Essential Albums
Hollywood's Bleeding
Hollywood's Bleeding
“I’m not trying to make anything massive, I’m not trying to make hit records,” Post Malone tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. It’s somewhat unconvincing coming from one of the most popular artists on the planet, but whatever he’s doing, it’s working. His third full-length album, Hollywood’s Bleeding, is bright and adventurous. Sure, it’s filled with all the flexing and bravado he’s known for, and features from Meek Mill, Travis Scott, Young Thug, Swae Lee, and more prove that Post hasn’t veered too far from hip-hop. But it’s also more sentimental, gentle, and pop-focused than ever. “Allergic” and “A Thousand Bad Times” are bouncy and melodic, and “I’m Gonna Be” is a joyous celebration of having fun and living your own truth.It’s fun to hear about Post’s opulent lifestyle, but he knows his fans, and he knows how to connect with them on a more grounded level. “It means a lot that if somebody is hundreds of thousands of miles away, they can sit and relate to the music,” he says. “And they come up to me to say something like, ‘Hey, I don’t want a picture, I just wanted to say your song saved my life.’” Beneath the Versace boxers and mink coats, Post is clearly wounded, and breakup tracks abound on the album’s more down-to-earth, relatable side. Future and Halsey feature on album highlight “Die For Me,” a slick, bitter attack on a lying ex-lover. Each artist takes turns airing dirty laundry and singing the chorus: “Said you’d take a bullet, told me you would die for me/I had a really bad feeling you been lying to me.” “Staring at the Sun” is a gorgeous synth-pop collaboration with SZA about the final throes of a doomed relationship: “If you keep staring at the sun, you won’t see what you have become/This can’t be everything you thought it was, blinded by the thought of us.”“I want to do something weird and funky,” he tells Lowe, preparing listeners for the album’s more surprising moments. Kanye West cowrote (but doesn’t appear on) “Internet,” a rejection of social media and technology which blooms into a majestic orchestral arrangement. But the most unlikely collaboration on the album—and possibly of 2019 as a whole—can be found on “Take What You Want,” featuring Travis Scott and Ozzy Osbourne. Scott’s smoky Auto-Tune isn’t the most natural accompaniment to an eerie Black Sabbath-esque riff and scorching guitar solo, but, somehow, it works.
In 2018, no one could tell Austin Post what to do. The cloud-rap-rock imprimatur and irreverent frat boy persona the Texas-reared singer had cultivated since his initial monolithic breakthrough, the 2015 featherweight trap anthem “White Iverson,” had already drawn in millions of listeners across the world. Singles like the celebratory, Quavo-assisted “Congratulations” solidified his status as a hit maker, with cosigns and collaborators from across pop and rap. beerbongs & bentleys, Post’s sophom*ore release after his 2016 Top 5 album Stoney, was positioned to not just be a chart juggernaut but his first auteur statement—done on the highest scale and fully on his own terms.Outfitted with guest spots from some of 2010s hip-hop’s most celebrated names—Nicki Minaj, YG, Ty Dolla $ign—beerbongs & bentleys is an extensive project that relies on Post’s characteristic dichotomy of stylistic playfulness and ruminations on substance abuse and heartbreak. It feels unfettered and confident, with a greater cohesiveness than his previous recordings, gaining him—for the first time—some critical respect. Opening track “Paranoid” launches the listener immediately into a world where every struggle assumes an equal weight, bemoaned earnestly in Post’s plaintive croon. In his delivery, an image of sitting up at night with a gun, fearing for his life, feels as trenchant as his descriptions of granular fallouts of a breakup on “Better Now” (“You’re not even speaking to my friends, no/You knew all my uncles and my aunts, though”).Post didn’t necessarily need a smash to build his crossover audience, but beerbongs & bentleys yielded several, including the No. 1 “Psycho” with Ty Dolla Sign, built on one of Post’s most unabashed singsong earworms. Meanwhile, the uncanny trap creeper “rockstar,” assisted by 21 Savage, not only topped the charts but broke industry records. The muted, lightly gothic track about the depths of celebrity excess might initially have seemed a strange pick for one of the highest-streaming songs of the early 21st century. However, its hook, hedonistic attitude, and the sly interplay between the two rising stars made it an inescapable banger writ large.
