Back for another top 40 hit, six years after “Ransom”…
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Julian Axelrod: “Dark Thoughts” operates on two levels of nostalgia, appealing to listeners who miss Bush-era Neptunes beats and peak Soundcloud rap in equal measure. Even when he’s trying on a throwback sound, Tecca’s voice is eternally frozen in the amber of 2019.
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Nortey Dowuona: …are we sure this isn’t a Neptunes beat left on a studio computer that Folie’s and Lucas Scharuff are passing off as their own? It’s not a good one, I can see why they didn’t use it on a Kelis album. Tecca sounds fine.
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Alfred Soto: Neptunes? Have y’all met 2017 SoundCloud rap?
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Leah Isobel: Titling a song “Dark Thoughts” and then rapping “I get dark thoughts too, but I keep ’em” is fucking hilarious. I’m a little suspicious of the nihilistic turn culture’s taken in the past year, but this strikes me as more joyful than dead-eyed. At its heart, pop is escapism – let’s have some fun!
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Dave Moore: Look, it’s a chart drought, I will accept every sub-Neptunes post-modal party rap. We need warm bodies!
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Katherine St. Asaph: The doomer rap to Katseye’s doomer pop, except a bit more literal this time. Unsurprised to discover that producer Lucas Scharff’s YouTube page is full of “THE NEPTUNES X 2000s X PHARREL WILLIAMS TYPE BEAT” type uploads.
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Al Varela: We’ve seen a lot of trap rappers from the late 2010s, early 2020s fade out of relevance, and yet it’s surprising that Lil Tecca is one of the few that’s still kicking. “Dark Thoughts” is getting by off of a sticky guitar-driven beat and a tight hook reminiscent of The Neptunes, but it’s not reliant on it. Tecca himself has incredibly strong melodic instincts, and his confident punchy flows make his voice stand out among a sea of slurred, vibes-driven rappers. It’s pretty lightweight pop rap, but it’s very good lightweight pop rap! I nominate that Lil Tecca takes the pop rap throne from Drake.
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Jel Bugle: The rapping’s good — flows along nicely and not too slowly.
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Ian Mathers: There’s something sweet about “she got dark thoughts, let me hear some now/baby, I’ll be messed up for you” right up until we get to “I get dark thoughts too, but I keep ’em” and then it feels a little less healthy. Lil Tecca considers himself a hook writer though, and this one’s pretty solid.
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: When Lil Tecca first became a known entity in 2019, it was possible to observe that he represented a certain unfavorable indicator for the long-term sustainability of mainstream American rap in the 2010s and 2020s. Here was “Ransom,” a song almost entirely devoid of qualities — a sub-Juice WRLD-ian ramble of a hook, nevertheless charming in the context of a broader ecosystem full of similarly warbling rappers, each with their own microhit. They were all drafting in the tailwinds of Lil Uzi Vert, Playboi Carti, and Juice WRLD, but waves have always had hangers-on. Yet “Ransom” rose from a minor regional hit to the top 10, sticking there for more weeks than made any sort of rational sense. It did not matter in the moment, per se, but it had the certain air of a bubble — the Pets.com of Soundcloud rap. Now, 6 years later, Tecca returns. He has gained no particular skill or distinction as a performer. He is still charming, but not in any way that I can put my finger on. He is still tuneful, but not in any way notable way. Yet he returns to a pop-rap environment much diminished. His contemporaries have made them selves irrelevant, died tragically young, or become insular superstars largely unconcerned with traditional pop success. In their wake, their inheritors squabble over petty fiefdoms while an older generation of stars reclaim vacant thrones. And here’s Lil Tecca again. He’s adapted to the times — he no longer raps over identikit Lyrical Lemonade trap, but the Neptunes revivalism here is not particular better — but the overall prognosis has gotten much worse. Here, at the end of days, Lil Tecca gets another hit. Scholars will long study how this, of all things, could occur.
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Taylor Alatorre: Lil Tecca really just wants you to love him, and while the desire for love and approval can lead in some strange directions, other times it can lead you to click on the first Pharrell type beat in the search results and do some standard-issue floating over it. The simplicity and unambition of Tecca’s goals with “Dark Thoughts” are its precise virtues, as is the lack of manipulation involved. He could’ve chosen to excise the four-note Neptunes intro or simply selected a beat without one, but who would he have been fooling then? Working within his limitations, he also doesn’t try to imitate Pharrell’s dry, off-center vocals or dissonant harmonies, instead using his typical rising-and-falling melodic patterns to sing-rap about getting with a goth girl or whatever. You can call this a cheapening, or homogenization, or “stuck culture”; compared to some of Tecca’s peers, I think it counts as being a responsible custodian of the past.
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Mark Sinker: This jukebox has been brought to you by the digraph sh and the chords I and V.
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