder than Mariah trying to whistle after the 90's  1438716144482s.jpg

Anyways, it's more than clear that the star here is the production and not the singing itself. If there was any time in this album where the vocals were truly expanding the sound and not just holding it back, it would be when the mystery female singer and her choir squad came in and made Daniel sound like, well.. Daniel, it doesn't get any worse than him!

 

IS THIS ALBUM ATTRACTIVE?

This album isn't ugly, but it still needs some contour to smooth out the rough edges. For anyone who enjoys a good PBR&B, soul album, this album is a great addition to your library and though you'll very rarely go back to listen to it in full, when a song like Too Deep or Hallucination pops up on shuffle, you'll be in a thoughtless reverie of good music. But god bless you if The Line shows up instead carla1 

 

With amazing production but lyrics that lack consistency in quality and vocals that can become beyond annoying if you listen too close, I give it a 7.7

Replay: Too Deep, With Me, Hallucinations, Angela

Skip: Another One, Do It Well

Delete: The Line 

 

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mm that's a lot of words. slayyyy oprah1 

i listened to the first part of this on a long bus ride and fell asleep sia2 you know what I think I liked it i'll replay it again demi1 

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