The Melodic Blue (Deluxe) - Baby Keem
i think the word deluxe has beef overused as of recently and has largely become a trend but i think what baby keem did here was a good application of the word. while technically being new material, the 7 additional songs don’t expand of any of the themes of the main album and they don’t experiment sonically(relative to the main album). these songs do seem to tell their own story but this story definitely exists in the universe created by the rest of the album. this is why i think baby keem chose to make it a deluxe and not a separate ep. one thing that immediately stood out to me was the arrangement of these songs. the moment i saw 7 songs my mind went back to Kanye’s Ye album. Kanye’s album makes use of a Chiastic structure which seems to also be the case in baby keems deluxe. Chiastic patterns are biblical literary devices that tells a story that “mirrors” it self like a palindrome. listening to the deluxe this way reveals just how many parallels there are from the front of the deluxe to the back. this was a refreshing take on an old concept. favorite songs - bank account (i’ve been listening to the snippet for months) - highway 95 (i drive that highway everyday and i don’t take lauryn hill samples lightly) - a life of pain (the piano arpeggios create this indescribable tension)