Album Review: LVRS PARADISE (SIDE B) by Isaiah Falls
Singing every song to a woman he wants to keep or convince, the Orlando singer writes in close detail with one person in mind and in stock phrases without her.
The Private Room was released in 2023 with five tracks on it and took the same route as most of the indie R&B EPs. “FLORIDA BABY” headed somewhere else in the following year, and the singer from Orlando is behind it. He has been booking rooms using that one track only. Isaiah Falls predominantly composes in the second person. On Side B of LVRS PARADISE, every verse is dedicated to some woman who might be gone, about to be persuaded or being requested to stay, and the songs are partitioned based on whether he is able to mention things about her past what she looks like.
“Stripping off your clothes leaves your past outside the door,” he remarks on the laid-back “TABOO,” and the hook surrounding it seems to inquire about her desire, and it promises to find her there, which is the totality of what he offers. “LAVISH” uses the same strategy through a group invitation: her and her friends partying until she is fed up, canceling all your arrangements, and coming back to him every time, asking him if he can persuade her with no pressure. LATENIGHTJIGGY takes the verse as a part of it and at least brings a night in with him, late but not Dark Knight, Cubans and rough chains outside, a request that she show him how to overlook a city, fate called his bestie and always on time. Both refrains are constructed to be sung along with on a repeat listen. Not one of them has anything to say about the woman being addressed that could not be used about another woman on another night.
The song “FLAWLESS” highlights the distance the artist shows the most, where he takes the first verse and just hands off the rest. He characterizes his part as a series of questions without any main idea raised, for example, whether she has a man or a friend, whether they could go for a tan on an island together and by closing the verse, there is no logical reason for her to be so attractive, an ending line. LooseKannon Takeoff, who follows him, is analyzing her details, the nails she had done and the hair she styled, her own bread and her bills paid, a drink that she has taken to her head with no chaser, a manner of walking like she is stepping for Vogue. Yakiyn sees her from a distance as he is standing on the other side of the room and in the following verse and finds out that she is that way because of the rumors about him, the streets that raised him, and a woman who is too fine to be that street.
“MARIA, MY LOVE” is a song written by God, and it is decided on before praying to be with her and telling her that he sees her maturity through the sun that shines on her. He does not ask her about it at all. “Even if I lost you in another life, I don’t need a reason to love you twice” is such a large claim as to matter more than anything in the pickup songs, and at the same time, it is a small one, and the chorus that he wrote around it is intentionally small, busy getting along, not alone, at home on the road even, only comfortable with certain parts of him showing when she is there. “ANYWHERE WITH YOU” expresses a more reduced version of the same thing, the phone off and her feet in the sand, a line about having waited so long and found peace in a friend, an admission near the end concerning the moon coming out and showing who he really is.
The woman exits the room with him instead of the man she entered with, and he utilizes the remaining time of “OUT THE GAME” to analyze the impact on him. He asks her about her feelings when she is now with the guy who made her deal with him, mentioning that he is a lover who surrounds himself with killers, but still turns the chorus to a request, “I’m tired of playin’, baby, take me out the game.” The second verse walks back the request before the end of the track, doing a parallel pike with the Pirelli, the blue tint gliding through like in Belly, a phone loaded over with numerous women’s numbers, “You fuckin’ with a big dog, not a pup.” “BACK IN MY ARMS” craves the same absolution without that furniture crowding it. The verse writing in that situation is just a phone call and an apology; she got mad, and he was wrong, and there was nothing else in the room.
“HONEYBUTTER” is a betting app, and Mahalia focuses on her inability to find different words to say she is not sure and how many times she has to come to his place, and later on, she tells who has been the one forcing and making it possible for the two of them to endure the drought. He had spent his own staff circling a question he would better prefer not to have decided: “Is it mine?/I can’t be sure/We both are mature, let’s be this way/Promise I’m not insecure.” “MAYDAY” does not have any interactions. He was mortally wounded by an angel in a street where there were no safe goals, was shot at a crossroads where she turned the way his heart goes, and only God knows whether he can make it alive with the rivers of pain. The entire tune is that one texture, carried.
In the first stanza of the song “FLORIDA BOI,” the guy states proudly that he is a flirt and absolutely sure that there is never going to be a “them.” He also tells her that she still has to smell the rain and go through tough times and be lost in a city heeling him like no one had rest in ice. After that, he calls her one time, and then he talks about everything else, about long nights and only trying to get his bread right, mama doing better and granny doing better, a plan to hit the mall and spend some when he wins. He even mentions that she is not in his most detailed verse. The third stanza of the hymn tells her something which he offers no one else: “You don’t have to say you’re sorry for doing the things that you do/I’m trying to be better for you.” Later in the song, she is back again, and he says he knew it wouldn’t take her too long.
In “PLAY YA CARDS,” he tells about how he is trying to explain himself, asking not to be judged for the way he plays his cards, and adding that a playa knows a playa “too well.” The thing he asks for is professional courtesy from the woman he is seeing, and he does not get it. She has heard the rumors from her friends, and the picture he keeps is the one of her shutting a door on him. 03 Greedo is handed the verse after that at 3:56 am, in the recording studio and tired, he’s yawning, drunk and high, and hoping that she is drinking and using drugs too, and he knows she is probably lying with another person and asking her to sneak away, saying that he would be wrong and he is putting her name in the song anyway. This is the one song where both of them miss the pitch, and it is more interesting than any of the ones where it goes through.
Above Average (★★★☆☆)
Favorite Track(s): “FLORIDA BOI,” “MARIA, MY LOVE,” “OUT THE GAME”