A bit disappointed...
3
By Willy 2 da G
I wanted to love it, but its just okay. The major problem for me is the short lengths of half of the songs. Like, bro whyyyy? Mario would be going off and then the song would just end! This results in songs that feel incomplete and not fully developed. I felt like I already listened to the entire album a half an hour after it came out lol. What's so frustrating is that I can hear the potential in some of these songs, but because they're so short, it isn't fully realized. I love Mario's voice and his music but I just feel like he could have came a lot harder on this one, like nothing stands out to me yet as a potential classic. Where are the hits? I can't find a "How Could You" or a "Let Me Love You", or even a "Music for Love" anywhere. Even his last album in 2018, stands out to me as better, with songs like "Drowning" and "Too Many Options" on it. As a Mario fan, I'm saying that this one feels more like an ep, just a little something to hold the fans over for something better, more than a proper studio album, since two songs were already released, and of the remaining songs, one isn't actually a "song" at all and many of them are so short. It seemed like he was going for a more artistic vibe here, which was cool, but there really weren't any true r&b slow jams. While the songs are solid, they don't seem very distinct, and tend to blend together a bit. Some cool songs though, I liked Space, and Run It Back has a fun vibe to it, but I was just expecting a bit more of that real smooth soulful r&b. "Mantra" was just, ... na. I dunno what he was going for with that one but it didn't work, definitely the weakest song on the album. With such a short album, there's no room for mid tracks like that one. Well, at least, we can say that this album is still better than Usher's "Coming Home", which was in a whole different league of disappointments.
