Modus Vivendi - 070 Shake: Review
AKA Danielle Balbuena is a New Jersey born rapper and singer who first caught the attention of the hip hop world last year when she was featured on Pusha T's Santeria followed shortly by features on the Kanye West tracks Ghost Town and Violent Crimes. After these critically acclaimed performances she released a handful of singles before announcing her debut record on the back of her Under The Moon single.
Review By Lavender:
I was definitely looking forward to hearing more from 070 Shake after she lit it up on back to back weekends with a killer performance on Santeria and then an absolute tour de force moment on Ghost Town. I even enjoyed some of her first mixtape and her biggest single to date Honey. But when the singles for this record started rolling in my expectations got lower and lower for the most part, and for good reason because Modus Vivendi kind of lands flat on its face.
The era got off to a pretty rough start last year with the albums lead single Nice To Have a song that sounds so painfully generic and lifeless that I called it R&B's answer to what Nav does with trap music. The next single was at the very least an improvement as Morrow is a futuristic R&B banger that is moderately catchy and ultimately has more structure than a lot of the other songs on this record. Shake's vocal performance on the song is incredibly fragile though and this ended up being one of the defining flaws of the record as a whole. I got some recommendations from people to check out the albums third single Under The Moon which excited me but it is really just an average tune. The synthetic instrumental is pretty cool and reminds me of something from The Weeknd's Starboy but the lyrics are incredibly underwritten and make it a little bit difficult to take seriously. Thankfully the fourth and final single for the record was by far the best and may be the best track on the entire record Guilty Conscience. It has a ton of hit potential with a killer hook and some shimmery keys, still not quite as dominant of a vocal performance as I would have liked but this is one of the best written songs on the record by far.
The rest of this record is defined by short songs that fail to make an impression, aimless and wandering songwriting, and most disappointing of all, no semblance of the incredible vocals that we saw Shake deliver numerous times during the Kanye Suite. Songs like Don't Break The Silence and Come Around get the record off to a rough start as neither reach past two minutes or have much of any reason to be here.
Occasionally the record stumbles into some solid instrumentals but rarely fleshes them out into actual completed songs. The Pines gets off to a really good start as a dark and mysterious track that still manages to be quite loud. Some of the vocal effects are actually pretty cool but this really isn't a full song and by the end the repeated refrains get incredibly tired. Divorce is exactly the same as it kicks off with a wild jungle rhythm that I love and evolves into one of the best instrumentals on the record but the incredibly samey vocal melodies make the songs structure seem to wash together aimlessly and leave at a completely random moment. Daydreamin sounds like an instrumental that should have been on Yeezus since its better than some of the instrumentals on that record and while Shake actually has some vocal chemistry on the song it doesn't quite finish it all up because the hook is absolutely terrible. Lastly the closing track Flight 319 features some more awful lyrics that are hard to sit through but otherwise is a pretty interesting and tolerable two part song that makes for a decent closing moment.
Unfortunately many of these songs never really get any part right and that creates some of the rougher listens of the tracklist and of 2020 so far. Microdosing sounds like a pretty good song played as half or even a quarter speed as it takes so long to develop anything and really need a stronger vocal performance. Terminal B is a really not good love song with some slow and terrible vocal melodies and terribly underwhelming singing. If that wasn't bad enough the song is draped in these awful vocal effects that sound like something Phineas would do, and the track is way too long for its core loop. Finally It's Forever is definitely the worst song here and it sounds straight up unfinished with a lifeless beat, annoying keys, terrible lyrics, and a totally sloppy vocal performance. These songs really needed to be reworked in a big way or just left off the album entirely given that Shake blew up off records that lasted under 25 minutes.
Modus Vivendi is a very unfortunately disappointing debut record from a person who emerged as such a talented force on some major records a few years ago. With the right collection of songwriters and producers I still totally believe in Shake's potential as either a huge hitmaker or an incredible performer, but the formula on this record so clearly doesn't work. 3/10
