Aasha Marie - WYWS (Album)
Aasha Marie, now this is how you start a fucking album, the cinematically dramatic background music allows Aasha to speak to you directly, nothing else within the music distracting you from focusing on what’s being said & this carries on throughout the whole album but don’t get it twisted, the production is just right, excellent choices from start to finish, the final two tracks being the only more modern feeling tracks, both fiery ways to cap off this opus.
“Punch” is my new morning routine song, the mundanity of working for it, putting in the work, I don’t think we stop to appreciate that enough, work can sometimes be a drag but when you love what you do, punching in everyday is beautiful, beautiful we can even wake up let alone have a job to support ourselves & loved ones, this is a subtle opener that if you weren’t sold from the fiery testimonial that was that intro, you will be after this one cause it only, the day only gets better from this point.
The cozy lounging of “Midnight Blues” (& Reprise), the technicalities in her flow on this is impeccable, particularly the 2nd verse, best verse on the album IMHO, that homonym with “trapeze” & “trap these” is sick, that whole scheme “Writers block built a glass prison, my words is tapping on the outside but my vision is handicapped knee to move around these bars, trapeze”, I could be butchering that but that whole rhyme scheme is insane.
The spoken word wax poetic piece “The Bee” is again, subtle production wise, her voice dominating and we can’t help but listen & heed all the vital points being made, the sludge of the mud flinging grungy overtones of the headbangingly rebellious “Let’s Feast”, I imagine this is playing whenever I was taking a test in school & my stomach would gurgle, just a little speaker in my stomach making those vibrations, the swaggering braggadocio intertwined with that raw, convicting poetry on “Dapper”, that swagger brought to the dancefloor on “Byob”, sounds like a roller rink to me, the trap modernity of the penultimate title track & outro, there’s a lot to study here, I’m gonna be studying this for possibly years to come.
Aasha Marie delivered a beautifully executed & important piece of art, her magnum opus with “WWYS”, this is a 5 mic album hands down, from the overall musicality of it, production, the features, the songwriting, the lyricism, the technicalities within her lyricism, I’m just floored by how great this album is, I hope y’all appreciate it as much as I & everyone here at the Wavez do cause before you know it, it’s over but you’ll come back to it, replay value as the kids say.