Song of The Year-Young Dumb & Broke by Khalid

by Dan-O

I can’t tell you how creepy it is when old critics write about young artists. Read some old Mac Miller reviews from when he was sixteen and a goofball, the venom is crazy. Either these writers pursue younger artists non-stop to feel like they are staying young or take out their world weary perspective on them. I am grateful not to be one of those dudes, a writer yes, an artist but not a critic. I couldn’t care less about capturing the youth experience versus the older experience as long as it is vividly rendered.

That is why Khalid is getting so much attention. His new album American Teen builds a world so complete that you can test the boundaries and it stands. The pure poetry is there (see: Angels).  His voice is more Justin Vernon than Marvin Gaye but the tempo shifts enough degrees per song to give you a new slice every track (with fifteen slices).

Young Dumb and Broke is a post-Frank Ocean anthem that harnesses all the energy of those negative arguments used against this generation and sends it back in some brilliantly articulate aikido move. How are you gonna hate this generation when your singing along to an anthem about it?

Do people even think about this stuff? How much better R & B is than it was ten or fifteen years ago? The fact that we have had so many important/influential achievement albums in the genre that the standard by which we judge it has moved up several notches. The music we shrug at could have run the table (nothing wrong with Monica, Ciara, & Donell Jones they saw us through some hard times) in 2006. The reason you find it so hard to know which new music to listen to is because the world is full of cold blooded assassins doing it themselves. New names we need to learn now or be called out by friends eventually. Press play on Young Dumb & Broke because Khalid is one of those names.