Two years removed from a pair of 2017 projects, COLOURS 2 & Seven Days, Toronto future R&B trailblazer, PARTYNEXTDOOR walks into a 2019 brimming with a plethora of established lanes rooted in the sounds that he’s been seeding for more than a half-decade. Lending his hand at a structural trend in the process, PARTY’s comeback comes in form of a two-track cut. The A-Side / B-Side release, The News & Loyal (which features longtime friend and collaborator, Drake), grants a glimpse into the refinement of two of his diverse stylistic lanes and puts into focus just how wide-ranging R&B music has become in the wake of PARTY’s knack for adhering to only the most unique, high-fidelity, low-energy psychedelia that the styling has to offer.

 

The News feels a lot like the PARTYNEXTDOOR that has long defined him as a dark-energy force of de-popularizing experimentalism for the downer-popping heartbroken. Brooding over a layered, piano-driven hip-hop beat that would stand strong under the fronting of any number of Gen-Z SoundCloud rappers, PARTY rides melody and repetitiveness into a welcome-back celebration dark with emotionality and heavy with bass.

 

At the other end of the spectrum, Loyal is an upbeat exploration of classic R&B merging with musicality and vocalism founded in West African pop music – Afro-pop, Afrobeat, hip-hop, and Alté – in particular. And at a time when the West African Cultural Renaissance has gripped the world in a fist of light-hearted beach love songs, traditional rhythm, and high-register vocalism, it’s only fitting that PARTYNEXTDOOR – as one of the most important diasporic proprietors of West African music making a return to the global mainstream – show us all how we helped bring us here in the first place. Fit with a classic Drake R&B cut, Loyal is bound for the charts just as every track the duo has ever put out has been. 

 

It’s good to have PARTY back – in all of his forms.