Blog Post 5 - REVISED

Blog Post 5 – Culture

Today I will be examining upcoming artist “Khalid” and his debut album “American Teen.” This album is now number 11 on Billboard top 100 hip hop/r&b albums. I was listening to some of this album and I noticed that he talks about his past a lot. I dug deeper and found that he actually came from a military background.

Once I saw that, I knew I had to discuss this album and Khalid culturally. Since this is his only Album, I think it's fair to include it in the conversation. He has almost 9 million unique listeners per month on Spotify, good for 134^th in the world. He is being dubbed as “a voice for young people.” Khalid is creating a new culture that revolves around not giving a fuck about anything. The Georgia-born artist’s background has helped make him a sort of de facto expert on the struggles of young people: As a military child, he spent his formative years bouncing all over the South before stints in Germany, New York, and Texas. Khalid is trying to be that voice. His debut album, American Teen, covers everything from spacey soul to synth-pop, but his textured voice and boyish ennui tie it all together. “A lot of my songs are about loneliness and losing relationships,” he says. “Even the ones that are happy, there’s a lonely undertone to them.” Khalid tries to connect to all millennials. After all, he is only 19.

 “I feel like growing up with my mom was the foundation of my (interest in music),” Khalid said. “In my home, we listened to music all the time. I was raised through music, and I’ve been interested in it since I was three. I’ve been singing since I could talk correctly.” By spring, and with “prom right around the corner,” Khalid said he was eager to get a new song out. It was then that Khalid traveled to Atlanta to work on the song that would eventually become his breakthrough. Tunji Balogun, vice president of A&R for RCA Records, said he began following Khalid after several of his early Soundcloud uploads caught his ear. “When he put out Location, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, this kid knows how to make a hit,’ in addition to being a talented vocalist and being ahead of his age,” Balogun said. He wasn’t alone. Soon after it was released, Kylie Jenner posted a video of herself and friends listening to the song on Snapchat. The co-sign from the reality TV star helped propel the song, with its catchy refrain and lyrics that delve into love in the smartphone era, to more than 12.5 million streams on Soundcloud. All this from a song Khalid says he almost didn’t finish after trying to write and record with the song’s producers in Atlanta. Tired, but unfazed, Khalid retreated to El Paso, where he wrote and recorded the song while his mom and friends hung out in the studio.

The track that best sums up the album is the title track, which opens the album. The song begins with a beeping alarm and drum-machine slaps, then turns into a story of light youthful irresponsibility: “I’m high up, off what?/I don’t even remember/But my friend passed out in the Uber ride.”

The tone of these few lines is completely casual; Khalid sings without judgment or emphasis. He does get more intense in the second verse: “I’ve been waiting all year/To get the hell up out of here/And throw away my fears.” The singer completely nails the feeling of knowing the bright options the future might hold while still being stuck at home, at school, with people who are telling you what to do and feel.

This is a universally known issue among teens, and this is something that Khalid addresses throughout the album with his use of “we” and “our” (“We don’t always say what we mean,” “This is our year”).  He’s drawing a picture of his generation and makes his final point when the digital flair of the music falls away and we’re left with an acoustic guitar and a group of young men speak-singing the chorus. It’s brings the nostalgia and atmosphere of a campfire singalong, combining the new technology with the older, and sometimes more simple times.

That’s why the lighter songs on “American Teen” work best.  For example, “Saved” is a fun and catchy story about saving a girl’s number just in case she will call him: “I’ll keep your number saved/’Cause I hope one day you’ll get the sense to call me,” which later changes to “I’ll keep your number saved/’Cause I hope one day I’ll get the pride to call you.” Meanwhile, “Coaster” does a good job comparing a breakup to a roller coaster.  The whole album is an effective mix of art-soul and 1980s new-wave pop excess with the lonely-boy feeling of looking in the mirror, looking for a larger purpose.  It most closely brings about the spirit of John Hughes’ fan-favorite movies.

Overall, Khalid finds a good balance between nostalgia and current topics, particularly love and technology, and this seems to be working for him really well.  Through his lyrics, production and lyrics, he has become a part of R&B’s reinvention, channeling the Weeknd’s earlier mixtape, Bryson Tiller’s first album but allowing us to experience it through the genres progressives, Frank Ocean in particular.

Commitment, the anthem of youth is presented as a central theme when it comes to love and relationships. In his lyrics, Khalid attempts to strike a balance between the embrace of freedom and the innate search for love. He excels at making songs that strike the soul of young people, and although he’s still learning how to write songs, Khalid has been around music all his life. He’s a classically trained vocalist and his mother sings in the U.S. Army Band, the reason he has lived everywhere from Germany to upstate Watertown. And that may be why songs like “Let’s Go” work so well, even though they are definitely informal. Khalid is a natural and it shows all through “American Teen.”