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The Internet – Purple Naked Women

Album review

A side project, already? Well, Odd Future were always a bit of a chop and change clan. My main question is, just what are they trying to achieve?

This time round, they’re hitting the R’n’B market. Or, more precisely, Syd – the only female member of the group – is.

Opening track ‘Violet Nude Women’ is an instrumental track taking a cue from the Nu Jazz school of production. “While Syd is tellin’ me that she’s been gettin’ intimate with men/Syd, shut the fuck up/here’s the number to my therapist” (Yonkers, Tyler the Creator), this is not. In fact, even ‘C*nt’ is so unoffensive it the childish humor of the title seems as offensive as the word itself. Just because a women’s saying it, doesn’t make it a good reason to be so uncreative with lyrics or titles – it’s not forward thinking feminism, it’s dull.

There’s a lot of movements into pop, soulful female vocals over bouncy basslines and hip hop drum loops. It’s almost as if they wrote a song for the reunion of Destiny’s Child, only to be turned away and told by their label to get on with it and do a whole album.

It takes until track six, ‘Cocaine’, for the traditional deep sounding males MC vocals to make an appearance. And as the track suggests, it’s about cocaine.

As an album full of tracks useful for DJs needing some light dub, most of this album works quite nicely. As a creation by a member of what was sold to us as the future of hip hop, it’s a little disappointing.

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