Release Date: 21 October 2016
Song Count: 19
Rating: 3.9/10
Description:
The debut of the neo-soul duo NxWorries, consisting of artists Anderson .Paak and Knxwledge joining forces, Yes Lawd! is an album that has garnered a lot of mainstream success and praise from music reviewing agencies since it got released in late 2016. Though the duo hasn't been consistenly active throughout their career, taking a long hiatus between the release of the remixes version of this album and the first promotions for their next album, they have been a name in their scene and since been working on new projects. But how well does Yes Lawd! really hold up?
While the expectations I was going in with in my entirely blind listen was that Yes Lawd! would take a more rap or rap-adjacent direction rather than the more singing-focused and grooved one it actually ended up going in, even when taking that out of the equation, what this 19-song album ended up providing left a lot to be desired. In an attempt to create an athmospheric, chilled and easy-going ambience with its lack of fast tempos or other flash going on, the songs have ended up feeling extremely idle, empty and devoid of anything to draw in any sort of interest. There is rarely any display of major quality present here, and at most a very small minority of songs that are worth sticking around for.
From the minimal and slicked out yet ultimately uninteresting instrumentals and beats and the often off-beat mixing and production to some egregiously immature lyrics that at times induce outright second-hand embarrasment, a very large chunk of the album fails to deliver a product that manages to impress or live up to its expectations or promises.
Of course, as with most works out there, even a "bad" album can have its highlights and points of quality, and with Yes Lawd!, it's specifically the unique 80s pop-inspired instrumental of "Scared Money" and especially the track "Link Up" that elevate it to match the potential it could have fully manifested if the other songs followed suit on it. These two tracks out of the 19, even for brief moments, capture what the album was attempting in all its attempts - a laid-back and charismatic ambience, achieved by trying and succeeding rather than waiting for victory to just come and flourish without giving anything to it first.
While Yes Lawd! overall had potential to be a truly great work in the genres it touches on and managed to find its audience and become a hit, it unfortunately didn't have much worth a revisit for me personally, save for the two aforementioned tracks. This may stand as a quite unpopular music opinion compared to what most people seem to think, but ultimately, sugarcoating my personal opinions is not what I'm doing all this writing on this site for, so I hope that's understandable.