Post Malone, Hollywood's Bleeding, Album Review
Post Malone
Hollywood's Bleeding
Album Review
Post Malone had quickly rose to almost global recognition seemingly overnight with his debut record Stoney, and one of his most pivotal singles "Rockstar". However, recognition didn't necessarily amount to appreciation towards the American rapper, singer and songwriter in my case. Even with his second full-length album Beerbongs & Bentleys early last year, I still restricted myself from listening to it. To put it bluntly, I simply wasn't interested.
however, Posty has shown me a different side to himself which might just have me hooked. Especially in the year of 2019, he has displayed far more uniqueness to his trap/emo rap counterparts, and has instead taken the approach of making far more ambient and gritty music. And no album elaborates on this better than Hollywood's Bleeding.
I honestly didn't get hooked on Posty until quite recently, when I found myself beginning to enjoy one of his recent singles "Goodbyes". I believe that the reason why I may have liked this so much, is because I feel that Post Malone was almost type-cast for the melancholy atmosphere the song created; he pretty much fit into the song perfectly.
However, my love towards Post Malone may not have been completely set in stone until his headline live performance at Reading festival this year. It almost completely flipped my opinion towards the artist after initially going there just because of the headline status. Feeling just as intimate as an actual concert of his, Posty completely killed it live, and along with this, I finally developed an interest towards his discography.
Shortly after Reading festival concluded for another year, Post Malone released another single "Circles", which pushed an evolution in his music even further. Even more so than "Goodbyes", I found myself enjoying this track as well.
This album begins fantastically, with the title track really winning me over with its epic and gloomy ambience, as well as the awesome rhythm shifts.
What follows is a generally fantastic album with satisfactory selection of good tracks and a generous runtime of 51 minutes. I was also pleased to find that despite having a total of 17 tracks, very few of them were completely underwhelming. The offenders are "Saint-Tropez", "Die For Me", "I'm Gonna be" and "Internet", which just come across as bog standard and unimaginative Posty tracks, everything else however, is at least great.
While not being an entirely "feature culture" album, Hollywood's Bleeding has some amazing features on them. I especially love DaBaby on "Enemies", SZA on "Staring At The Sun", and (ahem) Travis Scott and Ozzy Osbourne on "Take What You Want". Throughout all of this though, Post Malone remains the star of the show, displaying some amazing vocals, which in a few cases on this album, have the potential to make an otherwise bland song fantastic.
At the moment, the tree tracks that I think of the most fondly include "Sunflower", which features Swae Lee, is part of the Spider Man: Into The Spiderverse soundtrack, and has really grown on me (just like a Sunflower ironically). The other two tracks are "On The Road", which is essentially Postys "living large" anthem, and "Myself", which feels just as feelsy as something on Tyler The Creators IGOR.
While most people seem to regard Hollywood's bleeding as a decent third effort from the artist, I genuinely believe that this is his darkest, moodiest and most interesting piece to date. I feel that this is a great time to have a gateway album for Post Malone, as he is finally at a stage where he can basically do what he wants musically, which is exactly what he has done on this remarkable record.
Thank you for reading,
Booth Boy
Comments
Post a Comment