Sign up for our newsletters Subscribe
It's also fluid, and throughout The Water[s] Jenkins reshapes and tinkers with his ideas of what water can be. Jenkins even built that free-flowing vision into his mixtape's stylized title: he recently told HotNewHipHop that he put brackets around the "s" in The Water[s] to emphasize the idea that there's more than one metaphor or straightforward interpretation for what water is in this mixtape.
To play with Jenkins's concept a bit, his work on The Water[s] reminds me of Lake Michigan. His assured, cool rapping is as calm as the lake on a windless day, and his lyrics have more depth than I initially thought. And like Lake Michigan, The Water[s] is huge. It requires several full listens in order to get a handle on it—fortunately, the sumptuous soul-inspired instrumentals lend the mixtape a refined cool that invites playback.
Jenkins provides much of the reason for keeping The Water[s] on repeat. Each song reveals new reasons to comb through Jenkins's lyrics, be it his sharp, short lines about racial tension and inequality ("irritate the white skin like a blackhead" on "Drink More Water") or his thoughtful commentary about the nature of entertainment inspired by real violence ("They callin' me conscious, Jiminy Cricket / Unfortunate events got me writin' like Lemony Snicket" on "Dehydration"). Jenkins's powerful performance makes his mixtape reflect another quality of water—it feels like a life force.
Leor Galil writes about hip-hop every Wednesday.
Comments