Habibti Review

The pitch is sound. After eighteen tracks of grievance he hands over eleven of pure loverboy, the mode that built him, and at thirty six minutes it is the shortest album he has ever released. Prioritizing puts 40 behind the board alone and is the best three minutes on any of the three albums, a straight reminder of what that partnership does when nobody else is in the room.

Fortworth with PartyNextDoor works for the same reason: two voices who know the register, one idea, no padding anywhere. Slap the City brings in Qendresa and finds a texture he has not used before. That is three songs. The other eight are the same take. The autotune sits at one depth, the tempos sit in one narrow band, the subject is a woman who has wronged him and is never named, and by the fifth track the seams between songs stop registering.

Reviewers split between hearing the warmth as a relief after the cold of Iceman and hearing a man sleepwalking through material he has already cut a dozen times, and the second camp describes the record more accurately. Production grades above the whole because the surfaces really are lovely and the room tone is expensive. Nothing gets built on top of them. Shortest is not the same thing as tightest, and this is the proof.