Man on the Moon III: The Chosen Review

The main achievement is discipline. Fifty seven minutes, four acts, no interludes that outstay their welcome, and beats built by producers who grew up on the first two albums and know exactly which frequencies to hit. Tequila Shots opens it with the best hook he had written in eight years. Show Out is the aggressive swerve and it works. Sad People and Solo Dolo Part III do the trilogy callbacks without embarrassment.

Dive is genuinely gorgeous. The writing has not developed at all, still the same vocabulary of demons, loneliness and being different, and at thirty six that vocabulary has started to sound like a costume he cannot take off. But the melodies are strong, the sequencing is sharp and the record moves. As a closing chapter it is far better than it needed to be, and it repaired a lot of the damage the middle of the catalogue had done.