It’s largely agreed upon that pop music is primarily about fun, living in the moment, fleeting and intense moments of infatuation and, most of all, dancing. Artists must meet the de facto standards of successful pop — well-mastered, catchy beats and vocals that are just familiar and simple enough to be singable and repeatable and just unique enough to have the listener feel cool.
Mura Masa’s new self-titled album succeeds on all these counts. It is one of the most accessible pop albums of recent memory. It is laden with, and perhaps anchored by, its impressive list of features. The production of the young London bull Alex Crossan stands tall on its own all while playing to the strengths of each guest artist. It’s an album that’s just so easy to smile, bounce around, and have fun to, yet the subtler nuances in its more personal tracks are clear and satisfying.
“Messy Love,” the LP’s first song, utilizes stripped down twangs that sound like whammy-barred bell strikes to highlight Crossan’s own vocals about the baggage of an ended relationship. Third track “Love$ick,” one of the album’s most widely played, features the strong Caribbean elements present in much of the music. A$AP Rocky speaks in his typical jiggy manner about longing for a saucy flame over a scrumptious steel-drum melody. This is characteristic of the influence of London’s bustling Caribbean community — Drake touched upon, or rather bit, both Caribbean styles and London grime in “More Life.”
Mura Masa puts on one of hip-hop’s absolute stalwarts, Desiigner, in what is probably one of the best Desiigner features ever to have been made. “All Around the World” is an uplifting track, but it doesn’t include enough of the feature artist’s signature barks to warrant an ascended status.
Another characteristic of pop music is how much of it, both across the genre and even within some artists’ body of work, is an abject sense of redundancy. Sara Bareilles’ single “Brave” and Katy Perry’s “Roar” were nearly the same song and came into conflict when they were released around the same time in 2013. “What if I Go?” has some tasty autotune, but honestly sounds too much like “Love$ick” with its percussion to really wow the listener.
The combination of closers “Who Is It Gonna B” and “Blu” is the perfect ending to the album. Up-and-comer A.K. Paul has soft group vocals over a constant bass vibration, which creates a stupidly comforting vibe. “Blu” is a slower track with Damon Albarn of Blur that seems to embody the natural low sense of longing for romance that seems to be a common theme throughout the album. Mura Masa created an album that is listenable, danceable, chillable and analyzable, and that’s above and beyond what pop music should do.
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