Listening to Aminé is Good For You
This is the summer pop-like childish exuberance that we need in the age where everything is entirely too serious.
You might know him as that dude that put out “Caroline,” a triple platinum trap-rap smash hit that peaked 11 on the Billboard 100. Which is cool, because that shit is catchy as fuck. I’m talking like bump in your hatchback on your way to soccer practice while drinking on some sort of fluorescent colored juice catchy in the best of ways. You may also know him as Anima, Ameoba, Amineee, Anomaly, Uh-mine, A-Mine or more correctly Aminé, the dude from Portland with that Tuesday thru Thursday hair-due and catchy af bars across playful beats. And if you don’t know him at all, what are you waiting for, his debut album Good For You is out and it’s time to get familiar.
Modern rap is hard to listen to for fun. On one end, we get the melancholy social commentary albums that Kendrick Lamar is skilled at putting out. Less musical back to backs and more artistic oeuvre that leaks into social commentary of the modern day. Shit hits hard but sometimes you need a full on PhD to get the full context beyond screaming BE HUMBLE at the top of your lungs as someone cuts you off on the freeway. On the other hand you get the sound that is almost impossible to classify because there are at least like 57,000 artists sounding the exact same down to the ad-libs. It took Future at least a year to sue Desiigner for Panda, presumably because he didn’t even realize it wasn’t him. Listen to one song on the Migos album and you’ve listened to them all. And any other subsequent release. I’m not hating, I will still knock over all the furniture in my house whenever T-Shirt comes on some wyldin’ out business, but it’s nice to diversify. That’s where Aminé comes in.
From start to finish, Good For You, is a fun, enjoyable summer record at times shallow, at times deep, down to the at this point legally mandated guest feature from one of the Migos. If you just listen to the beats you can be mistaken for classifying this album as “youthful” and “carefree,” but unlike the inconsequential sonic mess that Lil’ Yachty tried to pass off as an album about a month ago, there is also subdued depth behind the poppy chorus and bouncy bars. In many ways Good for You is what your freelance writer wanted Teenage Emotions to be, but also good.
At times it’s strangely personal down to revealing that his father his diabetes, at other’s it’s playful beyond belief like on Spice Girl. Aminé speaks about being too old for this as well as having to grow up too fast. He speaks about consequence of relationships with his family, his fame and the fact that coming into some money is a weird concept for a 23 year old who has come from little. In the same breath he manages to shit on his exes, speak about personal enjoyment and reference back to owning dope shit, like a red Mercedes.
The biggest feat for Good For You is that it’s not encumbering like a lot of hip hop is nowadays. Sure, modern trap rap is devoid of any kind of complexity and meaning no matter how hard you look, but the heavy production and aggressive beat choices still often make it a chore to listen through an entire album, one sit down with Good For You feels like a breeze on a hot summer day. It comes and goes too soon and you start to miss it the moment it’s gone.
This is the part where I would typically write that listening to Aminé makes you feel good and alright, but it’s 2017 and it feels like it’s been 15 years since the U.S. elections and things are decidedly not alright. What it does make you feel is that it’s kind of okay to still have fun. We get so lost in the melancholy of the day to day hustle that it’s permeated our pop culture to the point where we’re not allowed to have fun. Between Good For You and movies like Baby Driver we’re rediscovering our capacity for joviality without losing our moral compass or ability to think about serious shit.
There are moments of sheer somberness on Good For You as well, song such as Money and Turf take a step back from the clear stand-up Wedding Crashers to both address this and showcase Aminé’s range as an artist. He doesn’t just rap, he sings, he speaks (occasionally) and manages to poke fun at his own name through a list of monikers no doubt said to him by “fans,” reminiscent of the Method Man AKA skit. He has range both stylistically and skill wise and he isn’t afraid to show it.
The album is a collection of stories about growing up. It speaks of falling in and out of love, trying to be carefree in the face of what seems to be a moral apocalypse that is the Trump presidency, dealing with your parents and the inevitable rift between youth and old age. It’s a lot of things, but in the end what it is it’s earnest, which doesn’t also stop it from being very very fun. In the summer where we tend to paint with broad swaths of white, black and shades of grey perhaps it’s a good thing to dump a bucket of yellow paint on the canvas and see how that one plays out.
