Art by Perry B McLeod
This website is user-supported. Any donation is immensely appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/passionweiss
Evan Nabavian wrote this from Diddy’s yacht.
Four tracks into Swae Lee’s vacation-themed album, the gentle pulse of Mike Will and Marz’s beat evokes waves and cicadas on a track that could bookend a Doobie Brothers playlist if you muted the drums. Picture yachts, white linen, and frozen drinks. Until…during Swaecation’s climactic moment, Swae Lee and Young Thug abscond to unnamed foreign shores on “Offshore;” Lee to flex, and Thugger to serenade his woman in a sprawling declamation. Young Thug dumps his consciousness in all its quavering honesty. A lot of it is horniness that he untethers from decorum and tepid songwriting and instead effuses through euphemisms that you don’t understand so much as feel.
Fevered ardor blots out rational thought—he lavishes her with cars and offers to slap the president. For several bars he just watches her walk. His voice bends and snaps and one imagines Young Thug’s eyes rolling back in his head. He gives a performance that matters—it climbs above the ephemera and casts a shadow on its peers. Your vacation is flopping on the beach with daiquiris. Meanwhile, Young Thug streaks through the atmosphere like a gamma ray burst.
