Released September 8, 2017
6.5 / 10
Favorites
2nd fiddle, Attitude, M I L K, Look
Least favorites
Bubblegum, Elian's Revenge, Braids tuh'da flo(w)
Brooklyn's very own Leikeli47's major label debut flips through genre inspirations as seamlessly as if they were pages of the same magazine. She raps and sings against hiphop beats, R'n'B grooves, a heavy dose of house-ballroom influences and even a drop of dancehall. The LP alternates between bouncy tracks and others that require Leikeli47 sharing a softer side to her. She shows a real ear for minimalist productions that still deliver punchlines filled with energy, oozing confidence and sounding right at home on tracks where the listener is summoned to her side immediately. Not only does she describe her grind and the goal of her hard work, she also champions individuality, looking for the trait in herself but also in her circle. "Wash & Set" is successful in sounding fun and playful without ever questioning whether to take Leikeli seriously. Nonetheless, the album still has its fair share of misses: they occur principally when she strays into melodic avenues that don't make a lot of sense alongside their peers on the record. The couple first tracks of the album serve as an announcement that Leikeli has landed on the hiphop scene. She makes sure you know how confident of her ability she is before you make any assumptions about her. 2nd Fiddle shows her standing her ground from the record's onset. The track features her both rapping and singing - and doing a hell of a good job at both. In it, she counts her blessings and shares her ambitions. She's basically introduced by male vocals, suggesting she deserves an introduction before serving what she's here to serve. Leikeli also transitions from singing to spoken word and rap flawlessly. What a great opening! Which makes the fall from such heights hard to swallow... Miss Me has her insisting the world is sleeping on her, and reminding herself she's playing the long game and won't easily be fooled by smoke and mirrors. The combination of the clapping percussions and the high-pitched chanted Miss Me get incredibly irritating real fast - harboring a slight dissonance that doesn't help. Leikeli's confidence is what makes me say this track deserves to be thrown to the recycling can instead of regular trash: there's still hope to pick it apart and make something good out of the parts, this here just ain't cutting it. Fortunately, "Wash & Set" still has a trove of surprises to uncover. Attitude throws us into the NYC ballroom club scene. Leikeli is as unapologetic as the prior tracks hinted ("So what I gotta attitude"). In between the brags, she finds a pay to pay homage to others: Dorothy Dandrige (one of the first successful black actresses in Hollywood), Grace Jones, Kelis, Beyoncé ("Kelis is god, so is Beyoncé") and friend Buffy Khan who appears on the music video at her side. The first half of the track relies almost entirely on snares and percussions yet it feels complete as it is. This makes it all the more satisfying when, as the track gains in density, we realize the track has much more to deliver. She keeps her "shrug it off" attitude going with Bags, with a sample from Kelis' "Daddy". This track plays with holes in its composition, considering silence as a key element to its fabric along its grimy beat. There isn't much to dissect here, it doesn't stand out much. Now that Leikeli has announced her arrival, she's adamant about protecting what she's got this far while also flaunting it. On O.M.C., she sounds almost over-protective of her close circle, telling that one person acting a fool he needs to press the brake before calling himself a friend of hers. At this point of the record, Leikeli appears as the type of artist that comes up with hard-hitting hooks and isn't afraid to hammer them to death. She's not one for drawn-out verses and vertiginous speeches. O.M.C.'s doom and gloom energy gets a bit old as the track progresses, despite its innate bounce. The following track, Money, sees her having to remind herself she can get what she wants with perseverance. True to the previous track's production style, the arrangements are sparse, leaving silence infiltrating the mix in and out. The contrast between her singing and rapping is really enjoyable. This time around, Leikeli also accelerates her flow in places, teasing a sound I want to hear more of from her. We find our way back to ball culture with M I L K, celebrating self-love and the right to choose how to present yourself to the world. As on most tracks on the record, she sounds unbothered and in no rush to get her message across; although she makes sure it does with the right dose of self-assurance. Production here is spot on, again. If you thought Leikeli was being too nice, Don't do it should do it for you. She warns us not to test her, calmly letting you know that despite her laidback demeanor, she WILL swing on you if you disrespect her. This tracks is hard not to bounce to, filled with little touches that drive the point home. The chorus is reinforced with the sound of a fast ticking bomb and echoes that make the warning resonate longer and louder. We're led into Look suspecting we might know what we're in for. And we're not taken by surprise. This track feels like we've already heard it on the album: and it's a shame it comes after the other ballroom-inspired tracks because it's one of the better iteration of the formula. It's a bit like Leikeli is stepping on her own toes now. Melodies are not memorable-enough to stick - notice that they are sometimes almost absent on good parts of tracks that consist only of some kind of beat and spoken deliveries. The final leg of "Wash & Set" is not the most satisfying. She takes a couple of distracting detours and concludes with an okay send-off, unworthy of the shine of the introductory tracks. Bubblegum is the first track that feels out of place on the record. The dancehall vibes are not the problem in themselves; we love to hear her West Indian roots. The mix of her high-pitched singing, the flute and the spoken word doesn't mesh as well as she'd hoped. It really feels a bit uncomfortable. The arrangements are... puzzling. She combines meandering flute and percussions with backing vocals that sound almost ritualistic: the result carries a solemn quality that doesn't play well with her delivery. It's not until the third verse that she comes into her own and that part of the composition makes sense but it's too late to truly enjoy the song by then. Leikeli takes a detour through R'n'B fields a bit later with Ho and Elian's Revenge - both tracks addressing relationships with men. The first of the two track has her singing with the full power of her angelic voice and leaves the listener swaying side to side. Her lines flow into one another quite impressively. On the other hand, Elian's Revenge sounds almost caricatural. She tells the story of changing her number so that a guy could not contact her, and imagines him trying to hit her up. The opening doesn't sound too far from something you'd expect from the Whack World. The fantasy quickly crashes with the first verse, and her adding some grit to her delivery only makes things worse. In terms of production, it's the densest track on the album by far: it clashes so much with the aesthetic of the record that even Bubblegum sounds like it makes more sense on "Wash & Set" than Elian's Revenge. Penultimate Braids tuh'da flo(w) features some rare guitar, undulating, slowly trying to get back up from the miasma of its predecessor. It... tries. The fatigue is starting to hit by the time the title closer comes around. The track ties in the images of the ballroom club salon painted by the bulk of "Wash & Set". No new tricks in here, it's most certainly a step up from the later tracks on the record but earlier tracks have little to envy Wash & Set.
Favorite lyrics
"Thinking you the man, but they don't understand And when you kissing Keisha, you already hugging Pam"
Ho
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