Son Of Spergy

Big Music Friday: Volume 2, Review 10
The series where I review a bunch of the big projects from this major release day, one release a day at 7pm UK time each day so please keep coming back and supporting this, I'm building up to the huge projects. Scroll to the bottom for the Leaderboard and the Review Schedule.
Bonus: The actual bottom of this review was me complaining about the sigma of political/religious music.

I'm a Son, but not of Spergy.

The 4th LP from Toronto R&B Specialist Daniel Caesar zones in on a sincere and fresh gospel infused focus on his own signature sound, across 12 songs it's incredibly consistent, thematic and vulnerable with a lineup of songs that are absolutely unforgettable. What I value so heavily in music is sincerity and honesty, I like when there is something being portrayed in music, a theme to be or that has been wrestled with and here we have a whole cohort of them. I would argue Daniel is the face of R&B now, nobody brings the same level of excitement to releases and the singles were OH MY FUCKING GOD level of amazing, Have A Baby With Me got 30 streams from me since it came out as a single and Call On Me has 25, both of them being in the 30 of songs I've listened to the most over the last 12 months because they resonated with me so heavily. There is even a song here that I fucked with so much I started doing a deep dive into the sounds on it, but you'll hear about that when I get to my mentions later on. Considering how well received some of his projects have been there's one specific feature of this new album none of them had, the instrumentals Caesar falls back on are absolutely untouched, almost all of them Lo-Fi with a gospel feel and I'm deeply regretting my system for the first time because I am clawing at the thought of writing a paragraph about every song here. Pianos, strings, synths and an incredible balance built create one of the best atmospheres of the year so far. His ability to sequence and lay out 12 very refined tracks is something I adore in music, if you take a step back to just appreciate the formatting of the music and the ability and skill Caesar possesses to make this play front to back and make 50 minutes feel like 25 and how unlike his past albums this felt NECESSARY to enjoy as one project instead of the songs on their own regard is so cool to me, this was such a needed step when since Freudian Caesar released 2 albums which were good but flawed in that very specific regard of songs that were out of place or just too boring to enjoy or on occasion doing TOO MUCH, watching him avoid the pitfalls was incredibly satisfying.

A lot of people are reflections of their parents, and a lot of people reflect what they didn't get the chance to reflect. Missing pieces of our childhood will sprout up once we get the chance to stand on our own two legs and go chase them without somebody granting us permission and without somebody doubting those ambitions.

My favourite song here is Have A Baby With Me.. obviously. More stats show it's my most streamed song of the last 3 months, it's incredible, some of the highest replay value I've heard in a long time and it's a true to it's core love song. Caesar yearns for children with a woman in a deteriorating relationship, the desperation is a real and not often represented side of love in music. "You wanna see what this world can offer you outside of me". It's stunning, on all 32 listens now since I have the music I review on in the back as I write always.

My honourable mention is Baby Blue, featuring Norwill Simmonds which is so exciting because I learnt while doing my research that Norwill Simmonds is his father. The song itself is so endearing and soft that it's really warm by itself and I love when it picks up into the beat and comes into its own, but my favourite part of the album is the outro to this song.
The outro of the song is a whole separate song called Can You Feel His Love by Norwill Simmonds of a 2012 gospel album by him, and since I heard that for the first time I've listened to Can You Feel His Love separately many many times. Despite my lack of faith it's one of the most powerful religious songs I have EVER heard, I felt the song pulsing through my veins and I was so enchanted by it when it outrod the track by Caesar that I went and listened to the entire album by his father and despite how none of the other songs really live up to Can You Feel His Love I've grown such a new appreciation for the gospel sound basically out of nowhere. I had no idea Caesars singing talents were inherited. For sure there are better songs than this on Son Of Spergy, this spot was almost given to both Call On Me and Sins Of The Father but I didn't have the heart to not touch on what an incredible experience Baby Blue brought me down. Just enamored man.

My least favourite song here is unfortunately No More Loving (On Women I Don't Love), which is far from a bad song, there is no bad song and every track here is above average as a song but it's the least exciting and has the least replay value, probably brought the least amount of moments to the table too.

BMF2 Leaderboard-
1- Son Of Spergy (Daniel Caesar) 85/100
2- PHOLKS (Leon Thomas) 85/100
3- West End Girl (Lily Allen) 80/100
4- GOLDFISH (Hit-Boy, The Alchemist) 75/100
5- PsychoWarrior: MG ULTRA X (Machine Girl) 65/100
6- LOADING... (BNYX) 65/100
7- Sin Ever After (1oneam) 60/100
8- WARNING SHOT (BabyChiefDoit) 60/100
9- rascal 51 (bleood) 40/100
10- 2005 (ian) 30/100

Schedule-
https://www.albumoftheyear.org/user/meeks0/list/429858/meeks0-big-music-friday-2/

OffTopic
Gospel is the first building block of music, recently I saw somebody flame a rap album for being preachy, that specific review got over 20 likes which if I got that many I'd be pretty happy with myself.
I said "Why is preachy a bad thing? It's rap music." and the response was "Rap music isn't preachy.. I don't know what you be listening to." Which kind of disgusted me.
I forget sometimes that basically anybody can come here and have a platform and spout some bullshit. Being "Preachy" is a staple of not only music but Reviewing! THAT PERSON HAS "Christian" IN THEIR BIO!
Flaming another EP for "I don't like how it sounds" is just dumb. Such a huge reviewer can't understand how to be objective and their broadcasted scores rely on a scale of Dislike-Like instead of Bad-Good which is just stupid, and let's be honest reader people on this site are super impressionable, when it was a trend to hate on Sombr a bunch of basic people without opinions gave all his music 0s, same thing with Doecchi, same thing with Not Like Us.
I think there should be a basic iq test and a questionnaire before you start spouting your shit on this website.
Somebody commented under that review where an unnamed popular reviewer said being preachy was bad with
"aoty won't like this review, but facts bro. I didn't love tpab, and I think it's probably for similar reasons to this"
Cmon man.. I'm all for having your own opinions and expressing them, but sometimes people's opinions are dumb. Music is political, music can be religious, almost all music is trying to push a narrative of sort and the fact some people really consider that a bad thing just makes me shudder and cringe.