In 1863 Charles Baudelaire suggested a modernity test for painters. It would be in how they depicted courtesans of their time. He said the painters had to be able to record “the carriage, the gaze, the come-hitherishness” of these women. Because therein lives spirit of the age, something that can’t be cribbed off the masters.
Charles, meet Terius Nash, also known as The-Dream. He depicts unchaste women for a living. He first got a leg up writing R&B for other people, particularly “Umbrella” for Rihanna. That was three long years ago, and now Mr. Nash is on his third solo album, writing and producing and singing.
Lately he has been receiving some criticism for his extraordinary focus or, if you like, his lack of breadth — so much that he recently threatened to quit making records. But there’s something about his persona Baudelaire might have liked: his obsession with surfaces, the endless trysting, the strings of brand names, the way he concentrates his talent in pursuit of casual pleasures, so casual he seems to barely even feel them. Not everything he makes is great, but everything he makes is modern. (Even when he’s copying Prince. Even when he’s copying R. Kelly.) His best work feels quick and intuitive.
In “Make Up Bag” you hear finger snaps on the two and four, digital bass tones with Taser voltage, a piano plinking around an A-minor chord. There’s a trite little narrative: He’s been cheating on his girlfriend and actually has lipstick on his collar. But he’s been through this before.
The chorus brings his lousy advice: “If you ever get your girlfriend mad/Don’t let your good girl go bad/Drop five stacks on a make up bag.” Gracefully he hammers it in: “The make up bag. The make up bag. The make up bag. The make up bag.”
The song’s flaw is that it’s a little confusing. He’s talking about buying a purse, not a cosmetics container, to make up for his indiscretions. Its glory is how complicated a symbol the bag becomes: wealth, treachery, shallowness, his own power and anxiety, his girlfriend’s. Somewhere in there the narrator knows how craven he is. But The-Dream knows that he’s just repeating four syllables that sound good together. That’s it, that’s all. By the time you work this out, there’s a good chance you want to hear it again.
There are similar small-scale epiphanies in the title track, on which, over a luxurious, summery beat with a piano bass line rolling upward by half-tones, he catalogs his girlfriends by their preference in footwear, liquor, airlines and data plans. And in parts of “Turnt Out,” on which he sings in falsetto about sexual positions for most of four and a half minutes, he tries to beat Prince at his own game.
The epiphanies aren’t there so much in “Yamaha,” a much more studious Prince homage that’s a few minutes too long, or “February Love,” the ebb-tide slow jam. And even though he’s trying — with songs flowing into one another, and characters and phrases resurfacing from earlier records — his album doesn’t transcend its highest individual moments. The-Dream is best in four minutes or less, describing carriages and gazes and moving on. He’s made some pretty seriously entertaining songs. And on some level it remains unclear why he should be making albums at all. BEN RATLIFF
PLIES
“Goon Affiliated”
(Big Gates/Slip-N-Slide/
Atlantic)
As ever, hip-hop is changing and, as ever, Plies is not. From Fort Myers, Fla., he’s been a model of consistency since his 2007 debut album: scratchy howl, dirty words, winning sneer, secret soft spots.
“Goon Affiliated” is his fourth album, but could be his 14th or 40th. He’s staunchly committed to his style, anomalous though it may be. A bare-bones rapper, he mostly works permutations of the same expletives, but he’s deliriously emphatic, often making them sound new.
Still, this album is less pungent than the two electrifying ones he released in 2008, “Definition of Real” and “Da REAList,” his signature style now approaching shtick. The brightest moments come from his exceedingly thin attempts at concept. On the fantasy “Rob Myself” he realizes there’s no one richer around, so why not. On “Becky,” about an intimate sexual act, he flips the title word umpteen different ways — “Becky, Becky, she’s so cool/I don’t get Becky, I can’t sleep,” etc. — making awkward comedy of the repetition.
“I don’t wear tight jeans like the white boys/But I do get wasted like the white boys,” Plies rapped on “Wasted,” last year’s Gucci Mane hit. Here he attempts to co-opt some other slacker slang on “Awesome,” over a martial, chipper beat by Zaytoven. (Though another Zaytoven production here, “Bruh Bruh,” is only so-so.)
Elsewhere Plies does a lot of undifferentiated grunting, though his mood and tone shift notably when feelings are involved. Plies is among the most empathetic of rappers, and on an unprintably titled song about his friends behind bars, he sounds wracked with stress: “Gotta make sure they get a chance/Gotta make sure they lawyers paid.”
Furthermore, despite his gruff presence, he’s always had a surprisingly uncomplicated approach to romance, a sweet talker through gold teeth. On “She Got It Made,” with its tacky updating of “Escape (The Piña Colada Song),” he aims to spoil rotten: “All five-star suites, we ain’t doing no Ramadas/You ain’t got to cook, baby, all you got to do is order.”
And on “Goonette,” he celebrates the ideal woman, one who understands his unchanging world: “For her birthday, I bought her a pink ski mask.” JON CARAMANICA