Album Review: Anywhere But Here
Another early January week, another disappointing Thursday night of hip-hop album releases. I say this from the perspective that I only have time for one album review a week and I like it to be a bigger one that I can really sink my teeth into. This week I was torn between two projects that both sounded like they would have potential but were both from artists I was largely unfamiliar with. I settled on the new Nyck Caution album Anywhere But Here.
The Brooklyn rapper released his first proper solo album since 2017’s Nick @ Knight. Caution gained popularity as a member of the hip-hop collective Pro Era. Anywhere But Here acts as a re-coming out party of sorts for the artist, as going over three years without a release for an artist with a smaller following as someone like me could tend to forget about someone like this. So how did Nyck Caution do for the people he re-introduced himself to? I can answer that by saying this will be by far my shortest review of an album on this website.
Breaking this album down track by track actually feels like a waste of time, therefore I won’t do it. However, I will start with a couple of highlights on this album. “Motion Sickness” is the third track on the album and relatively unremarkable. It has a groovy melody and Nyck has a nice flow on the track. The song is relatively uninspired but it's a nice bit of background music. “How You Live It” is a track that features a brilliant Joey Bada$$ verse that vastly outshines the rhyming of one Nyck Caution, but the track's vocal riff led melody comes together brilliantly and the hook is quite catchy.
The biggest highlight on the album is the ninth track, “Bad Day (ft. Denzel Curry).” This song absolutely slaps the shit out of you, then takes your lunch money, and afterward, you thank it for its services. The beat is this loud, aggressive bass-heavy banger that would fit perfectly on to just about any Curry project as it is produced by Charlie Heat. Caution and Curry trade bars on the first verse, Curry handles the hook, and Caution dominates the second verse. Curry’s aggressive delivery and smooth flows seem to rub off on Caution as he matches Curry’s intensity bar for bar. The track feels unique and like this standout beacon of brilliance on what is a sea of mediocrity.
As for low-lights, can I just say the rest of the album? The first three tracks leave you wanting any semblance of a change or switch-up. The “Vin” skits are grating and don’t fit into any semblance of a theme. The second one just serves to rave about Denzel Curry being on the track which is cool I guess but frankly superfluous. The project’s final three tracks are just begging for it to be cut off. Tracks eleven and twelve have some potential but fail to deliver on it. The thirteenth track is completely unremarkable and fails to make an impression. The closing track, however, takes the cake for the worst song on the album. The song is supposed to be this deep cut about how he raps for kids that can’t and everyone doubts him. We have all heard this track fifty times before this, and this one does not stand out. It's derivative and boring and as a closer just completely misses the mark.
The album is not bad. Though my review may seem mostly negative, I find this album to be more unremarkable and below-average than actually bad. Nyck Caution seems to be doing his best Lupe Fiasco impression and failing at it, and the album suffers for that. The bright spots where his tones and flows switch up to match more interesting beats are what saves this album from just being a completely whitewashed mess, but it's not enough to make the album even an average hip-hop album. Denzel Curry does pull so much weight on this album it should almost be a negative. I feel bad because I have nothing more to say about this album. This is easily my shortest review, managing to be even shorter than my review of a six-song EP. That is unfortunately what this album deserves to be honest.
The Grade: D+