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FLYLIFE A Different View SOUNDCLOUD.COM/FLYLIFEDMON3YY
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ause who the fuck gon’ save your family if it isn’t you?” raps FlyLife on the title track from his recently released album. “I know it’s usually guns and drugs but this a different view.” The song serves as the culmination of a broader idea, each prior track helping to redefine a concept of what it means to be successful. Throughout the release, the Des Moines-based MC does this by addressing cultural archetypes and challenging the proliferation of stereotypes in his own life—a contrast which speaks to the promise behind the album’s title. Despite being deeply personal, A Different View incorporates features and production from a dozen collaborators, including Teller Bank$, Juliano Dock and other members of FlyLife’s Us Vs Them collective. There’s no shortage of lyrical boasting and one-upmanship, but it more closely reflects a rising tide outlook than a crabs-in-a-bucket mentality. This theme echoes through Dominic Harrington’s verse in the methodical stomper, “Enormous,” where he adds, “They don’t want me to win, they hopin’ I catch a big L / They see my potential and wanna do me like Big L.” It makes you wonder what could have been for the New York MC if he hadn’t been gunned down at the age of 24. Several tracks depict gun violence and drug running as vehicles some use to try to escape their situation. But leveraging those themes to communicate a story reveals a vulnerability in the style: potentially reinforcing negative stereotypes
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by poetically incorporating them. This problematic trade-off is understood, as FlyLife raps on “Seven Days”: “They wanna put us all in a box and see us on Fox.” This isn’t to overlook the album’s musical cohesion—it incorporates everything from trap to R&B and shines through on several tracks produced by Cartier Cookin’, including “Oceans Thirteen.” But its selfaware concepts resonate as much as WILLIAM J LOCKER its sounds do. BRAINWASH Much of the album goes on to WILLIAMJLOCKER.BANDCAMP.COM challenge other concepts relating to achievement, with FlyLife attempthose of us of a certain age who ing to reconcile desires for financial spent any time on the rave or and material gain, companionship club scenes during their heyday are and personal satisfaction with so- familiar with that distinct sensation ciety’s conflicting messaging. In of coming out the other side of a “Enormous,” for example, he and night of partying, with the sun startHarrington trade bars, referencing ing to rise and the DJ lifting the muJay-Z and Michael Jordan as child- sic along with it to something bright hood heroes while FlyLife later and effusive. criticizes certain ideological blueMaybe you’re rolling, maybe prints laid out by past generations. you’re tripping; maybe you’re ridIn “A Different View” he raps, ing the inevitable high of a night “I ain’t respect your ways but I spent dancing with reckless abanknow you ain’t to blame / You OGs don. But has the sun ever felt like dropped the ball, truthfully them this? You’re sweaty and hot from n____s lame.” While not a direct referTHERE’S NO SHORTAGE OF ence to the aforementioned icons, this line provides an LYRICAL BOASTING AND interesting point of conONE-UPMANSHIP, BUT IT trast to their position as MORE CLOSELY REFLECTS A sources of inspiration. In a way, it recognizes society’s RISING TIDE OUTLOOK THAN use of “successful” outliA CRABS-IN-A-BUCKET ers to weaponize idealistic MENTALITY. versions of Black masculinity in undermining and dismissing certain realities facing those stuck within genera- giving your all on the floor, but this tional cycles of struggle. How does rising sun on your face imbues a someone pull themselves up by different kind of warmth. You feel their own bootstraps like Jay or MJ awake, maybe even hopeful. Just when they don’t even have boots? existing is the greatest thing you The close of the album brings with can imagine. it no specific view of what success William J. Locker’s newest alis, but instead, FlyLife encourages bum, BRAINWASH, hits those same the idea that success is what you notes. make it, depending on your own Opening track “Flow” is a dancecontext. Each listener needs to de- pop banger, guaranteed to drag you termine what that means for them- to your feet. Its dense layering is self. Therein resides the different like a dance floor in miniature, with view at the heart of this release. disparate lines weaving in and out —Chris DeLine and something new to listen to on
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each repeat. “Flow” rises and rises with no release into “Free My Mind,” which lands heavier but with no less urgency. “No longer alone on this megaphone / Get outside, feel the love, you’re alive / I’m gonna free my mind,” Locker sings. It’s a manifesto and call to action in one, adamantly positive and delightfully rocking. He flips listener expectations again with the bluesy “Walkin On” at track three. Locker has a Scissor Sisters-esque ability to genre surf while still keeping the energy up (complete with Jake Shears’ vocal flexibility, sounding good doing it all). The silky-voiced Nella Thomas guests on track six, “Good Thing Goin’.” The sunny early ‘60s vibe is pure joy, right through the sounds of the surf in the outro. The title track pulls things back into a more traditional dance vibe. Wordless vocals emphasize the steady pulse, and the simple, repetitive melody is deconstructed by a dozen different kinds of sound. “I love you more than I can hide,” Locker sings on the ‘70s rocker “Young,” a genre smash that seems to ask the musical question, “What if Tom Petty had given glam a try?” Love is persistent through this album, and Locker wants the listener to not just know it, but share it. Things slow down with “Infinite,” a thoughtful instrumental that exemplifies wistfulness, a last indulgence of memory, perhaps. An echo of happiness. Then track 12, “Hear My Name,” closes things out on a slightly different note, with an energy that extends from defiance rather than joy. But it’s no less open-eyed and engaging. BRAINWASH would be one hell of an album to see performed live. If Locker has a fraction of the energy on stage that he pours into these recordings, the audience would be brainwashed indeed, swept into a communal experience of activated love and joy. ––Genevieve Trainor
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