PARTYMOBILE – PARTYNEXTDOOR

By Sydney Davis

PARTYNEXTDOOR wants you to slide into his PARTYMOBILE with his new album! On March 27, 2020 PARTYNEXTDOOR released his long awaited third studio album PARTYMOBILE. It’s been four years since PARTY’S last studio album, and three years since his last two Eps COLOURS 2 and Seven Days, so the anticipation was high for the new release. Party is known for his impeccable writing and producing abilities and has produced for many notable artists such as Rihanna and Drake.  Having all this in mind the standards for PARTYMOBILE were set very high by many fans including myself.

The album starts off with a classic Party “chillwave” song called “NOTHING LESS”, where he is professing his commitment to provide his love interest with the best of him. Typical Party, right? We love to hear it. Then the album took a twist on the song “TURN UP” Party introduced a different flow sometimes even sounding like Young Thug’s, which compliments the song’s purpose of having a good time. PARTYMOBILE does have a few authentic feel dancehall beats on songs including “TRAUMA”, “EYE ON IT”, “TOUCH ME” and “LOYAL” featuring Drake. With Party being of both Jamaican and Trinidadian descent I love how he is starting to expand on his dancehall beat songs. I also really liked the “LOYAL REMIX” that added Bad Bunny because I felt like that was a great combination with all three of them. Another song worth mention was “SAVAGE ANTHEM” I really feel like Party killed this lo-fi song and the background choir vocals are icing on the cake.

Now I know Party is known for slow songs, but I feel the songs “THE NEWS” and “SPLIT DECISION” are so slow and mostly made up of repetitive chorus lines, that they become very forgettable. I don’t know where to even start with the song “NEVER AGAIN”, there was so much going on with that song. It sounds like an unfinished, half edited demo that Party just threw over a random beat, which was very disappointing. His vocals were also very questionable on the track, they just kept changing and sounded like he was not even really putting effort into the song. After looking up the lyrics I saw it had the potential to be a great song, but his execution was not hitting at all. I know “BELIEVE IT” is a fan favorite (it’s me I’m the fan) partially due to Rihanna making her first song appearance since 2017, but I still have some qualms with it. I feel it was very short, and it had the potential for just a maybe one more verse from either Party or Rihanna.

Overall, I was very ready to hear some new PARTYNEXTDOOR that matches up to his stellar first two projects PARTNEXTDOOR and PARTYNEXTDOOR 2, which in hindsight was not the best mindset to have going into this album. Holding Party up to these standards is in actuality very unfair. Once separating this album from his discography, I was able to enjoy it more for what it was. While PARTYMOBILE did not blow me out of the waters it still held its own to be a pretty decent album.

Favorite Tracks: “BELIEVE IT”, “NOTHING LESS”, & “SAVAGE ANTHEM”

Rating: 7/10