RISE AND SHINE
Rita Ora’s latest is surprisingly coherent given its protracted journey, while Anderson .Paak’s charms remain intact
Rita Ora, Phoenix
Pop years are a little like dog years. So fickle and forgetful is the market that an artist can rise to fame, fall from grace and be wiped from the nation’s collective memory over the course of a single year. For Rita Ora, then, to take six of them to produce a follow-up to her 2012 self-titled debut album, while she fought a messy legal battle with her (now former) label Roc Nation, was a risky move.
She’s kept her head well above the parapet in the meantime – there was the supporting role in Fifty Shades of Grey, the judging stints on The X Factor and The Voice, not to mention the eight singles she’s released since 2014 – but every time Ora has started to gear up towards an album, something has come about (usually a lawsuit) to stunt the momentum. Now, Phoenix, which she has grandiosely dubbed her “great rebirth”, is finally out. And given the stuttering, protracted process it’s been through to get here, it’s a surprisingly coherent record.
A handful of the songs have been floating around for a year or so. “Your Song” – a minimalist flirtation between drum pad and vocals that adheres to pop’s current “less is more” ethos – is the oldest single, having first been released last May. “Anywhere”, a hazy EDM banger with several bridges and some surprisingly gritty drops, is from 2017 too – but it’s too good to have been left off.
“Girls”, envisioned as a bisexual anthem but received (arguably unfairly, given that it is her lived experience) as a male gaze-fuelling misstep à la Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl”, is hanging on in there too – despite the flack Ora received when it came out (no pun intended) this summer. “Lonely Together”, meanwhile, is technically an Avicii track, to which Ora contributed vocals last year. She has included it here in tribute to the Swedish producer, who died in April. “We were very good friends and he changed my life,” she told the Evening Standard. “In a way, the album is dedicated to him.”
Between these already established tracks, the newer material slots in well. “Let You Love Me” is frank and affecting in its exploration of emotional barriers – “I wish that I could let you love me/ Say what’s the matter with me?” – but you don’t need to engage in its emotional crisis to appreciate this mid-tempo bop. “New Look” is catchy too, despite a beat that sounds like it’s being played on a radio with intermittent signal.
There are a few low points: “Keep Talking”, even with left-field pop connoisseur Julia Michaels on board, is frustratingly plodding, while “Summer Love” builds threateningly towards a clumsy drop. For the most part, though, Phoenix is worth the wait – whether you were doing so with indifference or baited breath. Alexandra Pollard
Charismatic star’s ambition spreads too thinly Anderson .Paak, Oxnard
Few artists look like they get as much joy from playing music as Anderson .Paak. Have you seen the guy live? Whether he’s singing, rapping, drumming or doing all three at the same time, the Los Angeles artist’s performances are always delivered with a wide, Cheshire cat grin.
That irrepressible charisma is one of the 32-year-old’s main draws. On his third album Oxnard, though, he gets a little too carried away. Named after his hometown, the record is a different mood to the first two in his “beach series”, Venice and Malibu, both of which also depicted a particular place. There are harsh tones here: .Paak’s joyous delivery is flecked with something darker. Sometimes it works, at other times it doesn’t.
Enlisting Dr Dre (who brought his protege to wider attention after featuring him on six tracks for 2015’s surprise comeback record Compton) as executive producer, .Paak sounds more determined than ever to prove himself… and consequently stretches himself too thin. You can pick up “California Dreamin’” vibes on short-but-sweet opener “The Chase”, which features some dreamy vocal contributions from the criminally underrated LA singer Kadhja Bonet. It’s one of the best examples of the .Paak fans know from his previous works: he sounds loose and eager to get things going, backed by jaunty flutes and a tight bass line.
Kendrick Lamar joins him for an uncharacteristically sunny turn on “Tints”. But the relaxed pace of the track, about one of the less serious repercussions of fame, doesn’t suit the “Damn” rapper, and listening to his bars is like watching a jockey pulling on the reins of a thoroughbred racehorse: it does neither of them justice.
“Headlow” is a drive that doesn’t ever find the right gear, narrating a couple whose sexual antics cause a traffic jam, before Paak veers into the next track – “6 Summers” – which is packed with the kind of juvenile innuendo that previously seemed beneath him. Similarly, “Smile/Petty” has the male narrator asking why a woman doesn’t trust him, before firing a string of abuse at her. The self-confessed pettiness doesn’t suit .Paak so well.
The absolute highpoint is “Who R U?”, where .Paak slips into icy-cold funk beats, spits some of his slickest bars and reflects on how far he’s come since daydreaming about a Dre collaboration in 12th grade. On “Cheers”, A Tribe Called Quest’s Q Tip brings in faint echos of “We the People” with that wailing siren intro, as .Paak pays tribute to the late Mac Miller (the pair collaborated on 2016’s superb single “Dang!”), before Q-Tip seems to offer a moving reflection on the death of his former bandmate Phife Dawg.
Oxnard isn’t quite the epic final chapter .Paak clearly craved for his trilogy – it certainly fails to compare to his 2016 breakthrough masterpiece Malibu – but you have to wonder if he really cares that much. On so many of these tracks he sounds restless, like he’s already thinking about moving on to bigger and better things. And there’s no doubt that he’ll do just that. Roisin O’Connor