Consumer Guide Album

BKtherula: Love Black [Warner, 2021]
For me a major charm of Brooklyn Rodriguez's 2020 Nirvana "mixtape" was that it came from another planet. One reason I found its stoned atmospherics so seductive was that I had no interest in what drugs or other dissipations activated them. They just sounded seductively weird in a way with no parallel in this aged white guy's considerable hip-hop experience, in particular the Atlanta trap that's failed to ensnare him for many years. Sonically, musically, Rodriguez's first proper "album" is different--its somewhat repetitive hooks and effects announce themselves in a well-tooled way that annoyed me at first, although soon I noticed that they were sinking in efficiently enough. So I ended up respecting this record and then some, and noted that the sexuality that's so muffled on Nirvana turns blatant as fuck as BKtherula passes from scrumptious pussy to scrumptious pussy, each one lured away from men who think they're all that in a cool show of sexual conquest as subcultural combat. "Hide your hoe," she warns; "I am that nigger, I am not your bitch." How long will this phase last? Quite a while, she brags, because she's got corporate moneybags behind her: "I'm smart as fuck and that's why they want me around." Dare I add until they don't? B+