Album Review: U, Me & My Ego by Chxrry
A Scarborough debut where the ego shows up uninvited and orders for the whole table.
“Fuck a popstar, baby, I’m a cinema.” This one line illustrates all the confidence of Chxrry, yet with the following bar, the artist fails to boast in the same breath: “Blockstar, a billion to one.” A pun whose main point is to enjoy the casing that it is. The instrumental of Believve with its 808 sub-bass and pitched-up operatic sounds renders it an argumenting personality for the next ten tracks, ready to use both vanity and self-awareness in the same bar. She addresses her ex as the one who lacks, while she calls her enemies the under-mad ones.
“No weapon that is formed against me shall prosper
Especially in this Moncler.”
“I want everything, even if it costs me everything,” she sings, and in her pitch, she poses the boast as a transaction, not a confession.
Chxrry is the one who walks into “Call Security” with cold leather, a chiled drive, and a door that was only pulled open by one hand on a Beretta and practically asks the question, “Where did I go wrong? Is she better than me?” Over an uptempo techno-inspired beat, she said, “I’m not leaving till one of us ain’t breathing,” were taken as an escalation by attrition. “New Chanel won’t fix it/It’ll be a body bag, you’ll see,” she warns the rival. The Beretta is a humorous thing, but it’s a serious thing too. Pop singers are less likely to do both at the same time in one setting.
She partially speaks on “Bible,” with “Sensitive, I know I don’t look it, but I’m sensitive” asynchronously on a synth bass and a pad, which is being played underneath it. Her chorus comes in with a clinical approach: “Loving you is so much of a joke, stupid/I go psycho.” Afterwards, this begins with a feeling of hate. “Hate the way I re-read every word, ‘cause you typed it.” “Hate how much I care ‘bout who you see, and what your type is.” “Hate that I don’t even like myself unless you like me.” That’s why the singer makes the comparison of love with a disease; hence, she sings it against the beat, and there is no melodic relief. In the final promise, the confession is uttered: “I hate that I’ll follow you to hell/I love you more than I love myself.”
One producer is the single person responsible for the entire album, which is an unusual thing for the debut of a major-label R&B act, but it is being compensated for this by the fact that the album is very well structured and cohesive. The backbone of the album is Believve’s embracing atmosphere that is hardly ever heard besides this. Theatrical menace on the opening song is re-lit as a sense of loneliness over similar low-frequency and slow late-night design, thrum with party anger. On “Boring,” it relies on elies on space and subtle textures with experimental, minimalist R&B design, while a pitch-shifted vocal chop can be heard playing in the background. His trademark is a reminiscence of the low end that the tracks come back to, no matter what kind of mood Chxrry is experiencing.
After Chxrry has named the Maldives and the Sandy Springs cheating (“Whole time you was fuckin’ these bitches in Sandy Springs”), Mariah arrives on “Bottles & Lights,” but instead of agreeing to the painful comment, Mariah stands it aside with a flex: “I went from AP to Richard while y’all was TikTokin’.” Two singers mutually attached to the same breakup are situated in two different rooms in the same hotel. A different version of “Badness” is played by Cash Cobain. His “Club can’t love you like me” contrasts with Chxrry’s “Three shots in, I’ma turn to a flirt/Six shots in and somebody getting work,” and the song is experienced through the lens of a hookup. Mariah complicates her partner’s argument. Cash agrees with his.
No threat here arrives as a red flag Chxrry is identifying; her threats sit inside the songs as the love language itself. “Groupie” closes with “we’re gonna die together, so I love you, bye,” sung over horns and dusty vinyl crackle, and earlier on the same track Chxrry slips in “I need to be on meds” before going straight back to the come-on. Clinical and violent registers share a sentence across this debut. “Hall of Fame” puts the CN Tower into a flirtation: “I’ma take it higher than the CN tonight.” On “Boring,” she slots “possessive” between handsome and shameless, expecting the joke to read as both. None of these lines arrive with architecture. They ARE the architecture.
On “Main Character,” Chxrry cashes the album in on her own terms, very late. “Fuck ‘round tell Mona Lisa move, I put myself up in the Louvre,” she sings, and a Believve crescendo climbs from a single piano figure to an orchestral wall behind her. “Last time we linked, we made the news.” “Blew him a kiss, Chanel on my lips.” “I just went Rossi on the boots.” She closes the album with “I’m the main character, I’m the main character” to a room she has spent ten songs talking herself into being qualified to walk into.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Call Security,” “Bible,” “Hall of Fame”