Across a Sonic Mosaic, bLACK pARTY’s ‘Hummingbird’ is a Portrait of Neo-Soul’s Avant-Garde Romantic
Evan Dale // September 26, 2022
Niche, an oft-overutilized word by types that type about music, Arkansas-rooted, LA-based bLACK pARTY is exemplary of its definition. Deftly maneuvering across the stylistic landscape, he – born Malik Flint – encapsulates the idea of niche not by striving for a particular sound, but rather by exploring many broad-stroked nodes across the breadth of his musical grasp. It’s in the thematic discourse of his music, not an ardent adherence to one specific style, that which makes it all make sense. Unpredictably fluttering, only pausing to focus on the fruit and honey of one flavor before searching for the next, his new album, Hummingbird, is a refined, overarching thesis on a collection of sounds a decade in his transformative making.
2019’s Endless Summer was his previous full-length release, and living up to its title, it rings still as a warm weather bout of auditory positivism dredging through beach-tinged soul. Hummingbird is more complex, less overtly focused. Instead of harping on one sound or one branch of the emotional spectrum, it builds amalgam through bLACK pARTY’s influences and emotions towards something more defining of the pulsating expanse that his experimental signature has always represented.
Self-defined as underground rather than rising, his longstanding position has perhaps been better described as aquifer, flooding the rushing waters of the mainstream with the ideas at his experimental tributary. A decade into his career – into influence constructed from the consistent pursuit of his brash individuality and exploration – that underground position feels more widely reaching, and ultimately less underground – or rising – than ever. Hummingbird in particular feels like the boldest glimpse into what his journey has meant for both himself and for the indefinability music today. A father, a vocalist, an instrumentalist, a rapper, an auditory alchemist, an influential force of pushing the boundaries, and a frequent collaborator with Donald Glover, his person and his creative are stretched wide rather than thin.
Intent swirls around Hummingbird’s every moment. Cyclically linking its Childish Gambino assisted closing track, I Love You More Than You Know, to its introduction, Blues by way of a silky subconscious melancholy, the rest of the project’s transitions from one track to the next, too, are cohesive, even as they are wide-ranging.
‘I put songs together like they’re brother and sister. “You belong in the same world as you do, so I’ll put you together.” This song belongs in the same world as that song. That way, when you listen to everything, you can completely loop it and it basically feels like one continuous vibe, one continuous story,’ Flint told GQ.
Through and through, beyond even its success as one continuous story, Hummingbird is a funk and soul strewn soundtrack to pursuits understatedly romantic and quotidianly mellow. More than anything, it feels like a new chapter in a gray area orbiting near the instrumentally endowed, DIY nature of his brand of Neo-Soul and Pop-melody's laid-back Lorem moment. Its sounds, too, tell a story every bit as grandiose as bLACK pARTY’s deep lyricism.
A staunch romanticism guides that lyricism. Love, lust, and loss define its every turn. And if nothing else, that has been a consistent truth for bLACK pARTY’s every project since the beginning. She’s Gone is, expectedly, a low-key anthem of loss and longing, seeing Flint himself kaleidoscope his emotional melody across the range of the track’s funky backdrop. Hotline explodes the groovy, beachy chords that have been centerpiece to his musical exploration since the beginning, lyrically harping on connections over the kind of nostalgia that came long before our cellular present. Electronic nuance that feels taken more from late 90’s experimentation than it does the modern cloth leave Soakin a timeless work of lustful, but even more so playful pursuit. And that trinity – the lost and longing, the loving, and the lustful continue to tie the project together from beginning to end, and then beginning again.
Together, there is a raw understanding of self hand-in-hand with refined sense of musicality that make bLACK pARTY’s Hummingbird so inwardly and ultimately definitive. He’s always been unique and experimental. That’s what dug the foundation of his early years and brought forth opportunities. Those opportunities spurred a deeper skillset and a wider reaching nuance. Now, fluttering across his many nuances, refined yet still unapologetically experimental, Hummingbird tells his story, while also relating to all of ours. Mellow yet deep, it’s a thought-provoking soundtrack to the end of Summer, and beyond.