Jacob has risen to prominence over the past few years as a musical genius. His music theory and ability to layer hundreds of vocals and not have it sound terrible is a feat in itself. He’s being held in super high regard by legendary artists like Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock, and is even signed with the former. His cover of “Moon River” starts off with over a hundred people harmonizing, including the names above, Lianne La Havas, Ty Dolla $ign, Chris Martin, Daniel Caesar, Tori Kelly, Hans Zimmer, Charlie Puth, Kimbra, Tank, Tom Misch, and even his own family. Jacob always seems effervescent and eager to share his love for music with whoever is willing to listen. He’s someone that has all the production and theory talent in the world, but how well did he come through on his project?
Well, there are definitely some great highlights on here. “Time Alone With You” with Daniel Caesar is a great, laid back jam with Daniel and Jacob almost doing a call and response for most of the track. There’s a fantastic jazzy breakdown during the bridge of the song that really shows how Jacob can add a lot of extra production to the song but still make it fit the original groove of the song. And of course, Daniel’s angelic voice immediately makes any song just that much better. This song shows the accessible, R&B and funk sound that Jacob was going for at its absolute best. Everything is perfectly layered and transitions seamlessly throughout the entire song.
“All I Need” with Mahalia & Ty Dolla $ign is another highlight and is probably the most accessible song on the entire album with this anthemic chorus over these gigantic, skipping synths. Mahalia provides a great change with her voice, and Ty brings in his phenomenal harmonies that make anything better. “In My Bones” with Kimbra and Tank and the Bangas is another highlight that will grow on people. It does feel a bit overstuffed, but the core of the song is easily danceable, even with all the extra sounds that are there.
The main problem that I keep running into is that Jacob seems to over produce and overstuff his songs to the point that the song loses its meaning. For example, the first full track “Count the People” with Jessie Reyez and T-Pain. Jessie starts off the song sounding great over this electronic, maximalist production hinting at a transition. But when it transitions, it goes into Jacob doing his best Eminem fast rap impression, which frankly sounds awful. It completely kills the vibe of the song that Jessie sets at the beginning.
“He Won’t Hold You” with Rapsody is another example of overproducing. I’m a huge Rapsody fan, and I knew it wasn’t going to be a traditional beat for her to rap over, but her spoken word passage still comes through as the best part of the song. The rest of the song is filled with as many vocal layers as possible to try and create this serene feeling, but you don’t need this much to create the feeling. It’s like he’s putting as many layers in there as possible, but not looking at what makes it the best song. It’s more impressive than it is enjoyable. People like Bon Iver and James Blake layer and twist their voice much more effectively by focusing on what each layer adds to the song instead of adding tons of layers.
Songs like those last two make this project a bit complicated for me, but I still enjoy this project overall. There’s still a lot of positives I haven’t talked about yet, like how “Butterflies” reminds me of Flying Lotus in the best way, or how “Sleeping in my Dreams” has a fantastic chorus and some exceptional production moments. But there’s just so much potential on this project that’s not yet realized that leaves me wanting more.
That potential has almost left me frustrated at points with this project. It’s almost as if he thinks he has to cram a hundred sounds into a single track just to make it a good song. No, you can scale it back and only have a couple minimalistic transitions and it will most likely be a better song. There needs to be someone else in the studio to almost act like a filter for all these sounds, which I think will lead to his most impactful role in music, producing for other people.
As of now, Jacob’s only worked a couple times for other people, but they’ve ended up better than almost anything on this project. Daniel Caesar’s “Restore the Feeling” features an effervescent ending from Jacob that helps make the song standout. But his biggest production credit so far will be on SZA’s upcoming single, “Good Days”. Even though it was only teased for 90 seconds at the end of SZA’s new music video, fans are already clamouring for it’s official release, declaring this snippet is better than the full song she just released.
All that said, Jacob definitely has a bright future ahead of him. While this project still has loads of wasted potential, it’s still a good project with quite a few quality tunes. It’s worth saying again that his talent really is among the best people in music right now. So as long as he continues to refine his talent and make music for the song itself instead of making it the most impressive song, I’m sure he’ll continue to get better and more popular from here.
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