Album Review: Love/Hate II by The-Dream
Nineteen years after Love/Hate turned bedroom synth-R&B into a serial, the Radio Killa returns with Usher, Pusha T, and Rick Ross and picks the dirty mack back up mid-sentence.
It was 2007, and The-Dream, who’d just written Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” spent, according to his own estimates, around eleven days creating a debut album dedicated to seducing women away from other men. The music of Love/Hate was driven by drum machines, deep synth bass and falsetto vocals stacked till the phrase exceeded the beat it was placed over, making Terius Gesteelde-Diamant, former Terius Nash and self-proclaimed Radio Killa, an institution of bedroom R&B. Nineteen years and a name change later (with a pending case), Love/Hate II becomes his first major label album since 2013’s IV Play, marking his return with a full season of courtship, danger and revenge.
First kiss is remembered midway through the seduction process on “Love Sound,” where the groove is slow and steady, drum machine and synth bass loop while stacked backing vocals broaden the chorus. He takes her from a car to kitchen counter to dishes, swears to have never experienced anything like that, and she interrupts with a question: what does he know about love? In “24/7,” devotion becomes domestic: he keeps her in their room for a week straight, “Leaving this room is like walking out of heaven,” and gets so obsessed with her that he even sings her tempo: “One twenty-six BPM, girl we ain’t miss the beat.”
Dirty macking returns as the topic of a phone call on “1 of 1”. He makes a woman call the guy she left him for and end it right now, swears “I’ll kill a nigga for you” just after saying “I’ll always adore you,” and admits “I know I’m sending psycho vibes.” The same trick is played with even less patience on “Bring That Body.” The hook is built as a command, “Bring that body over here/Leave that fuck nigga over there,” he pretends to be a neutral party, “I’m just a messenger here to undress you,” until a different section reveals everything: just friends, but he has keys, and he lets himself in. He stops pretending on “Favorite” when the agreement is mutual, “You don’t need my love/You just want my check,” and they keep lying to each other regularly: she loves him when he’s in town, he loves her when he flies her out.
Usher spends “Tampa” teasing a boyfriend who is not there. They split the hook, “This is where your man should be/Instead of worrying ‘bout me,” over a signature Pharrell four-count. His verse is all about logistics and flex, woman flying in, fifty-room mansion with an in-law suite, Givenchy perfumes in the air, and the funniest line in the song goes to her: she is so new to this world that she actually has to ask, “This is random, but what’s a Phantom?” Two singers leave each other on a jibe about saving “all that runnin’ shit for your own album,” one professional teasing another.
All the warmth created by those songs is instantly ruined by a woman coming to “Powder Coat” and asking, “You sure you want it? You would kill whoever? If we can’t be together?” The composition leaves all the instruments except heavy bass, slower drums and empty space, and his writing also turns gothic in its nature: “She prays dangerously/Ill prayers go unheard,” the bridge is full of murder scenes and poisoning dreams, fake queens and kings, pawn shops and drug addicts. Pusha T delivers a quality rap verse, cryo-cooling on the neck, Richard Mille watches on the wrist, a Shedeur-and-Shiloh name-drop and a common tag, “Dream and King Push, we just psycho.” Strangest line goes to her: “She roams through the temple of life sacrilegiously.”
For one interlude, “Virgo Type Shit,” woman is left to her own words, crying out “that Virgo shit you be doing,” sweet in one moment and, in the next, something she doesn’t even finish calling. And then he proves her right on “State of Peaches.” Somebody saw his ex at Whole Foods last year, so he makes a U-turn on Peachtree in order to see her face. He can’t sleep, hopes she misses him twice, and ends up preaching, “If you die before you live, it’s like you never was there.” He stretches his grudge across the two parts of “Obviously / Juxtapose.” First it’s the threat, “You gon’ hear the wrath of my love,” then the whole verse is spent mocking the clothes of a new boyfriend and the way he sits, and, once he is done with taunting, dream-state plea signed in Spanish, “Te adoro, mi amor.”
The pitch on “Be My Lady” is classic, as it’s the usual be my lady, have whatever you want, and T.I. tries to talk his way through it, rather than floating above it, dirty and half-comic verse which gradually becomes customer service, when she wants something she can call him, for sure. Kelly Rowland (who surprisingly doesn’t sing) makes “Papi Te Ama” an actual conversation, playful banter at the top, a brighter voice against his, while he drives her, “Pull off in the Benz like I’m Uber/Give me five stars when I’m done.” Rick Ross gets the long goodbye on “Perfect” about Birkin bag plugs and first night rules, while The-Dream keeps singing that every flaw is what he loves most. Ross finishes the conversation with a tribute, “R.I.P. to B.I.G., yes, Big Poppa.”
He appears as a beggar on “No Hands,” calling his creation a mess which needs to be cleaned up over barely moving drums in the pocket, and all he can promise to do is to help her to TikTok until she finishes. Compliments on “Blow My Mind” are limited to the way she styles her hair and the way she behaves with his mother. The hook and verses are pushed forward by nothing new underneath it. “I, Remember” is a prayer about a woman who said that she had a man, catching a side eye from his ex at the club and riding the same slow, plodding mood as the two previous tracks, three grooves in a row becoming one.
The water warms around him to a lukewarm temperature on “A Cold Summer” as he floats, pondering a woman with the new crew that used to be his old crew. He sells his Collins condo, flips his Bentley to a Rolls, still travels to Miami so he can dine at Carbone, and learns that she even does drive-throughs. His woman’s new lover, however, turns out to be a rat who “didn’t even do a year on a five to ten,” and the whole breakup boils down to a single ultimatum: “So keep your love or send my motherfuckin’ bomber back.” All those trinkets and cars, and what he wants back is a jacket.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Powder Coat,” “State of Peaches,” “Obviously / Juxtapose”