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May 24, 2019 - Warp Records
I admire the fearlessness with which Flying Lotus approaches his creative work. It is indulgent to use instrumentation the way he uses it on his much-anticipated sixth album Flamagra. Expressing thoughts this organically with such a high production value runs the risk of polarizing an audience: people either love the result or dismiss it as nonsense.
Flying Lotus has irrevocably transformed our cultural definition of the hip-hop genre and of music itself. He’s one of the most significant artists of our time. But, despite the reverence of this influence, I think Flamagra as a standalone body of work ambles too much to hold my attention for long. Aside from recurring moments of the words and themes of “hero” and “fire,” there doesn’t seem to be much cohesion to the musical ideas. And it’s a very long album.
The 27 tracks together try to be about the event of a fire and fall somewhere in limbo between narrative and non-narrative. I don’t think it would have been any good at all to make this album more linear like a broadway drama or a rock opera, but I really was craving a clearer picture to reveal itself as I listened. Instead, it kept me always on the outside, too abstract for me to enter or even approach. Like walking through a hallway of glass with fake glass doors that look like they can be opened but are actually fused shut. Or like looking through Flying Lotus’s sketchbook in passing, viewing the sparks of ideas but unable to decipher all of his handwriting.
The most enjoyment I gained from experiencing this album was picking out the collaborators. I found myself so starved for substance and connection to the work that the pleasure of recognizing Anderson .Paak, Tierra Whack, David Lynch, Solange, etc. hit epiphany level in my emotional response. But epiphany is a fleeting moment. The only performances I took away with me were the way in which Tierra Whack’s voice delivered, “My shoes are untied” in ‘Yellow Belly,’ and Denzel Curry’s haunting message in ‘Black Balloons Reprise,’ which is one of the most direct songs on the whole album. I’m embarrassed that it took such political directness for me to connect.
Overall, Flamagra seems to be the grouping together of a large mass of conflicting impulses. The danger in a stream-of-consciousness is that the mind isn’t always clear in its response to stimuli. I am excited for Flying Lotus to develop his ideas further. For now, though, they are as fleeting as the breaths we take to get through the day. ☔