Album Review: invite,sessions,only!! by Lance Skiiiwalker
A decade past his cult TDE debut, the Chicago singer tapes his studio door open for warped, invite-only R&B.
Lance Skiiiwalker may be the most unknown weirdo at TDE. He was born in Chicago and started his music career after a random stranger overheard him discussing music on public transport back in 2007. Since then, he’s been the secret ingredient in TDE, providing his twisted voice for Kendrick Lamar’s untitled unmastered. and Isaiah Rashad’s The Sun’s Tirade. Skiiiwalker’s first debut album, Introverted Intuition (2016), was filled with so many filters that critics couldn’t decide whether he can sing at all. His new album, invite,sessions,only!!, is totally unconcerned about it and contains studio fragments, unfinished hooks, altered voices, and guests appearing in the middle of the recording session, sequenced in such a way that it feels as if you have stumbled upon them just in the middle of their creative process.
Much of that buzzing comes from the first track, “keep it on!!”, with its pounding kick drum and wobbling keyboard phrase slipping from underneath. Then ScHoolboy Q makes his entrance and stands in the center of the beat firmly as usual, telling us about his wealth: “I crawled up out of the mud, my credit squeaky clean.” Pink Siifu wanders around the same beat and grumbling tells us that he is tired of explaining himself: “Guess I am who you not.”
Lance writes relationship songs the way people argue, going back on his word mid-sentence and switching opinions. Every answer on “Yes & No” is doubled, maybe now, maybe later, and “I tell you the truth, poof and it lies” is one of the least ambiguous answers in the whole album. In “Saturday” he pleads for a verdict by the weekend, asking “Will you love me by the weekend?” over drums full of actual daylight while Turich Benjy raps clean and direct through the open space. On “Test of Times” he is serious for once, strolling around her room and talking about investing time like people planning a mortgage. At “Mad at Meee!!” the argument is completely circular, ten years wasted, blame nowhere to go, and he snaps with the rhythm of the drum machine, “Waste ten years spent now/Should’ve happened then, split now.” That should sound as bitter as it can get, but it’s rather funny to hear him ask what he’s blamed for after he himself has blamed someone.
After the songs, there are two brief inserts in the broadcast of “Ed&Hattie” and “Ni News,” where the former has an old man talk about his dead wife June, who died in September of 1991, and the latter has two enthusiastic hosts discuss their admiration for the usefulness of artificial intelligence (yuck!). Most of the real things happen in the songs in which Kaicrewsade sings about his stoned, broke, and grateful state, knowing only “you the reason that I ain’t hopeless.” In contrast, Lance worries about the world staring at him. In the song “Really miss us talking,” Blvck Spvde sings about becoming sober, “I’m sober now/I see clearer than before,” and admits that the negativity in her mind has not stopped with quitting drinking. Lance replies with long, wounded phrases, telling about the way she opens his eyes, about the remaining smoke, and about his missing their communication—the most heartbreaking song in the album. “Work this hard” is the morning after all these events when Lance claims his efforts are for himself, supported by the thick bassline, which gives his voice its own space.
There is one dim spot in the album, and it starts with “Often,” which puts Lance’s voice somewhere deep inside the bass figure, so the key phrases “Give it to Tony” disappear somewhere in the depth. Then “My Garden” passes by without any effect, and then comes “Only you”, filled with double vocals and fears, with a sweet, slight voice with no content, and with repeating chords and drums with no development in it. However, these tracks are not terrible, just sleepy, which makes the brighter parts even more pleasant and appreciated. And the most vivacious track on this album does not even contain any vocals—“42 Interlude Invited” slowly sink down with its bass pulse and some keyboard parts, and “Adjustments” snaps the atmosphere up with the rapid beat of a drum machine, bright hi-hats and a synth loop that constantly flirts with tipping over.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “startofday,” “Really miss us talking,” “Adjustments”