Aminé - "TWOPOINTFIVE" Album Review
Following the release of his debut album "Good For You", which put him on the map for his quirky bars and tropical instrumentals, Aminé decided to drop somewhat of a tide-me-over project in 2018, before what would become his 2nd full-length album, Limbo, that took the form of a self-described "EPLPMIXTAPE" entitled ONEPOINTFIVE. On that project, Aminé's lyrics are more hungry, salicious, and introspective at times, but still comes through with his trademark wit on standouts like "REEL IT IN" and "BLACKJACK".
This year, one year after the release of Limbo (what I believe to be his best work yet), Aminé returns with a followup to the EPLPMIXTAPE series, which has all the defining characteristics of ONEPOINTFIVEand, sometimes to a fault, takes more risks compared to his more conceptual studio releases.
Everything I loved from ONEPOINTFIVE is back: Rickey Thompson as a recurring, omnipresent guide, the mixes are more blown out, the songs are fast-paced and danceable, but it's where its sequel, TWOPOINTFIVE, tries to differentiate itself from its predecessor where I start to get a bit lost.
The album's lead single "Charmander" was a strong indicator of the new creative direction Aminé was heading in with this project. It had chopped up vocal samples, a sub and cymbal-heavy beat that borders on the genres of juke and footwork, and Aminé also experiments with some vocal effects on the track as well. I personally thought this was an interesting development in Aminé distinct sound, when the full album released I found that a lot of these tracks have these same characteristics, and despite its concise runtime, the gimmick becomes stale before we even get to Charmander in the album's tracklist.
The opener of TWOPOINTFIVE is a great tone-setter, and it's followed up by "Colors", which is a fun and creative track that has Aminé weigh his steadily climbing success and his wavering feelings of genuine happiness, continuing to express similar sentiments to what we saw on Limbo. Tracks like "OKWME" and "Between the Lines" show off how versatile Aminé can be, as producers Pasqué and Lido supply him with ear-catching production choices and musical moments that made my eyebrows shoot up. The track "Sh!t2Luz" reminded me of old school tracks like Ghost Town DJs' "My Boo".
Some other tracks on the album find Aminé in a bit of a creative corner, floundering around in genres like cloud rap and trap. Excluding "Charmander", the middle section of the album contains most of the examples of this, and the closer "meant2b" sounds like Aminé doing his best Playboi Carti impression.
While this album doesn't have any potential to have huge singles like ONEPOINTFIVE did, nor does it have some of the other creative aspects of that album that I enjoyed as well, like its cleverly placed features or interesting beat switches (see "RATCHET SATURN GIRL"), I still found this to be an enjoyable listen. This album truly does its best to be forward-looking and it will be interesting to see how well it'll age and how much of an influence it'll be on Aminé's third full-length studio album, which can't come soon enough.
