Pi’erre Bourne - The Life of Pi’erre 5

Pitchfork 72

Read Dylan Green’s review of the album.

The Guardian 0

(Interscope)
The super-producer pulls out all the earworm tricks on his second album, but fails to find much real emotion

Pi’erre Bourne is the super-producer behind some of the biggest rap tracks of the past decade, including Playboi Carti’s Magnolia and 6ix9ine’s Gummo. The Life of Pi’erre 5 is Bourne’s latest attempt to resurface as something greater than other people’s beatmaker, as an artist who can rival his melody-rapping peers such as Trippie Redd and Travis Scott.

His second studio album is saturated with his idiosyncratic earworm tricks: mid-tempo wavy beats, inebriated syncopated synths and gloomy piano arrangements. Both Biology 101 and Retroville are buoyant tracks that vibrate with instrumentals reminiscent of 90s video games. The gravity-free Hulu, a song about god, the galaxy, girls and his grandma, features breathy ad-libs and the velvetiness of ethereal cloud rap.