808s and Bold Takes Issue 25: Aminé's Limbo, A Review
An album that shows growth, both musically and personally.
Hello and welcome to 808s and Bold Takes. This is going to be a really short newsletter; I’m moving back to one every two weeks and they’ll mostly be a normal length but I, like many, am getting ready for my first year of college. This newsletter is a review of Aminé’s album. In the next newsletter, I’ll have my long-awaited ranking of the five worst people on Fox News and possibly thoughts on the potential unionization of college football players.
I’ll be on the next Dunks and Discourse talking some hoops and ranking my top 5 characters from HBO’s The Wire. Check it out, I’ll send out a link when it’s up.
But before all that, I want to issue an apology. In an earlier newsletter, I ranked the latest and sixth installment in the Mission Impossible Franchise as the fifth-best movie. After watching both Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol and Mission Impossible 6: Fallout, I have made a huge mistake.
The latest Mission Impossible is, at worst, the third best installment in the franchise, and it might even be second. There is no movie in the franchise that has quite as many twists and turns, and the best part about it is that for the first time, Ethan Hunt seems truly fallible. He looks older and is evenly matched with Henry Cavill, giving the real impression until the very last second that he might fail.
Apology over: let’s get to the album reviews.
Limbo
“This is some sh*t you pick your homie up from jail with”
Those are the first words of Aminé’s second album, Limbo. It’s fitting, because the album is his most mature work yet. Good For You was the album you played on the way to meet up with your girl, ONEPOINTFIVE was what you played en route to your friend’s house after she broke up with you, and then, like Aminé said, Limbo is what you play to pick your homie up from jail, when you have to deal with real adult life.
The Portland rapper feels much older than 26, as the stress of the recent years seems to have aged him. Part of it was the pain associated with Kobe Bryant’s death earlier this year. Aminé’s friend Jak Knight says it himself.
“In, like, being a young person died with Kobe
And now, like, with him being gone, I'm like
Let me figure out how money works
Let me figure how, like, how to buy a house”
That maturity echoes throughout the 14 song, 44 minute work, in which Aminé displays his continued growth as a rapper while sticking to the core elements that make him a rising star in the industry. Right after the opening bar about picking up a friend from jail in the song “Burden,” there’s guitar followed by an initially jarring tone that sets the beat and, after half a minute, becomes a great example of the more complex production he’s using in his songs.
“Woodlawn,” the best song from the album, doesn’t carry the emotional baggage of other songs, but it makes up for it with a flute-like beat (one of my favorite things) along with Aminé’s most electric bars from any of the songs on the album. Although he is weighed down by recent events and becoming more mature, “Woodlawn” still has that intrinsic joy that caused many, including the author, to fall in love with the young rapper. The song’s essence is about Aminé’s journey from Woodlawn to where he stands now. That journey is exemplified by the company around Aminé on the album.
There are some great features on the track; Charlie Wilson makes another appearance on an Aminé song after “Veggies” and “Turf” from Good For You and is joined on “Roots” by JID, who delivers his signature syncopated flow. Young Thug’s verse on “Compensating” is classic Thugger, entirely incomprehensible and instantly appealing. But the best features on the track both come in “Pressure In My Palms,” when Slowthai and Vince Staples display their instantly recognizable voices in their verse.
Despite the features, this is Aminé’s show, and it’s a vulnerable one at that. He worries about bringing a kid into the world, about the continued racism he faces, about being a burden to those around him.
Those insecurities aren’t meant to diminish him; they humanize him. Aminé succeeds at balancing the serious message of the album with more lighthearted radio hits in a work that’s maybe not on the level of ONEPOINTFIVE or Good For You (which are two of my favorite albums ever), but still measures up as a solid stepping stone with high points that indicate a peak that hasn’t emerged just yet.
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