PARTYMOBILE / PARTYNEXTDOOR / March 27, 2020
- Joshua Yoo
- Apr 28, 2020
- 1 min read
Updated: Sep 13, 2020
It's been four years since PARTYNEXTDOOR’s last album release, a dry period that’s left fans of his low-key R&B highly anticipating this new project. It’s unfortunate because PARTYMOBILE is disappointing, in many ways, showing the real weaknesses of PARTYNEXTDOOR as a writer and producer.
The writing throughout the album is unfocused and unstructured, often singing and riffing on long, unending melody lines that drains the energy of songs such as on “NEVER AGAIN.” In some places the songwriting is just repetitive and uninspired (“LOYAL” & “TOUCH ME”). Production wise, the album suffers from vocal mixing issues, saturating his voice to the point where it takes away from the instrumentals’ strength (“ANOTHER DAY”). Also too many songs linger on longer than they should, adding instrumentals to extend song lengths boringly and unnecessarily (“SAVAGE ANTHEM”).
The few brighter spots on the album play to PND’s strengths in utilizing understated instrumentals and simpler, compact melody lines, found on the songs “THE NEWS” and “SPLIT DECISION.” The traditional feature from Drake and surprise feature from Rihanna are also notable moments on the album, but PND’s shortcomings as an artist limit the potential of the feature songs sonically.
The album overstays it welcome with an unnecessarily long runtime of an 56 minutes, which PND’s vocal performance can’t sustain the energy to support. In the big picture of PARTYNEXTDOOR’s career, PARTYMOBILE may be his most underwhelming project.
Best Track(s): SPLIT DECISION, THE NEWS
Lowlight(s): TOUCH ME
SCORE: 3/10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeOFAG3NlLM
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