Not every line is a winner-“I wear ice on me like hockey dudes” and “I’m a king like Simba, roar,” in particular, fall flat-but they fit the lighthearted nature of Bourne’s music, which takes itself just the right amount of serious. He invokes rapper Cassidy’s song “Hotel” while describing an anonymous hookup on the chorus of “Biology 101.” On “Couch,” he laments his deteriorating relationship with a brother who let him crash in his living room before talking about untucking his chain at a train stop that used to scare him. He isn’t as silly as Big Sean or unfadeable as Roc Marciano, but his jokes and scene-setting are typically colorful enough to infuse each rhyme with enough personality. Bourne’s raps are wordplay-heavy, funneling boasts about money and fashion, flirtations with lovers, and the occasional autobiographical gem through the tried-and-true art of the metaphor. None of this is to say that his subject matter has changed much. His voice generally lands a little bolder than before, which gives the raps more impact. He’s become better at determining whether to skate over his bubbly sonics (“Biology 101”) or submerge himself within them (“HULU”). He cuts through throbbing 808s and minor octave keyboards on mid-album highlight “40 Clip,” where he flexes checks and leaves his jewelry at home to not embarrass anyone.
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Continuing the refinement seen on TLOP4, the fifth in the series further corrects this power imbalance his voice meets the production halfway, becoming more than just another detail in an audio mosaic. He’s never been bashful on the mic, but his beats-synths, drums, and sound effects whirring and clicking together like gears in a clock-tend to smother his breathy sing-song. There’s no denying Bourne’s strengths manifest as a producer first and a rapper second. It’s a slight upgrade, less a gear shift than a recalibration. The Life of Pi’erre 5-the fifth installment of his long-running series which also doubles as his sophomore major-label album-lands slightly closer to the sweet spot between beats and bars glimpsed on 2019’s The Life of Pi’erre 4. Bourne’s beats quickly became the star of the show as his approach became more ubiquitous, but he’s expressed frustration at having his raps looked over as a part of the experience: “I just want everyone to take me seriously for both,” he told The Fader in 2017.
Though indebted to producers like Pharrell and Kanye West, songs like Nudy’s “No Stains” and Playboi Carti’s “Magnolia” hijacked genre conventions with chirpy abandon and helped lay the foundation for a new generation of rap psychedelia ruled by song leaks and heavy vibes. At the time, Bourne’s contrasting style was an anomaly within rap: he pitted cavernous 808s against synth lines that wouldn’t sound out of place in a 16-bit-era Sonic the Hedgehog game.
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