Hodgy missing Left Brain on Fireplace: The Not The Other Side.
Fireplace: The Not the other Side is the name of Hodgy’s debut album that dropped on December 9, 2016. He is better known as Hodgy Beats, Odd future member and one half of the duo MellowHype, but today he is just Hodgy.
He is no stranger to the studio, having released many projects in the past and two mixtapes this year (Dukkha &They Watchin Lofi Series 1) before releasing Fireplace. Even though he may have put out other projects, this is his first full length album and as Hodgy tells Fader “this album is like the last 5 years of my life.” During that time he went through a growing pain or too like the not so public breakup of Oddfuture. Hodgy felt as if the past few years had left him in a bit of a tailspin, as he puts it, “at a point I really felt like I was gonna die.”
The album starts with a woman’s voice presumably speaking to Hodgy explaining to him that no matter how good you have it or how sweet things may seem, it can all be taken in an instant. It’s a good message and one that would seem to set a tone, but not really. The songs “Barbell” and “Resurrection” are the ones that stand out in the first few tracks. “Close my eyelids//feel my iris dilate//ain’t bothered by no hate//we steppin to it face to face” he says in “Barbell” while fishing from a boat in the video.
His ability to make a song is very apparent. That may sound like a simple thing to do, but not everyone can create a musical offering that has a structured beginning and end; that he can do. What he struggles to do at times is create music that has depth. He achieves it on some tracks like “Barbell” but on songs like “Now” the point seems to get lost in the verse and that happens often on this project. He caps off his debut album with “Glory” which is a nice offering with airy background vocals; it is a nice send off.
“At a point I really felt like I was gonna die.”
All of his songs start with good intentions and then unravel into their own form as Hodgy does his best to regain what semblance of purpose he may have had when he began. That was one of the things that helped him during his time with Mellow Hype. Left Brain handled the tone of most of their songs through the beats he created. There is hope for his projects to come because he is a gifted lyricist who is still honing his sound.
2t/i�5_� �
