Post Malone
"beerbongs & Bentleys"
(Republic (ASTERISK)(ASTERISK)(ASTERISK))
The Dallas rapping singer (or singing rapper) who made his bones with the swaggering 2015 hit "White Iverson," has come a long way since lyricizing about the famed 76er. Each track and album since has benefitted from rugged guitar lines, trap-ish rhythms, woozy melodies and that warble-rap of Malone's, with this winter's "rockstar" defining his intentions and repositioning rap-rock beyond its '90s heyday and the lame likes of Limp Bizkit.
Sonically lighter and more playful than its earlier model, Malone's vision of the rap-rock ethos is weirdly whiny and disillusioned, like a proud drunk guy at night's end who won't leave the bar, but can't go home. Take "rich & sad," where our egotistical hero is so disgusted with his moneyed, romantic lot in his life that he acts out in macho-moron fashion. "It was only lust/I was living life/how could I have known?" Malone rope-a-dopes dumbly through a tale of love-em-and-leave-em emo-hop. Luckily, Malone doesn't linger on the morose or the malignant, and instead rhapsodizes thoughtfully and sensitively about heartache on the acoustic guitar-driven, Beatles-ish "stay" and the delectably odd and contagiously melodic "otherside." With that brightness and goofiness, Post Malone crafts a winning, multigenre-dabbling, hip hop-infused sound for his retinue of honky tonk losers and cash-carrying wise guys. �A.D. Amorosi
