Review: Aminé’s Limbo Skillfully Melds Traditional and Modern Hip-Hop Modes

The album proves that the rapper can keep pace with his contemporaries while drawing on the history of hip-hop.

Aminé, Limbo
Photo: Micaiah Carter

On the intro to his 2018 mixtape, Onepointfive, Aminé demonstrated his talent for verbose, declaratory scene-setting. The opening track of the Portland-based rapper’s second studio album, Limbo, likewise sets the stage with a chopped soul sample-driven beat and telling references to hip-hop’s past (Jay-Z) and future (Rico Nasty), while unfurling some of the moral concerns plaguing his thoughts. The album also contains new spins on the dormant practice of skits, and one such interlude pays tribute to the late Kobe Bryant, while others serve as outros for the tracks “Riri” and “Fetus.” These skits find Aminé conversationally musing to himself and his friends about growing older and his place in the world, and they’re a welcome, thoughtful nod to the rap opuses of yesteryear.

By the album’s halfway point, though, it’s clear that this isn’t just another throwback, as Aminé’s full-bodied beats, vintage soul samples, and clever rhymes set him up as a deserving carrier of Kanye West’s torch. “Roots” features R&B/funk icon Charlie Wilson, a favored collaborator of Kanye, while “Pressure in My Palms” includes a reference to the origin of the divisive rapper’s beef with Taylor Swift, as well as a brief but unmistakable interpolation of Kanye’s 2005 track “We Major.” On “Mama,” Aminé lovingly sings the praises of his mother and her herculean efforts to raise him, as if in homage to Kanye’s “Hey Mama”—though the song also links to 2Pac’s “Dear Mama.”

One of the album’s more complex lyrical moments, “Becky” is an examination of racial inequality in America that centers on Aminé’s suburban upbringing, repeatedly returning to the line “Mama said/don’t ever bring a white girl home to me.” The song fascinatingly looks at the contradictions between the behaviors of individuals and the trends of the masses, a kind of liminality hinted at in the album’s title. Aminé is also frequently caught between his swagger and his conscience, resulting in a moral ambiguity that’s further explored on “Fetus,” which, in another stroke of highly uncharacteristic attitudes in rap, ponders the potential harms of bringing a child into the world. The production of these songs, like much of the rest of the album, is unhurried, allowing Aminé to enunciate words fully, the percussion patiently churning and the guitar lines slowly strummed.

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Aminé isn’t quite as good a singer as he is a rapper, and certain songs, like “Compensating” and “Riri,” feel encumbered by their repetitive hooks. But when he’s spitting verses, Aminé’s bars feel as painstakingly worked out as those of J. Cole, though his looser, more blasé demeanor saves him from the strident handwringing of the North Carolina MC. (Cole would not, for example, say “Get off my dick and my balls” with the gusto that Aminé manages here.)

In melding traditional hip-hop form with just the right amount of modern trap verve, Limbo makes the case for Aminé, if not as the next great rapper, then as a pop-rap workhorse. The album proves that he can keep pace with his contemporaries while drawing on the history of the genre in ways many of today’s innovators are unconcerned with engaging.

Score: 
 Label: Republic  Release Date: August 7, 2020  Buy: Amazon

Charles Lyons-Burt

Charles Lyons-Burt covers the government contracting industry by day and culture by night. His writing has also appeared in Spectrum Culture, In Review Online, and Battleship Pretension.

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