“Boy Red” may be the biggest missed opportunity here. “Rideau Swing” has a bit more movement than most Lovell songs, and elevates Lovell’s flow too.
While never deviating too far from Lovell’s general palette (icy), there are some welcome expansions that give this album character outside of “ Concept Vague 2.” “Barbie Doll,” another Blank Body production, takes the signature Lovell-Body sound and takes it into DJ Mustard territory without sounding too desperate for radio play. The album’s sonic palette is one of its best features.
Blank Body, one of Lovell’s frequent collaborators, lends this album some of its best tracks (he did that for Concept Vague too). “Problems” is another pretty good track, and the production is wild. “Still Cold,” by far the oldest track on here, is still cold as hell (pun intended), and exemplifies the kind of bars-on-bars approach that much of this album lacks. “Riot Ballad” has Lovell passionately defending his girl against an onslaught of other suitors, declaring “I know youse a snitch, but you can’t play my bitch.” The chorus from Wavy Draxler hews a bit too close to the generic leaned-up choruses of Post Malone and the aforementioned, but Lovell’s delivery makes up for it. The track is way too short for how good it is. “PP15 Interlude” goes hard as ***, and the menacing production (courtesy of Lovell himself and Dylan Brady) really helps it to lurch along. Lovell does get some good verses in, thankfully. This hampers some of the edge to the lyrics, and casts many of the more ambitious choruses as overly simplistic. “Guidance” serves as another example of this quirk, where Lovell can barely pull together the chorus without the yeahs serving as an unnecessary lyrical crutch. The song barely escapes the chorus, and every sentence is punctuated with a yeah that serves as the only connective tissue between dissonant and unrhyming words. Just listen to lead single “Contraband” and you’ll see what I mean. Gone are the bars that recall other technical rappers like Bones or Vince Staples. But the lethal and technical flows that Lovell seemed to be overflowing with on previous efforts have been replaced with sing-songy choruses and repetitive structures marked with more filler that belies an aggressively lazy flow. This project is still head and shoulders above something like Lil Boat. That’s not to say that Red Teenage Melody is a bad album, or even on the level of contemporaries like Vert and Yachty. Following up such a statement was always going to be a tall order, and unfortunately Lovell’s newest effort is colored a bit by the trappings (no pun intended) of modern rap. Songs like “The Renegade Never Dies” and “Trees of the Valley” were ice cold, and forecasted the arrival of one of rap’s newest and best iconoclasts. Lovell’s debut album, Concept Vague, was a confident statement that painted in broad black strokes. While piss-poor aesthetes like Lil Yachty and Lil Uzi Vert supposed carry the torch of rap in the mainstream, figures like Lovell are making definitive statements and progressive music that moves the body of work forward. I also composed music for different brands for advertising campaign (Ubisoft, Zapa Par.Make no mistake: Night Lovell is one of the best rappers in the game right now.
I played on the biggest stages and festivals (Olympia, Grand Rex, Couleur Caf_, Rock en Seine, Les vieilles Charrues, etc).
,Year after year, I discovered and played new styles, from funk to hip hop and even classical.,I worked in the biggest recording studios, for artists and bands albums, for small labels as well as Major record labels (Universal Music, Sony-BMG, Wagram, Plug & Play Records, etc). Immediately, I knew music will be my way of life.,At 17, I already played in front of thousand people, but it was during my first recording sessions that I realized I had to work very hard to master this environment, everything started from here.,Then I moved to Paris with a backpack and my guitar. I learned by myself this instrument and how it was difficult to master it. Clapton, Lennon, Page, Gilmour were my mentors. I was born in Nantes, France, 1980.,I started to play guitar at 13, listening to pop music standards.
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