Last Friday Jaden released his sophomore album "ERYS", the supposed antonym to his 2017 debut album "SYRE" (an album that I absolutely adored) which is his middle name and a character he developed who seems to be a boy that is constantly lost and out of his element. That's where ERYS comes in, he's the tragic king of a fallen Los Angeles only holding that position by his use of fear. Jaden has some dope album concepts (Cool Tapes sucked though, sorry Jaden). Anyways this album goes into so many different genres while still focusing on a mumbly emotional trap spine, but experiments with electronic and punk to name a couple. Similarly to "SYRE" the album starts by spelling out a color, in "SYRE" it was blue, in "ERYS" it's pink which coincides with both albums' covers. Although I found a lot of enjoyability in the album at first... I've noticed its flaws recently and man are there a lot of them. Although the production is top tier, Jaden doesn't capitalize on it. After a third or so of the way through it just drops in quality and even in that first third there's a few songs that are just extremely... 'meh'. And its not even the fact that the beats are somewhat similar its just Jaden doesn't seem to know how to keep it different and changing, which was something I admired on "SYRE" that for some reason he hasn't managed to keep up, which sucks cause SYRE was pretty fucking cool. There are highlights though, I'm not saying there aren't any, and the songs that are actually good are pretty enjoyable, such as "Summertime In Paris" with his sister and the last two parts of "PINK", "N" and "K".
The highlights from the album for me are:
-"N" for its bubbly intro where like 40 Jadens repeat the work 'pink' over and over, the really trap influenced section around half way through the song that has a killer beat and the ending section that has an uncredited feature from Teo.
-"K" for Harry Hudson's uncredited singing in the intro, the "don't talk down to me I'm drowning" section, and of course the insane beat switch that incorporates the sound of Jaden shaving his own head which is just brilliant from producer Lido.
-"NOIZE" for Tyler, The Creator's verse, the rest of the song is kinda boring... the hook is energetic and the beat is decent but if Tyler didn't have a verse on this I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be on this list.
-"Again" which pits Jaden's two characters against each other which is a pretty cool concept. The song itself is good but the concept is really what makes me like it as much as I do, especially the ending that makes it clear that ERYS has won, because someone tells them to turn off that sad shit (SYRE).
-"Summertime In Paris" which is one of the few songs I still have in heavy rotation because wow this thing is catchy, the beat is beautiful and Willow's verse is gorgeous, even though the lyrical content is pretty surface level I can't be mad because of how well crafted the song is.
-"Chateau", surprisingly enough I love the simple beat on this, there's a lot of bass, some pretty basic drums, but not much melodic instrumentation, but with a great feature from A$AP Rocky and Jaden delivering better than he has on the rest of the project, the song is pretty good.
Sadly on a 20 song album those are the only songs I really still listen to. My least favorites would have to be "Fire Dept" which is just a ridiculous attempt at grunge rock and "i-drip-or-is" which is easily the most bland rap song this year. I hope Jaden is able to redeem himself in my eyes at least on his next project. I do hope he keeps up the concepts because they're probably what I like the most about his projects (arguable for "SYRE", the music is bomb on that record). Overall, I think the album is worth about a 4-5/10, if it had been shorter it'd be a lot better I think, less fat.