Joji - Ballads 1 ALBUM REVIEW
Everyone has that one YouTuber that you watched growing up. For me, that was Filthy Frank, a truly offensive and boundary-pushing creator that single-handedly made the world Harlem Shake for about a year. He also had another personality in his YouTube series, Pink Guy, who was an interdimensional being who couldn’t speak, but somehow was a great rapper. His final effort as Pink Guy, the vulgar and disturbing (yet somehow good) Pink Season, topped the iTunes charts and even made it onto the Billboard 200 charts. After retiring his YouTube channel due to the health concerns that had to do with the things he did as Filthy Frank, he went full in on his music career with his In Tongues EP, a shallow project that had a great aesthetic. With his second studio album Nectar on the way in July, I think it’s time that we look back to his debut album BALLADS 1 and see how it holds up in retrospect.
BALLADS 1 is an R&B album with some influences from trip-hop, pop, and lo-fi spread throughout the tracklist. The tracks throughout are, you guessed it, ballads. That’s the theme of the album, and boy, Joji is good at it. The outstanding cut “SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK” has synths slowly building around Joji’s shout-like vocals, Thundercat and Clams Casino produced the dance track “CAN’T GET OVER YOU,” and the only vocal feature belongs to Trippie Redd on “R.I.P.” a lackluster track overall, but it can set a very good vibe on a dwindling party.
What I said about “R.I.P.” applies to a majority of the album. Most of the tracks on here, save for the bland “I’LL SEE YOU IN 40,” are pretty great, I won’t deny that in any capacity, but as an album, it just feels like a collection of tracks that were put together for streams. That’s very sad to say because Joji is a very talented artist, but you can only see it on one or two tracks off of BALLADS 1.
Although it has a few hiccups, BALLADS 1 is an enjoyable album. It showed that outside of the YouTube fame and the lo-fi shallowness that Joji can come into his own in his own unique way other than rapping about cooking dumplings.
6/10
Stream BALLADS 1 here
Spotify
Apple Music
YouTube Music
BALLADS 1 is an R&B album with some influences from trip-hop, pop, and lo-fi spread throughout the tracklist. The tracks throughout are, you guessed it, ballads. That’s the theme of the album, and boy, Joji is good at it. The outstanding cut “SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK” has synths slowly building around Joji’s shout-like vocals, Thundercat and Clams Casino produced the dance track “CAN’T GET OVER YOU,” and the only vocal feature belongs to Trippie Redd on “R.I.P.” a lackluster track overall, but it can set a very good vibe on a dwindling party.
What I said about “R.I.P.” applies to a majority of the album. Most of the tracks on here, save for the bland “I’LL SEE YOU IN 40,” are pretty great, I won’t deny that in any capacity, but as an album, it just feels like a collection of tracks that were put together for streams. That’s very sad to say because Joji is a very talented artist, but you can only see it on one or two tracks off of BALLADS 1.
Although it has a few hiccups, BALLADS 1 is an enjoyable album. It showed that outside of the YouTube fame and the lo-fi shallowness that Joji can come into his own in his own unique way other than rapping about cooking dumplings.
6/10
Stream BALLADS 1 here
Spotify
Apple Music
YouTube Music
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