SiR - Her Too EP

Pitchfork 76

Since the early 2000s, the proprietors of the TDE label—Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith, Dave “Miyatola” Free, and Terrence “Punch” Henderson—have made a home for more critical darlings per capita than perhaps any other hip-hop-dominated outpost. Each of the last three acts signed to TDE (SZA, Lance Skiiiwalker, SiR) have been R&B artists, an indication that the moment’s hottest rap label is perhaps looking to expand its palate.

The latest signee is Sir Darryl Farris, aka SiR, an Inglewood-born-and-bred crooner who has spent years following in the footsteps of his older brothers, the songwriters Daniel and Davion Farris (aka WoodWorks), writing for artists behind the scenes. It’s uncanny for a mainstream R&B newcomer to have started out penning tracks for Jill Scott, Robert Glasper, Stevie Wonder, and Anita Hill rather than Drake or Rihanna, but this is central to SiR’s ethos.

Her Too is an 18-minute jolt of pure, traditionalist R&B and neo-soul. SiR’s successes lay in his polish and maturity. In this lane, his peers have recently focused on self-discovery, nostalgia ultra, and experiments in form, but SiR’s concerns are in subtlety, restraint, and finesse. SiR’s releases, then—2016’s HER EP and 2015’s Seven Sundays among them—have lacked a masterpiece like his labelmate Kendrick Lamar’s “The Art of Peer Pressure.” But Her Too contains fantastic analogues to Jay Rock’s “Hood Gone Love It,” which are a purist’s thrill.

Much of Her Too feels warm and leisurely. SiR has said he was aiming for something darker than his previous EP, but the project doesn’t live up to that description, save for a few bars on the Anderson .Paak- and King Mez-assisted opener “New LA.” King Mez raps, “Man why we take the murder route?/Shouldn’t we be worried about niggas dying, niggas dying?/Or we could just not say shit and take the Cam Newton scary route.” As virtually the only patch of lyrics that aren’t explicitly romantic, it’s a bit discordant. On it’s face, it’s a whimsical and somewhat funny, topical sports reference. But it plays into the pathology that, no matter a black person’s station in life—and even if they’re currently blinded by love and passion—the threat of state-sanctioned violence lingers in the back of the mind, ready to punch itself into the foreground at a moment’s notice.

“New LA” is nonetheless the project’s brightest and most buoyant moment. Cardiak samples Drake’s overlooked “With You,” crafting a saccharine trance of a beat. “Ooh Nah Nah” is a smooth, sultry number featuring Masego’s vocals and darting saxophone; it finds SiR bellowing in a tenor full of lust. Five of the six songs here embrace a degree of calm, but the closer “W$ Boi” possesses kinetic energy that explodes in the chorus, as SiR shouts that he’s a “westside boy.” It’s like SiR’s version of “Uptown Girl,” which is Billy Joel’s Romeo and Juliet—the template for an endless trove of tales about star-crossed lovers.

In his real life, Sir Darryl Farris is about 30, and he’s been with his wife for the better part of a decade. About seven years ago, he was in Hollywood jobless, drug-addicted, and nearly homeless. The W$ Boi returned home and started writing songs in his mother’s house, which eventually turned his life around. SiR proclaims, “I don't know if she knows/She don’t know what I been through.” Even amid a song that could afford to be a bit more chaotic, the result is a contained personal anthem. SiR’s debut album is slated to come out whenever Top Dawg chooses, but up to this point, his story is one of triumph.