From the great hive of SoundCloud, an internet musician is born every other minute who thinks to himself, “If The Weeknd did it, so can I!” and joins the ever-growing roster of cloud rap, lo-fi, trip hop, alternative R&B acts that multiply at the rate of rabbits. Another Nav, Yung Lean or Post Malone is not exactly a rarity these days. But sometimes it works out.
Internetainer George Miller is a man of many names, most famously his “Filthy Frank” and “Pink Guy” YouTube personas. These were a nice mixture of memes and crude humor, but apparently Miller overdosed on meme and turned to pills instead, retiring from YouTube to produce moody, atmospheric, drug-addled R&B under the stage name “Joji.” His debut EP In Tongues dropped last year, a lo-fi and spacious set of tracks that I liked quite a bit, but I was even more excited for his first full-length album Ballads 1, which dropped a couple weeks ago.
Joji told numerous publications that he wanted to push this album further beyond the territory covered in In Tongues, setting a new direction but still “keeping Joji roots.” Relishing the cloudy weather so I could relish the cloudy music, I set out to test this.
From the first track Attention, it’s clear that Joji has upped his production game since his SoundCloud origins, but still has a strong hold on his lo-fi style, riding a nice balance between. The instrumentation is punchy and analogue, but much fuller and textured as well, and while his singing voice is more clearly audible, it also can be distorted, reverbed or even Auto-Tuned, depending on the track.
Joji’s voice also proves stronger and more honed than it was on In Tongues, hitting passionate high notes on songs like Slow Dancing in the Dark and Wanted U. There’s just as many moments, though, when Joji passes up belting climaxes for low, groggy and depressed vocals, similar to The Weeknd’s approach on his 2015 hit The Hills. Moments like this include Come Thru and Yeah Right, the latter of which is my favorite track and, with a music video depicting Joji clinically depressed between two twerking women, wins Joji the “saddest player of the year” award.
With all these attempts to mix things up, though, the listener occasionally catches Joji losing control and going in directions he has little concept of. An artist evolving their style is good, but only if that change of pace works in a positive way, which is not always the case on Ballads 1.
The track No Fun is an incredibly unexpected and bouncy pop tune that, though kind of cute and humorous, feels way out of place amid the heartbreak odes on either side of it. The song Can’t Get Over You has a similar vibe, but at 1:47, it vanishes before its ideas can be explored thoroughly.
The closing track I’ll See You in 40 thankfully doesn’t follow this pattern as it is the longest track at 4:14, but it consists of one loud, 90-second trap soundscape bookended by high-pitched vocoder and ukulele segments, completely uncomplimentary to the middle portion of the track. The two components are so separate and conflicting that they feel like two different songs accidentally spilled into one another. It finishes the album on a sour note.
While I appreciate Joji taking artistic risks, there is something to be said for consistency, a department that Ballads 1 is somewhat lacking in. That being said, this album is still a much more formal and serious project than Joji’s past releases, and the artistic progress shows. While I’m more excited for a more focused and fully-developed Ballads 2, this album is an atmospheric debut that cements Joji’s persona beyond the constraints of his past work.
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