Four Voices of 2021
Songs of love, pain and ambition from a loose group of returning artists (plus one revelation).
Mahmood, Ghettolimpo
To announce each of the 15 songs of its second album Ghettolimpo, Milanese singer Mahmood introduced as many 3D versions of himself. There was Mahmood as Icarus, Mahmood as Tuareg, Mahmood as the Invisible Man, ... This chameleon persona is reflected in his craft, which he approaches with a dizzying urgency and an obsession for transformation. A daring pop royalty overflowing with ideas, Mahmood seems to consider music as a negotiation between the calm and the storm. He has a fascinating ability to build up songs through brash sonic gestures, switching gears between after-midnight musings, robotic outbursts and symphonic escapes. His constant search for the next sound, coupled with a mystique that borrows from anime, Greek mythology and high fashion, makes him a mesmerizing presence.
A work of spectacular grandeur—designed in parts by Italian producer Dardust, himself a pop cathedral builder—the album has the steep turns of a live brainstorm and the potency of a greatest hits (a good third of it is made of familiar, one-word singles: “Rapide”, “Dorado”, “Zero”, “Klan”). The title Ghettolimpo is fitting: Mahmood thrives between highs and lows, in the interstices where western pop nests with trap mutations and the singer’s own Egyptian roots. A progressive icon in Italy, Mahmood kindly shook up the conservatism of the country’s historic Sanremo festival, which he won in 2019. Edging closer to an international breakthrough, he’s an active reminder that our long-fantasized future—diverse, fluid and digitized—cannot be escaped anymore.
Lloyd Banks, The Course of The Inevitable
There’s a video of Lloyd Banks I keep returning to. He’s on Funk Flex’s show on Hot 97, back in 2017. Banks sits in the studio, arms crossed, and he’s rhyming. Flex sits next to him. He admires his guest with wide eyes, keenly aware of the theatrics required for filmed radio. But Banks could care less: he freestyles with a fixed, almost absent stare. He could be contemplating the meaning of life, or reviewing a grocery list, we don’t know, yet he still delivers lines after lines with atomic-clock precision.
Fine rap craftsmanship constitutes the essence of The Course of the Inevitable, his latest album, the first in a decade where Lloyd Banks operated mostly as a discreet mixtape provider. His time as G-Unit’s second-in-command now a distant memory, the Queens-raised MC doesn’t try churning out local bangers. Instead, he displays a kind of heartfelt, seen-it-all weariness, letting clues of vulnerability bleed through his reaffirmations of strength. Of all the rap revolutions that happened since 2010, Banks’ gruff voice was well-suited for the gutter rap renaissance led by Buffalo’s own Griselda collective. Despite a long bench of producers on tap (14 for 18 tracks), the record has the kind of brooding consistency granted by modest commercial expectations. Sparing with celebrated late bloomers like Freddie Gibbs, Roc Marciano and Benny the Butcher, Lloyd Banks cements his rap legend status without forcing it, away from the industry noise, and always one bar at a time.
Clara Luciani, Cœur
Sainte-Victoire, Clara Luciani’s 2018 debut, had moments of joy and sweeping ballads, but the record was memorialized as a sharp, unamused mission statement—its opener, the tense “La Grenade”, became a protest anthem for France’s #MeToo movement. Since then, Luciani hasn’t let go of her anger, but her follow-up, Cœur, shows her embracing a more joyful pop queen persona, down to the ‘70s-inspired patine of the album cover.
With production from dancefloor fetichist and Ed Banger alumni Breakbot, the warm sound of Cœur alludes to a mythified era of expensive studio sessions and glittery stage shows. Born in the south of France, Clara Luciani brings to life feelings of more carefree summers—a welcome note of escapism in a lockdown-ridden France—but this is still French chanson, and melancholy always creeps through (the dagger-in-the-heart insecurity of “J’sais pas plaire” evokes France Gall’s all-time great “Si maman si”). A witty writer with a knack for concise metaphors (marrying a singer, to her, would be like “pinning a butterfly”), Clara Luciani is a stunning vocalist. In lead single “Le reste”, she reveals layers of lust, hope, regret and crude honesty through subtle voice inflections, as she muses on a bygone lover through quirky, sensual details. This is radio-friendly audiophilia: every nuance of her voice is captured with stupendous precision. The evocative depth of this voice, a storyteller of its own, establishes her as one of the brightest ambassadors of French pop savoir-faire.
Mustafa, When Smoke Rises
When Smoke Rises, the debut EP of Toronto folk singer Mustafa, is inhabited by ghost sounds: ethereal hums, voice notes saved from oblivion, echoes of Sundanese music, muffled drums and crackling guitars. It’s a fog of memories from which the voice of the 25 year-old artist emerges, a precocious poet who grew into a spiritual anchor around Regent Park, Toronto’s oldest housing projects.
For his first fully-formed artistic statement, Mustafa writes an eulogy of fallen friends (the Smoke from the title is Toronto rapper Smoke Dawg, who was murdered in 2018). His words beg for wishful changes of course, calling for lost friends to stay home (“Air Forces”) and praying for impossible returns (“Come back”). An old soul at 25, Mustafa sings with a quiet, aching voice, a stubborn flame in a makeshift memorial. At one moment, his righteousness is intruded by flashes of anger: in “The Hearse”, he lets darker impulses take over, promising the most delicate revenge to an unnamed nemesis. In an interview, Mustafa expressed conflicted sentiments about his songs, and seemed doubtful about the possibility of closure (“I resent everything about them”, he said). He can’t promise solace or better tomorrows, but there’s something alive, still alive, in Mustafa’s voice, a fleeting sense of grace for others to pursue. “Healing happens outside of this” he wrote in his last public statement, "the song is only a compass.”