It’s too damn hot to post this on a weekday…
[Video][Website]
[4.50]
Iain Mew: Normally YouTube’s filters keep you pretty much to stuff you know, but I’ve found that by sorting by views rather than “relevance” I can find a whole world of popular music videos I’m not going to come across any other way. Some of them are YouTube personalities with little outside appeal, sometimes it’s stuff from Poland or Ukrainians with delusional wikis. Sometimes it’s more difficult to explain, like the million views for this song — four times as many as Gunplay in a similar time frame, for instance. It has a dreamy production that’s the perfect fit for staring and thinking, the kind that would go well with your electric moons, and Lorenzo has a good stab at soft and slow nostalgia, with the we in “we were young” as crucial as it always is in songs like this and smartly repeated. He doesn’t have anything that memorable to say, though — “these crayons and glitter make me think of shit” is as good as it gets — and he ruins the mood as often as he enhances it. Is nudity in the video that big a draw?
[6]
Alfred Soto: The wisdom of age versus the immaturity of rhymecraft.
[5]
David Lee: Lorenzo Asher/Went to a Weeknd concert/Then he wrote a song. That’s a haiku.
[3]
Brad Shoup: This is some cold garbage. Pretentious and precious are a weird combo, and this one-day Weeknd production sounds like a millennial’s botched job interview.
[2]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: “Begin” is concerned about everything while being about nothing. That isn’t to assume that Asher — an earnest young man with earnest young ideas — is untalented, more that his ambition trumps his focus. You can hear glimmers of the song Asher wants to make in the swelling strings, Sa-Raesque intro and proclamations on the end of days, but the track is cluttered and clumsy. Asher spits but sputters, and his grandiose attempts come off sounding corny. However, a throwaway line about “crayons and glitter” sticks creativity and glitz together, hinting Asher’s strength may be in the details.
[5]
Jer Fairall: Mournful and elegant, with a delivery heartfelt enough to match both the melancholic hum of the accompaniment and the gravitas of “we were brave, we were crazy, we were young” refrain. The overstatement of the backing vocal and the evocation of “one last dance before the world ends” reveal a lack of confidence, though; rookie mistakes from a promising newcomer, hopefully.
[6]
Anthony Easton: It’s a slight little thing, the radio static apparently taking up more of the 3 minutes than it actually does. The laconic vocals don’t sell the dumb rhymes, and the flow just kind of peters out.
[3]
Mallory O’Donnell: On the fence at first with this, actually on the opposite side, but this is something that opens with time (hence, presumably, “Begin”) and unfolds like flowers. The slow-grind beat isn’t so much trend-friendly as indicative of the long-running link between the midwest and the third coast, and the lyrics dwell within a comfortable “conscious rap” framework that late-90’s devotees will be acquainted with. So, it’s authentic and safe, but it shows at least the promise of one day emerging from authentic safety to the land of the truly ‘brave, crazy and young.’ Not much? It’s more than you can say about 99% of US hip-hop this radio-friendly right now.
[6]