LUCKY DAYE CANDYDRIP [REVIEW]

With flawless vocals, and romance laden lyrics, Candydrip cements Lucky Daye’s position as new age R&B’s latest loverboy.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – Lyrical Dexterity 4/5

⏱⏱⏱ – Longevity 4/5

🎧🎧🎧 – Production 5/5

🔥🔥🔥 –  4/5 overall 

Six-time Grammy nominated Lucky Daye is back with his sophomore album Candydrip. Daye has made a lane for himself as one of the most versatile artists in the current wave of contemporary R&B: from featuring on the dance tracks of SG Lewis and Kaytranada, duetting with UK’s own Tiana Major9 and Mahalia, to soulfully covering Marvin Gaye. Daye has said himself that he isn’t big on genres, and with Candydrip you can tell that he’s made the album he wanted to – not the one that may have been expected from him. 

One thing Lucky Daye is going to do is a little spoken word about his muse(s), and this album is no exception to the rule. Candydrip opens with ‘Intro’ where he passionately tells his love interest: “I would run half-way across the world for you. Deep sea diving in the bottom of the ocean looking for a pearl for you.” Behind this you can hear a group of guys yelling “simp,” but what’s R&B without simping? 

These confessional monologues add extra character and texture to the songs, and give us more insight to his personality. Daye can tell us how he’s feeling without having to worry about whether it fits into a melody or a rhyming scheme. The emotion feels pure.

The smooth and stripped back ‘Candy Drip’ draws you in with its bassline as Daye switches between a laid back vocal and effortless falsetto. His love interest in this song is seemingly (getting) married but that doesn’t stop them, “Pretty white dress, How’d he get between us? And I know nobody knows […] Hope nobody see us, ‘fore you get home.” As usual his music has R&B at the heart of it, but ‘Candy Drip’ has elements of funk running throughout too. This fusion is heard across the album.

Lucky Daye is no stranger to collaborations, and despite having worked with everyone from Babyface to Adekunle Gold, Candydrip has only three features. As anticipated, Smino’s , Lil Durk’s, and Chiiild’s appearances are all distinct from each other.

At track ten we are met with a distorted sample of Musiq Soulchild’s ‘Halfcrazy,’ which is the foundation of Lucky Daye’s moody and sultry ‘Over ’ –  Candydrip‘s stand out song, and one of Daye’s best to date. Carried by an array of guitars, and accompanied by his signature croon, ‘Over’ paints the picture of a cyclical and unfruitful toxic relationship: “Now you calling me special, when you know I can’t have you. When I’m on to the next one, oh now you wan’ get aggressive?” The ghostly backing vocals almost mirror how Daye’s situation is haunting him.

Despite being one of the only songs on the album that sounds more like new age R&B than old school, ‘Guess’ features another, more subtle, homage and uses a distinctive sample of Usher’s ‘U Don’t Have to Call.’

Candydrip straddles R&B, Neo Soul, funk, and at some points even Pop which makes it reminiscent of certain early 2000 projects. Songs like ‘God Body,’ ‘Cherry Forest’ and ‘Feels Like,’ that land somewhere between mid and up-tempo, are driven by percussion, and beautiful guitar chords and basslines, could easily find themselves on an album like the infamous Confessions…in another life.

When asked about the state of R&B in a recent interview, Daye responded “R&B is doing just fine. R&B is the foundation of all of this music, so at the end of the day, you got to always go back to the roots.” With an album like this that has everything you’d expect from an R&B project: flawless production, silky vocals, and crooning about unrequited love, lust, and heartbreak, it’s clear that, even though this isn’t a strictly R&B album, the genre is in safe hands nonetheless.

By Kiah Olowu