TWOPOINTFIVE

Aminé

I was pretty curious to check out this new Aminé project. I haven't heard much of his music before but there's one Injury Reserve song that he features on called Jailbreak the Tesla where he absolutely kills. When I saw TWOPOINTFIVE pop up, I figured a 12-track 27 minute album was relatively low commitment and a good entry point into his music. I was quite happy to find that Aminé occupies his own lane in hip-hop. The instrumentals he rides on have elements of bubblegum pop and are slightly more up-tempo. Some of these tracks are a lot of fun and a little irresistible to move to. Neo is definitely one of the most simple, yet fun instrumentals, who's main melodic component sounds like it was sampled from a Nintendo Wii game. The colourful Charmander features bubbling synths, flutes, and chipmunked hyper-pop vocal hooks. Van Gogh is perhaps the most soothing track with its twinkling melody, similar to that of a thumb piano. meant2b takes heavy influence from chiptune music, which considering that many hip-hop fans are also video game fans, not sure why this sound doesn't pop up more often. Lastly, my favourite instrumental is without a doubt Sh!t2Luz. It has such a positive and life-affirming air about it and I can draw many parallels to some of the sounds on the last Porter Robinson record.

On the vocal and lyrical front, I think Aminé does a decent job for the most part. I like the pitch shifting effects he often uses, sometimes to very warped ends. And while, I wasn't a huge fan of some of the more cloudy R&B tracks, I will admit that Aminé does not come off as sleepy as others I've heard in that particular lane. I also enjoy Aminé's sense of humour, sometimes eliciting a chuckle from absurd bars delivered here and there. Not all bars are diamonds though, especially on one of the weakest tracks, Mad Funny Freestyle. I don't think I need to explain how much of a throwaway the line "we finna make babies tonight, goo goo ga ga" is. Even if that was an attempt at humour instead of coming up with a witty line, the joke still falls incredibly flat.

While I'm complaining, there were a few songs I wasn't completely smitten with. OKWME starts off interestingly enough with a chopped up boom-bap beat, but unfortunately suffers from a weak hook and uninteresting melodic content. Between the Lines also wasn't really to my taste with another uninteresting hook and a busy beat that seemed to dominate the track a little too much. The last complaint I have is that while I do like the bubblegum pop tracks, Aminé appears to be following a bit of a formula. This becomes quite obvious with Twisted!, who's instrumental is essentially just a more dull version of the following track Charmander. However, even with a few duds in the tracklist, TWOPOINTFIVE was still a fun and unique fusion of hip-hop and bubblegum pop. It made for a fresh and mostly rewarding experience.