What Could Possibly Go Wrong - Dominic Fike: Review
is a Florida based hip hop & R&B performer whose profile has grown majorly in the past year after featuring on numerous tracks from the Brockhampton camp and being signed to Columbia records. After being featured on a major commercial release earlier this year with Halsey's Manic, he geared up to release his debut record while his hype was at its peak.
Review By Lavender:
I was pulling for Dominic Fike, after he made some very solid contributions to Kevin Abstract and Brockhampton records last year and I enjoyed his Kenny Beats collaboration Phone Numbers. But when singles started dropping for this record it became very clear to me that Dominic was mainly looking to craft some quirky tik tok anthems with short simple refrains and heavy vocal manipulation. As much as I wished the entire record wasn't going to be like that, it is, and it's one of the worst thing I've heard this year.
The lead single should have told me everything I needed to know about this record but I didn't listen to it's warning. Chicken Tenders is an absolute train wreck of a song thar sounds absolutely awful with muddy mixing and vocals that badly need to be redone. The lyrics are also a total disaster and a minefield of cringe, how he thought this was okay to release I have no idea. While we're here we may as well get the terrible songs out of the way, which is most of the record. The opener Double Negative was yet another warning I ignored and I'll save you the time spent with it, it's like a bad Jaden Smith song paired with a bad Neighborhood. Good Game is one of the most thoughtless tracks here the refrains are really boring and there is literally nothing else in the song except really long and uncomfortable breaks.
Why is a song whose make-up is something like 75% Dominic moaning "why" and 25% vapid boring wandering. Superstar Shit is like those Brockhampton songs where they pitch up their vocals except everything about it is worse and much more bad. Now you may think that Joe Blazey is one poorly thought-out two minute song, when in fact it's actually two different equally underwhelming songs spliced together by about 10 seconds of literal silence, why?
Even some of the songs here with good elements to them drown in the messiness. Cancel Me isn't a terrible song but the production is an absolute disaster. There are some funny lyrical moments and I understand he anti-fame sentiment particularly from such a young artist but it can be so hard to listen to the atrocious mixing an keys that sound like presets. Whats For Dinner? is tolerable and there are at least parts of the instrumental I think are good even though the drums sound cheap and awful. I wish the vocals were recorded better because the way they are presented now just doesn't fir the song at all, even though this would be a skip on any other record it was a sigh of relief here. Politics & Violence was the records second single and it is slightly more tolerable. It has one of the fullest instrumentals here and even though it falls flat on its face lyrically and has a really half-hearted transition to the second half I still kind of appreciate it. Finally Wurlii is a decent track even if the whiny vocals on the hook are insanely annoying and badly needed a second take. The refrains are decently catchy and I like the songs ending.
There were actually two songs on here that I enjoyed thankfully starting with Vampire. Even though the lyrical theme of the song pulls heavily from Sir Babygirl's Haunted House and the instrumental pulls even heavier from Kesha's Honey it is one of the only songs here with a good recording and clear concrete lyrical flow. The closing track Florida is produced by Kenny Beats and the first half is a total mess with thoughtlessly manipulated vocals and a refrain that sounds like a generic ultra contemporary tik tok grade tune. The second half of the song however Dominic manages to pull off an actual rap verse that is pretty damn good and shows off his potential right as the record ends. I think this may be my favorite individual moment on the entire album.
If the question is What Could Possibly Go Wrong the answer is almost everything. Name a symptom of bad music and it shows up on this record, from cheap and poorly recorded instrumentation, underwhelming phoned-in performances, to underwhelming and completely uneventful songwriting. There is barely anything here worth listening to because even when the record does something right it's one step forward and two steps back. Despite all this I believe Dominic is a talented artist and at a few points on the record his abilities shine through in a memorable and engaging way. But if this is the kind of project he and his label are looking to release it is more than clear that using his talents isn't really a strong priority. 2/10
Album Cover Review By Tyler Judson:
The imagery of this over is nice and I appreciate that it's composed with the addition of text in mind. The vibrancy of the text and effect really make it stand out from the darker background and draw your eye to the information that's important. While it's very nice I am not that attracted to it personally. 5/10
For more contemporary tik tok music check out my review of the new Gunna record Wunna here
