West Coast artist Vince Staples dropped another LP at the back-end of May, titled Dark Times, just two years after his previous album, Ramona Park Broke My Heart.
Vince Staples has been on a pretty consistent run, dropping 3 albums in as many years, and Vince is pretty good at providing music that is relatively concise, extremely moody, and a solid alternative/progressive take on Hip Hop. That's the formula we saw on his 2021 album Vince Staples (which was really short), and I'd say we get more of the same here.
At just 13 tracks, 35-minute run time, Dark Times, as the name suggests, is at times a bleak and depressing state of affairs, made bearable by the interesting and charismatic music choices. The forward-thinking MC opens up with a 30 second intro with the words "to live is to be, like the ni**a in the tree", which swiftly transitions into the bouncy Black&Blue, with simple but fat drums, reverbed and echoey vocals, Vince riffs off dour lyrics of poverty, death and mourning heroes gone before, his situation seeming "so black and blue".
The following track Government Cheese continues the decent start musically and the sad start thematically. A mumbling delivery with basic rhyme schemes and a tight flow see Vince discussing the depressive state that he is in, but not wanting to burden his friends with this when they do get time to speak to one another. The lyrics of the chorus hear Vince suggesting he masks his emotions, "don't forget to smile, know the world can weigh you down", on the surface may seem like a positive message, it could be taken as that, but I can't help but seeing the darker undertones of Vince justifying to himself to mask his own emotions.
One highlight was no doubt the track Shame on the Devil. This beat is dominated by laid-back, psychedelic, smoky guitar chords with Vince flowing nicely over the beat and the understated drums, particularly at the start of verse two.
The next song Etoufee marks the most accessible song on the tracklist to my ears. The reason being the absolutely stacked chorus, almost Denzel Curry-esque, and the hard lyrics that are in the chorus "in the ghetto I'm a martian, crash-landing in them dirty ass apartments, stay solid I'll forever be the hardest, big timin' like them ni**as in New Orleans, grill shinin' like them ni**as from Magnolia, Chopper City in the ghetto I'm a soldier now, where they at get the gat ha". Vince's lyrics on here are reflective, grateful that he got out the hood he talks about. The song closes with a heavy trap outro which quickly transitions to police sirens and choppers.
Justin hears Vince flexing his storytelling skills, the story of him meeting a Qatari woman in a bar, having a conversation with her, going up to her room potentially to have sex with, only until her partner arrives and Vince is quickly announced by her as her little cousin "Justin" - hence the chorus "woman lie a lot". It's linked to the prior skit which in a way justifies lying and is quite removed from the song that comes after. Not entirely sure of Vince's intentions with the message but either way the song is quite a decent listen, and the flow and rhyme schemes at the start were really smooth, his use of internal rhyme schemes inbetween rhyming "Qatar", "bar" and "star" sounded sick - "met this pretty woman in the Summer from Qatar, late night at Gjelina she was eating at the bar, said she was a teacher, seven months left on her visa but she used to be a singer, she was meant to be a star".
The track Nothing Matters was the other catchy moment on the project, Vince using some nice cadences to keep the track interesting. The instrumental had these industrial and mechanical drums which contrasted with the low and stirring bassline and cute piano keys. This mis-match of instruments made for a random but awesome mix that Vince could spit his poetic and flowery lyrics over, but still contain the undertone of cynicism, I liked the lyric, "cause every moment that we share feel like a poloroid, sometimes you gotta shake it up to see what's really there". His flow was cool on that second verse and also shoutout Maddy Davis who killed her outro.
Just quickly going to touch on the track Little Homies, brilliant chanting and powerful hook and was a more uplifting and inspiring moment on the album. I liked the lyrics "life's hard but I go harder".
Wasn't super keen on Freeman, I did not like the electronic beat (I love Big Fish Theory by Vince though), and thought it was pretty boring and aimless.
Finally, there was a spoken word closer by Santigold that touches in multiple areas somewhat relating to the project. Not much of a song itself, with no beat just a spacey soundscape which finishes with audience applause and some loungey keys.
Overall, I think this is a very slow and considered album from Vince. On the surface it can sound one-note and dull, which is something I've experienced with Vince's music in the past. But I think digging into the album a little more helps to find some brilliant tracks and a fair bit to get out of the album. There's some excellent song-writing in terms of bars and flow, but also the lyrics themselves that have depth and meaning to them and display Vince's vulnerabilities, opinions and insecurities.
Star Track - Etouffee
7/10
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