There’s always been a sense that Ellison was stretching for a new musical vernacular, one that would continue the lineage of free jazz. This album suggests he might have found it.
Its flow is even more liquid than that of Until the Quiet Comes, though the sounds are more jagged and free, with roots deeper in jazz.
This record is a wholly singular work; not only does it defy expectations of what a Flying Lotus album should sound like, it totally obliterates any preconceptions about what can be released by a remotely popular contemporary musician.
You’re Dead! is a near-flawless examination of death as narrated by a virtuosic musician who has been exposed to a little too much of it.
Part of his appeal is his reverence for the album as a format—big-name guests emerge as merely part of a scene—and You’re Dead! is his most confidently structured work yet.
The album flourishes during these moments of warmth. It's what the man does best. Too often electronic music has no soul, but this has never been an issue for Flying Lotus
Excitingly new yet classically evocative, You're Dead! is contemplative but never boring, an example of genre cross-pollination that transcends novelty and, occasionally, time and space as well.
The elements of jazz, hip-hop, and IDM blend together to create a soundscape that is anomalously captivating. Made up of 19 tracks that cover less than 40 minutes, You’re Dead! powers ahead at a quick pace, never dwelling on any one sound for too long.
The fact that Ellison squeezes 19 tracks into a brutally concise 38 minutes gives some indication of how wide ranging and tempestuous it is. At times it is wildly celebratory but it veers very suddenly into abrasive and radical territory.
The nods to free and soul-jazz are as present as always, but this time their delivery feels more like a real, live band than a rearranging/processing of samples.
A 38 minute journey more complex and original than anything he’s released before it.
It's far and away the most free-ranging FlyLo album to date. And yet the album doesn't sprawl out of control, maybe because it doesn't really have the time to: the whole record clocks in at just over 38 minutes, all jolts of sound and quick bursts of motifs.
With his fifth LP You’re Dead, we’re now experiencing pure, unadulterated Flying Lotus. Quite an experience it is too.
FlyLo's unique beat-based blend of laptop sounds, hip-hop and technically impressive jazz is executed, as always, with a light touch. The tracks ebb and flow, cluster and breathe, and eschew any kind of verse/chorus formula.
This panoramic attempt to make sense of life’s one certainty beyond taxes flutters far above the digital static of 2008’s breakthrough Los Angeles into twisted, ethereal jazz territory.
Fans searching for club bangers should U-turn now. Once again LA’s most talented beat producer is using his vivid heritage to explore the album format.
While it begins with an exclamation point, You’re Dead! ultimately wonders what happens to our souls after we die, and imagines a journey that continues long after our untimely demises.
On a palette as cluttered with ideas and guest stars as this, maintaining thematic focus could have, in lesser hands, been tricky.
On the L.A. artist's fifth Flying Lotus set ... Ellison makes the boldest, most fully engaged fusion of the hip-hop-laptop era.
The genius of Flying Lotus, which has been invariably present throughout his preceding releases, but most especially on You’re Dead!, is that he has an incredible ability to both illustrate and extract exceptional amounts of emotion, without saying much at all.
It’s when Lamar and Snoop arrive on Never Catch Me and Dead Man’s Tetris that things get weird, double speed turning to half, free-form jazz segments appearing and dissipating. It’s fragmented and yet, as ever, seems to make total sense.
’You’re Dead’ is a madly inventive record, one that takes hip-hop and jazz as starting points, beats them both to death and then brings them back to life in an almost unrecognisable form.
The lines between jazz and Ellison's more traditional beats are blurred almost beyond distinction, encouraging you to hear it as a whole and revel in its dizzying ambiance.
It’s a risky desire to create albums that, if dismantled down to their individual components, rarely make standalone sense, but it’s a bravery that’s consistently rewarded.
If scientists inspected half of this album, they’d probably find traces of psychedelics that’ll be introduced to mind-expanders fifty years in the future.
One of the most accomplished releases of the year, You’re Dead! embraces the uncertain, celebrates fear, and induces a meditative consciousness that’s hard to shake after listening.
These disparate elements, influences, and guests could have made a mess of an ambitious album, but instead You're Dead! turns out to be Flying Lotus' best yet.
Save for a few stretches of inconsistent detours, You're Dead! is another reliable entry into the canon of one of the most brazen and forward-thinking producers out there. Though not a defining work, it's still a mark of excellence
The album works best as a single, unified listen, the instrumental stretches inspiring just as many shivers as the Kendrick and Snoop Dogg features (if not more).
As impressive as this sort of music is as a straight technical accomplishment, I hope I’m not alone when I say that I find it all a bit aimless in the long term. Still, You’re Dead! finds ways to keep things pumping.
You’re Dead! sees FlyLo enter his weirdest phase yet: impatient, irreverent, dangerous, with the confidence to not only try new things but to also fail and keep trying.
For an LP about the infinite unknown, it isn't that meditative or self-aware.
God damn this album is a VIBE!
I wanted to check out Flying Lotus for a while now, And I know that Cosmogramma is considered by many his best album, But I've heard the song Never Catch Me with Kendrick from this project, And I had to listen to the full album after listening to this masterpiece of a song. So here we are.
This album is such an experience, It almost feels like an out of body experience, I felt like I was floating in a psychedelic dream throughout the whole album. Steven Ellison ... read more
You're Dead! is yet another weird and experimental from Flying Lotus. However, while Cosmogramma was simple but complicated, You're Dead! is an album full of rich sound and jazz, mixed in with some amazing guitars and bass. And this time around, there also seems to be a theme revolving around this album: Death. The album cover for You're Dead! perfectly represents the shift in mood this album takes, the deeper we go, the more we begin to feel the hands of death pulling us into madness. In the ... read more
Flying Lotus is the most prominent innovator of hip-hop and electro, generally recognized as the heir of J Dilla in the small world of avant-garde beats. After four albums, FlyLo, whose real name is Steve Ellison, decides to distance himself a little from his habits to venture into a genre with which he has always flirted: jazz. But for this album, he needs help. For example, Thundercat's fingerprints are everywhere on "You're Dead!", Mostly in its avalanches of bass notes. Among the ... read more
although having some good songs packed into, i just don't see it being my favorite project from him
A nice album with very soothing instrumentals and interesting mixing, but unfortunately it's a mixed bag overall. No songs sound bad or are annoying, but it's more that there's some uninteresting songs that pretty much feel like the other songs. Never Catch Me is still mind blowing though.
OOH this one’s really fucking great.
I LOOOOVE the features on here, everyone shows up and does their thing.
This is a FlyLo record that doesn’t function as background music, it’s super jazzy and very alive, if that makes sense.
Another banger, what do you really expect?
Favorite Tracks: all, but the one with Kendrick is really fire
1 | Theme 1:24 | 85 |
2 | Tesla 1:54 | 86 |
3 | Cold Dead 1:34 | 89 |
4 | Fkn Dead 0:40 | 86 |
5 | Never Catch Me 3:54 feat. Kendrick Lamar | 98 |
6 | Dead Man's Tetris 2:25 feat. Captain Murphy, Snoop Dogg | 87 |
7 | Turkey Dog Coma 3:09 | 91 |
8 | Stirring 0:30 | 82 |
9 | Coronus, The Terminator 2:40 | 91 |
10 | Siren Song 2:37 feat. Deradoorian | 89 |
11 | Turtles 2:06 | 86 |
12 | Ready err Not 1:45 | 80 |
13 | Eyes Above 1:12 | 84 |
14 | Moment of Hesitation 2:18 | 88 |
15 | Descent Into Madness 1:27 feat. Thundercat | 86 |
16 | The Boys Who Died in Their Sleep 1:50 feat. Captain Murphy | 80 |
17 | Obligatory Cadence 2:56 | 87 |
18 | Your Potential//The Beyond 1:45 feat. Niki Randa | 90 |
19 | The Protest 1:57 | 88 |
#1 | / | Sputnikmusic |
#2 | / | Clash |
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#3 | / | PopMatters |
#6 | / | Entertainment Weekly |
#9 | / | A.V. Club |
#9 | / | The Guardian |
#11 | / | FasterLouder |
#11 | / | Rolling Stone |
#12 | / | Gorilla vs. Bear |