Album Review: Raw Honey by VINSON

A Detroit singer-rapper’s first full-length puts suicide and pickup lines in the same bar and means both. The contradictions are in the album.

Courtesy of Soft Sweet Radical Productions.

At the end of “On the Low,” after a verse about reckless sex and crying alone and withdrawing from everyone close enough to wound him, a woman leaves a voicemail. “I am not one of these artsy ass niggas you be fucking with,” she says. “I’m tryna keep shit cute for real. Man, I just miss you.” She sounds exasperated, tired of performing patience for someone who won’t sit still. It’s the funniest and sharpest thing on Raw Honey, the debut full-length from Brenton Andre Vinson, a Detroit-born, LA-based singer-rapper who has been putting out EPs since 2020 and curating a quarterly alternative showcase in LA called Good Company. VINSON has had six projects to practice saying difficult things casually. The voicemail is someone else confirming that this is, in fact, what he does.

There is a lot of sex on this record. VINSON talks about sex the way he talks about eating baguettes in Europe or stepping out for an all-night thing, as activity, texture, passing weather. On “Liquor Brown,” the woman is tall like Lisa Leslie, and the chorus compares her skin to brown liquor, sip it, put it down, lick it, cuddle then stick around. On “Forth N’ Back,” the first verse says “you fuck the way you dance” and the hook asks to hold her hand without holding her back. “Body Misses U” is an interlude that barely lasts a minute, and the only thing it says is come make me say your name again.

Then the admissions. VINSON drops confessions the same way he drops his pickup lines, mid-verse and moving right along. “Bout 2 Flourish” describes sweaty sex behind curtains, mutual worship, spreading cheese on a baguette in Europe, and then, “Was fucking on a socialite while contemplating suicide.” AshTreJinkins’ production stays knocking underneath, and VINSON keeps going. His ex called eighty times, spread eighty lies, was it because they made a baby and then it died? On “Killian Hayes,” he confesses he abuses substances like Juice WRLD. On “On the Low,” he goes through being alone, crying, shaking, withdrawn, and admits these impulses last for so long. On “U Want Me to Be Myself???,” he’s ironing his apron before work, noticing his bald tires, wondering if he crashed would it even hurt.

.Coffee and AshTreJinkins split most of the production between them, and they sound nothing alike. .Coffee’s tracks have a low-slung, late-night pull, the shuffle on the title track crawling forward at 2 a.m. speed, and the drums on “Killian Hayes” stuttering and skipping across an unpredictable grid. AshTreJinkins’ beats run tighter, more rhythmically insistent.

VINSON’s father shows up once on this album, on “Never or Now,” and the song can’t get rid of him.

“Coming up, said my daddy had a Beamer
Coming up, said my daddy had a Benz
Heard him talk about his many, many wins
Never heard him talk about anything else.”

The chorus says time is running and it feels like it’s never enough, that he’s on a treadmill underneath a shadow of doubt, feet can’t hit the ground. They never told him they were proud, he admits, and now the only thing he does with pride is question everything he feels inside. Nappy Nina, the Brooklyn rapper and poet, takes the third verse and adds a parallel weariness that has nothing to do with VINSON’s specific pain but rhymes with it.

“Growing bitter in winter, said this was just enough
Times I couldn’t eat much.”

The penetrating political lines on Raw Honey show up where you don’t expect them. “Feel Crazy” opens with a spoken-word sample declaring that anger at racist transgressions is sanity, not insanity, and VINSON responds by saying he sees with both eyes and isn’t trying to see both sides. “You ain’t innocent, you’re standin’ by,” he adds, and the line sits there while AshTreJinkins’ production holds its lazy, faded sway. The second verse of “Bout 2 Flourish” leaves the bedroom entirely.

“From the moment you walk out your door, you hate the poor
From the nation that crushes bones and will destroy.”

Then, “From the moment you left the womb, it was decided that you will endlessly consume.”

“Tell Me If You Like That?” is a sketch built on a single question about sex asked four ways, and the answer never arrives at anything worth revisiting. “Covid Tales” is a skit about a guy dodging COVID test questions with jokes about alkaline water and strong immune systems. It was probably funnier in 2020. Raw Honey could stand to lose a few songs without anyone noticing the seams. Bruiser Wolf, the Bruiser Brigade rapper, drops a guest verse on “On the Low” that’s all bravado and no snitching and Remy Martin, pure fun, tonally miles from the guy who just finished saying he cries alone and shakes. It’s a Detroit connection that makes biographical sense and musical sense only if you squint.

Only one song on the whole thing talks about music itself, and VINSON put it last. On “Time 4 Jazz,” he tells 33-year-olds doing TikTok dances in the club that it might be time for jazz. His mama grew up on MC Lyte and Grandmaster Flash. He puts Thelonious Monk and Rakim in the same sentence, tells you don’t throw inventive new artists into the laundry cycle and let them spin. “No health plan, no insurance/Rappers don’t have to get shot to die early,” he says, and then names Ecstasy and Biz Markie. The hook calls himself a bee caught in a honey trap, and it’s the only time the album title sounds bigger than a compliment for a woman’s body.

He has been running that Good Company showcase for a while now, booking Koreatown Oddity and Qu’ran Shaheed and Silas Short, artists who don’t fit cleanly into anyone’s algorithm. His great-uncles sang in Motown-era groups; his uncle and cousin rapped with Public Enemy. He grew up hearing everything, and it shows. The record jumps from house shuffles to hip-hop to bedroom R&B without signaling the turns. On “Liquor Brown,” the third verse declares love is strong and nothing can break their bond, and then he cradles her in his arms and says freedom to go alone. Both things in the same breath, no comma between them.

Great (★★★★☆)

Favorite Track(s): “Never or Now,” “On the Low,” “Bout 2 Flourish”