Nectar- Joji

(Album) (Pop) (Hip-Hop)

Nectar is the much anticipated second release by singer/songwriter and creative mind, Joji! Following the success of his debut album, Ballads 1, he brings us a whole new assortment of tracks to sink our teeth into.

“Ew”, the album’s opening track starts as a blissful ballad, but evolves to a haunting track as it progresses, adding strings, and droning, sightly off-key piano chords to the mix. Later on, a track like “Tick Tock” has a hook that seems made for the actual app, Tik Tok. This is not a bad thing, I just thought that it was ironic that the song of which I feel has the most potential on the app, also basically has the app’s name.

Tracks like “777”, however, feature an array of beats, but, ultimately, could have used stronger vocals to make it one of the better songs on the album. And this one of the bigger complaints I have about the album, the music really could use some stronger performances. I know Joji’s style has been portrayed as ‘laid back’ singing, but I feel the production and instrumentals on a lot of the tracks do not support that vocal style as much as Joji’s “SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK” track did, or how FINNEAS’ production and instrumental choices for a Billie Eilish song support her ‘laid back’ vocals.

One of the tracks that I really enjoyed off of the album, however, was “Run”, because I feel that Joji upped his performance on the track. We hear him deliver a few growly notes, and display his nice vibrato, in a song that showcases—in my opinion—the best singing he has ever laid on a track.

I am also a fan of the wide variety of instrumentals on the album. It has strings, pianos, plucky guitars, booming bass lines, and much more. Joji was also able to amass great features from Omar Apollo, Yves Tumor, etc. In general, however, I found a lot of the album not interesting—which is totally my own personal opinion, and I acknowledge that others will probably love this album—and only found a few tracks that I really enjoyed.

It’s still worth giving it a listen!

To listen, click here: https://open.spotify.com/album/5EzDhyNZuO7kuaABHwbBKX?si=D-69xLBjTAyjUkgtdEDllQ

FAVORITE TRACKS: MODUS, Run, NITROUS