Pitchfork
45
The rapper/singer Tory Lanez’s primary skill is mimicking others. He greeted 2017 with two new mixtapes, and while some people use the New Year as an inflection point—time to slough off the old and commit to change—Chixtape 4 and The New Toronto 2 show an artist toasting to inertia.
Lanez is known for two singles, both of which rehash previous hits — “Say It” borrows from Brownstone’s “If You Love Me,” while “Luv” swipes Tanto Metro and Devonte’s “Everyone Falls in Love.” In pop, familiarity often breeds success, so it’s not surprising that this pair waltzed to No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart. Lanez’s major label debut album arrived last August—a month before “Luv” peaked—bearing a triumphant title: I Told You.
Exulting after those hits is like soaking up sartorial compliments while dressed in someone else’s suit. But Lanez is well-equipped for this sort of work: his filmy voice, blissfully unburdened by texture, allows him to live lightly in past smashes without dulling the pleasant narcotic effects of nostalgia. Lanez also has plenty of practice—songs on the previous volumes of Chixtape mostly pull from a jumbled collage of the last two decades of R&B and rap. This music exists in the same space as Natalie La Rose and Jeremih’s “Somebody,” Diplo and Sleepy Tom’s “Be Right There,” and Cheat Codes and Kriss Kross Amsterdam’s “Sex.” The aesthetic impulse, not far from Hollywood’s vogue for making sequels to movies twenty years old, seems to be: if it ain’t broke, add new drums and put it out again.
This is especially true for the music on Chixtape 4, where the references to golden oldies are as loud and pervasive as ever. The wall-to-wall blanket of homage extends even to a pair of skits, where venerable crowd-pleasers (Cam’ron’s “Hey Ma,” Usher’s “U Don’t Have To Call”) can be heard in the background. Elsewhere, Lanez drizzles come-ons willy-nilly atop of melodies recycled from P. Diddy, Chingy, Fat Joe, R. Kelly, and Aaliyah.
Of course, referentiality is part of pop: to underline this point, Lanez builds a track around the singer Mario’s “Just A Friend” from 2002, which in turn borrowed and revamped the famous melody from Biz Markie’s “Just A Friend” (1989), which is based on Freddie Scott’s “You Got What I Need” (1968). Lanez is part of a long and vital tradition, and he knows it. But he has little to add, and after you identify the radio-staple-core of his songs, listening to them has all the drama of watching a friend complete a paint-by-numbers kit. Confusingly, Lanez also tends to muddy and bury the superlative melodies from his source material, undercutting any help they might give him and leaving his beanpole voice to do the heavy lifting.
Lanez’s other new tape, The New Toronto 2, makes it clear why he likes to stay in the vicinity of a sure thing. Populated with battering hip-hop instead of songs cherrypicked from other artists, it’s more energetic than Chixtape 4, but hardly more distinct. Lanez fires off dismissive, unimaginative fusillades like, “I be up way in the clouds/A fuck nigga weighing me down.” The tracks creep and bulge, matching the temperament of your boilerplate radio beat but doing nothing more.
The exception is “Wraith Talk,” a flashy, horn-laden number produced by AraabMuzik; it’s a throwback to the early ’00s, but has more zing than anything else here. Perhaps worried that this song would interrupt the humdrum flow of the rest of the material, Lanez tucks it away at the very the end of New Toronto 2. New year be damned: Lanez’s latest tapes are the work of an artist in a holding pattern. And why would he shift course? With the right coaxing, one of these old hits might be his new No. 1.
Fri Jan 13 06:00:00 GMT 2017