By Martin Castro (The Cascade) – Email
BJ the Chicago Kid’s first full-length project is a bit of an oddity. It reflects his struggle to carve out an identity, and while it does an adequate job of that, it’s more of a success in how it reclaims an aesthetic as opposed to creating another one.
The aesthetic in question is R&B. R&B has gone through some pretty dramatic changes these past years. It was once well known as the stomping ground of artists like Stevie Wonder, who took funk aesthetics and blended them with soul. Later, R&B morphed once more, this time turning into the funky rock of Earth, Wind & Fire. Fair enough.
And then came R. Kelly. Through him, R&B was redefined into the smooth, silky, pillow-talk soundtrack it has come to be known as. Even now, the R&B aesthetic has further moved away from its roots, as artists like The Weeknd and Drake further muddy the waters.
And In My Mind seems to be the latest in a series of albums that come off as a cultural backlash against this bastardization of R&B. Although not as rooted in the inception of R&B as Leon Bridges’ Coming Home, In My Mind is definitely a step in the right direction. And it’s much more accessible to mainstream audiences.
The Weeknd is on the far left of the nu-R&B aesthetic spectrum, all hedonism and sex and drugs and parties and sex and sex. Leon Bridges is the diehard conservative: his music is all gospel and redemption and spirituals. Each has its appeal.
In My Mind is an amalgamation of both extremes of the spectrum. “Shine Bright,” for example, is a more hopeful track than what I’d expect The Weeknd to ever produce, but it’s still all about a couple’s relationship, and there are definitely sexual tones throughout. It’s not as overtly pornographic as The Weeknd, though. (Although there’s nothing wrong with The Weeknd’s brand of auditory pornography, it’s just different is all.)
“The New Cupid,” for example, is one of the best tracks on In My Mind; it blends BJ’s smoothly-delivered chorus with a more laid-back instrumental that actually incorporates strings, a kit, and guitar, as opposed to the neat synths we’ve become so accustomed to. And it’s a track much more focused on the emotional aspects of relationships than the physical ones. Is it as radio-ready as “Can’t Feel My Face?” No, not by a long shot, but it’s smooth and funky and features a kick ass little verse by Kendrick Lamar. We get the sense that BJ turns more to God than he does to physical pleasures in his times of doubt, and his music is all the more interesting because of that.
And so it’s no surprise that the best track on the record starts with: “She say she wanna drink, do drugs, and have sex tonight / but I got church in the morning.” Overall, the track is pretty much a thematic carbon copy (although a damn catchy one) of tracks that highlight the disconnect between our society’s predominantly Christian religious ideologies, and our hedonism and focus on sex. (At least insofar as how it applies to BJ as an artist.)
It’s Chance the Rapper’s feature that makes this track stand out.
I can’t even begin to express how floored I am with the music that Chance has been putting out lately, but his guest verse on “Church” is the best part of In My Mind. That’s not a dig at BJ, but rather an acknowledgment of how much Chance has grown as an artist since his appearance on Donnie Trumpet’s SURF.
In My Mind adds to a mosaic that includes SURF, as well as records released by a myriad of other artists over the past couple of years, and if the tide moves in the direction of these two records, then R&B is finally taking a step back in a direction not as dominated by vaguely-defined instrumentals and ever-present sexual innuendos.
