Welcome back to Sound Bite! This week we will be covering the biggest releases from the month of May, since Sound Bite took a bit of a hiatus as we covered some larger stories this past quarter. So from Kali Uchis to PinkPantheress hop on into this week’s Sound Bite review.
“Sincerely,” is Kali Uchis latest album, and I honestly think it is one of those albums that will chart a few radio hits but wont be remembered in the years to come. There’s a couple stand outs for me on this album, “All I Can Say” and “ILYSMIH” to name a few, but a lot of this album sounded extremely homogeneous and compared to some of Uchis past work, it fell a bit short of the mark for me. By no means am I saying this is a bad album, in fact, I really enjoyed listening to this, but I definitely was hoping for a bit more out of this extremely talented artist.
André 3000 also released a new album, and in now classic André 3000 fashion it was truly confusing and unlike anything Outkast, the rap duo he used to star in, ever produced. The album was recorded on IPhone, and is all freestyle piano solos performed by “three stacks” himself. To be completely honest, I don’t know what to make of this album. It is unconventional, and honestly it doesn’t follow any of the “rules” of music or theory, but at the same time I think that’s the point. So in that regard, I don’t know if I can review this album, or recommend it. At times it’s a hard listen, at times exciting. All I can say if you choose to listen to it is that you should really focus, and hopefully you can get something out of it.
“Pinball II,” is a direct sequel to MIKE and Tony Seltzer’s 2024 album similarly titled “Pinball.” It’s a classic rap collab album with features from the likes of Earl Sweatshirt and Lunchbox and I really enjoyed listening to it. A couple stand outs for me were “WYC4” and “Prezzy,” both of which showcase exciting lyrics and flow, and are very fun to listen to. If you’ve never listened to a MIKE project, I would highly recommend this one as a great jumping in point, it’s a very fun listen and its overall a very fun and intriguing collaboration that I believe works very well.
To wrap up this May issue I would like to touch on PinkPantheress’s latest project, “Fancy That.” In classic PinkPantheress style it’s only nine tracks long and this one specifically is a mix tape. I’d like to disclose a little bias here, I love PinkPantheress’s musical style. I think it’s super refreshing, and it would be very hard for her to make an album that I wouldn’t like. So that said, I loved this album. It’s an auditory feast that you would be remiss to let pass you, and out of every album of this week’s Sound Bite it’s the one I would recommend the most.
