Album Review: Papercut by Imani Imani
On her surprise pgLang debut, Imani Imani sings desire as a flat demand and turns it into a study in control.
pgLang built its early years on rappers and partnerships, and rollouts slow enough to transform silence into an event. A singer seemed an unlikely first booking. And Imani Imani, as the first voice the company is putting its name behind, is someone who arrives on the scene unannounced, as she herself seems to prefer, for someone who is never shy about using her voice to clearly state exactly what she needs. Suggestion and seduction were already off the table. Here, on Papercut, want arrived fully formed as a stance and not a question, and it dominates all that follows.
“Put a bet on me/I bet on you,” she tells a man whom she has just met. She is fully confident that he’s the one on “Bet On Me” before she’s even heard him say his name. Selling this blindness off as a virtue, she expands: “I don’t even know your name/But I can feel all the things you say/I know what’s on your mind/I’ll be knocking, knocking.” There’s just a clock and a list of demands. “Come Together” similarly pushes the desire through angles and around corners. She wants “all that ass,” not half. And when the man hesitates, she renders the issue as a word problem: “So bent out of shape/Thought you wanted to try angles/Running ‘round in circles/Can you get one thing straight?... It’s math you can’t handle.” Even still, she continues to apply it: “Add it or subtract from it/Keep it coming, I just want it.” The total never appears.
Tame, obsessed, on the clock, kept where she can see him on “You’re Mine.” She lays it out up front: “I like when they’re tame/Bitch stay in place.” What first sounded like a desire, a “high” like a drug, until he’s out of town on a business trip, and the song shifts in tone to the chill. “You better come on home before you’ll bleed,” she warns him, and when he’s gone again, she counters it with “a sub who don’t need briefing” and cuts off his begging: “Don’t you fuck with me/I will bite/I’d rather die/I don’t play about mine”. The same desire that sounded like hunger is actually a fence. “Slidee” uses the same control with the malice stripped away, amuses herself instead of arming herself. She has a man who is singing to his friends about what her lips taste like, high all weekend, begging to be seen, and she keeps him on schedule, “If you in love keep it quiet/I’ll be back on your phone when I need it,” “I got him so obsessed” her control never in doubt.
With production handled by Daan Zinkhaan in its entirety, the span of half the album of independence lasts. In “Snatch” she has “Fully independent” on the roof where she dictates the rules, “don’t call me back, I’ve had enough” and then the same verse crumbles: “what does it mean if I can’t call you up.” Her other back stretch switches sides completely, handing freedom to the benefactor who provides her with the lifestyle she wanted: “You give me dreams/You give me lifestyle.”
When she is begging, the writing is commonplace. “On Demand” is exactly like the control songs and all its demands and offers, “You right I’m wrong/Take me back/Take me back/I’m so sprung,” and giving herself as on call is the reward, “I’ll be on demand /I’m a call away.” Sinking further into the same sweetness, “1 of 1” gave even more, “What would I do to please you, boy?/What would I do to keep you?” and the woman who laid down the law is now begging for the man to stay. This is sincere, a familiar declaration that countless others have already sung.
Despite it all, the panic underneath is simply not being left alone. She doesn’t know whether to hold onto the man she’s worried about, “Who comes around at night before I call?” on “Mindgames,” and it’s this ambiguity that forms the chorus; “If I stay tonight/Do I hold on tight?... Do I lose my light?” Still, threats emerge, “I would set this bitch on fire,” but by the bridge the game’s over and she confesses: “I never let my guard down, I was good all on my own/And now I cannot lay my head down when you’re not here for too long,” before finally coming clean; “You know that I’m broken.” Lonelier and stranger, “Chasing” finds her packing bags she doesn’t even travel with, “I’m out the door/I’m packing my bags, gotta go” whilst acknowledging: “I’ve been alone too long/Can you keep me warm?”. With all the swagger gone, “I think I’m born with a broken heart” finds her completely defenseless.
Aimed at everything at once, the desire on “Let Go (wishes)” loses its capacity to differentiate lovers from money. “West Coast, sold shows, big brands, good time,” she lists, before adding “your nigga on my wishlist,” placing him among the cars and the deals as just another item to obtain. Ending with instrumental, devoid of vocals entirely, her persona’s most powerful concluding remark is found in a song before, with her “down on my knees,” hunting after dreams she calls “made of riches.” It’s the very same hunger from the very first bet, swelled and now ambitious enough to claim a man, a coast, and a career, without distinguishing between them.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Come Together,” “You’re Mine,” “Mindgames”