American Teen

About

In April of 2016, a few weeks before attending prom, El Paso, TX teenager Khalid Donnel Robinson uploaded a song called “Location” to the internet. It was a love song for the digital age, daydreaming of pins on virtual maps as if pointing to a generation's new lovers' lookout. The track was built on an odd combination of disaffected vocals and a beat of sparse percussion, staccato guitar strum, and ghostly choruse. And yet, “Location” found an audience, eventually breaking into the Billboard Top 20, earning a subsequent remix featuring Lil Wayne and Kehlani, and garnering a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Song. But the legend of Khalid had only just begun. Almost exactly a year later, Khalid's debut album, <i>American Teen</i>, hit the airwaves to near-universal acclaim, propelled by the runaway success of “Location” and expounding with an effervescent mix of new-school R&B and shimmering pop grandeur. The young singer's minimalist vocals glided over a sonic canvas of driving drums and textured synths that unfurled in sunset hue. Meanwhile, the songwriting was an earnest portrait of adolescent frustrations (“Young Dumb & Broke”) and anxieties (“8TEEN”). “My youth is the foundation of me” he sings on the title track, succinctly honing in on the thesis of his debut over a wistful, slow-burning groove. Though the first half of <i>American Teen</i> unfolds in sinewy waves of R&B, the album's second half leans unabashedly into pop. The thumping four-on-the-floor of “Hopeless” gives Khalid ample room to flex his vocal chops while saturated basslines inject the song with a futuristic edge. Later, on “Winter,” his half-whimpered beckoning for a paramour to come warm his bones is boosted with blasts from distorted horns that evoke old-school Detroit funk and glossy London electro-pop. .

via Apple Music

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