MIXTAPE: Jeremih – Late Nights

And, the award for ‘going in’ alot harder than you’d anticipated goes to this fellow. He’s warmed audiences up and gained fresh perspective in recent months with his ‘Go To The Mo’ and notable The-Dream aping jam ‘Love 733′, even piquing the ears of types who were probably, exclusively only listening to Razorlight a few years ago. It’s a good look. I actually enjoyed his record ‘Birthday Sex’ and mostly ignored ‘Down On Me‘, but during those periods of intensified R&B decline, artists like Jeremih seemed to be more a part of the problem than any anointed, alternative solution. Not necessarily because he was singing through a Colgate smile over trance arpeggios like Whigfield‘s invalid black-pop lovechild, but because he was on the other side of fence where genre frontmen had frankly just become bona fide corny… like guys who wear sunglasses in the club. Now after thankfully going AWOL for the ‘first-glimmers-of-new-dawn’ year of 2011, he returns on his own mission, but can he make up for the cheese-on-toast sins?

Whilst still straddling the dodgy line between cliche (“them thick girls with them rhino legs…”) and credible swag (something that died by the mid-00s), the production here is saviour foremost. Various unmined, fresh beatmakers provide tougher groundwork for his over-carnalized style and for all intents and purposes, it coalesces well. Ditch the radio sheen, muddy the bass a bit and throw in current flavours of candy paint culture, more aggressive down south club components and everything’s left feeling edgier, even shopworn sleaze. Fact of the matter, when a label doesn’t allow an R&B’ster to get gully, they take it to the democratized online mixtape arena where the real soldiers of fortune are and often end up producing their best work (re: Trey Songz). So we’ll give it to him, Jeremih sounds like he’s having fun on Late Nights and it stays true to it’s banner: partying, women, sex, stuff relating to sex, stuff revolving around sex, stuff hinting at sex, sex analogies, sexcapades, some more sex. And like Trey, like Terius, these are all ultimately the children of one man’s musical/melodic testes, and he is R. Kelly, so we forgive them all for what they’ve inherited. This collection is thoroughly enjoyable though and it bangs. So well done Jeremih for not allowing me to wee all over your career in two paragraphs. Stand outs include: ‘Fuck U All The Time’, ‘Rated R’ and the prior leaks.

Download: Jeremih – Late Nights