After a week of having "Arizona Baby" on repeat and learning most of it by heart Kevin Abstract has dropped the second instalment in the 3 EPs that will together form "ARIZONA baby" which was the title of the first EP but I'm getting a feeling that the title may change... you never know with Kevin and the BROCKHAMPTON crew. I only say that because a lot of the teasers have included the message "The 1-9-9-9 is coming" which if the final project is titled "ARIZONA baby" could be a reference to a future BROCKHAMPTON project. As usual I'll be doing a track by track review of the EP.
Track 1; Corpus Christi; I adore this song it's amazing but every now and then I feel a little weird listening to it, it's like a spyglass into Kevin's life. He's talking about all his faults, things he's done wrong, and his inner demons. The first time I heard this song I almost shed a tear, right at the moment Kevin mentioned former BROCKHAMPTON member Ameer Vann, asking "I wonder if Ameer think about me, Or what he think about me", it makes you think about everything Kevin and the group have gone through in the past year alone. The instrumental holds the emotional value with some beautiful guitars and synths produced yet again by Jack Antonoff and Romil Hemnani.
Track 2; Baby Boy; Another amazing song with some beautiful production and beautiful vocals from Ryan Beatty, a frequent BROCKHAMPTON contributor, on songs such as BLEACH where he sings the chorus. This song also features the hook from one of the most demanded BROCKHAMPTON leaks "Let's Get Married" minus a short verse from Joba and a Bernie Mac sample. The hook is infectious, so much so that I had taken the time to put the leak on Spotify for my own listening even though it's only about a minute long. There's not much to say about Kevin's verses, they resemble past thing and sound good sonically but don't add much lyrically, other than his short section about his dependance to God. The bridge also sounds vers similar to the BROCKHAMPTON song "Something About Him" which was completely performed by Kevin so that isn't too surprising but it's pretty much exactly the same intonation. The final verse from Ryan Beatty sounds fantastic, it's absolutely gorgeous and yet again the Antonoff-Hemnani duo kill the production from the beginning all the way to the saxophone outro.
Track 3; Mississippi; Another state themed song for Kevin to add to his repertoire but sadly not his best, it sounds a lot like Georgia off of "Arizona Baby" minus the high pitched autotune but it does slightly kick in later into the track. The break that shows up every now and then about a minute and a half in sound amazing though I must say it adds some energy to the track. The hook that comes up later into the song is fine but really doesn't add much contextually. The instrumental also resembles Georgia up until the final section of the song which is absolutely gorgeous and more reminiscent of the outro on the first track.
Again another beautiful 3 track EP from Kevin, creating a lot of excitement for the full and final project to be out (with a rumoured Dominic Fike feature which would be amazing) anyways in my opinion "Arizona Baby" was slightly better although "Corpus Christi" is one of my favorite songs of the year and "Baby Boy" has one of my favorite hooks of all time, the rest of the album didn't land quite as much as the first EP in the trilogy but it was amazing you can't take that away from it. I'm giving it a solid 8.5/10 and hoping "ARIZONA baby" finishes as well as it started.