Khalid burst onto the scene with his smash-hit debut single, "Location." He self-released the song during his senior year of high school.But who says you can’t take care of that stuff and still be young?" Khalid is going to stumble into hits, as he should, and when it comes on the radio I’ll probably have little reaction just the usual shrug and a sway."A lot of people feel pressured by the outside influences, whether it’s your job, whether it’s school. Khalid comes out of the project, mostly the same, still the least controversial pop star we have right now-which, in this moment, we need more of. The purpose of Sun City doesn’t seem to be a cohesive project but a vehicle to throw seven different sounds into the world and see what sticks. “Vertigo” is proof that when Khalid slides into the pop alleyway-the song is reminiscent of the strange pop era when Coldplay ruled the world-his broken-hearted vocals fit perfectly into this world: “But I love you in the moment/I was happy, I was not/I’ve been learning, I’ve been growing/But the worst is yet to come.”įor as popular as Khalid is, he’s still trying to figure it out. Khalid is a pop star, he’s capable on the R&B end, it’s just not where he’s most comfortable. His voice is sharp and the melody is clean but it only makes me want to press pause and spin a Miguel cut, something with momentum. It transitions into “Motion,” a light and glimmery smooth jam that features Khalid without any vigor whatsoever. Khalid wants to be taken seriously on the R&B end but drops “Salem’s Interlude” which has to be the first R&B voicemail interlude to not be petty and hurtful. Khalid sounds at home having another vocalist to bounce off of and not having to carry the future hit on his own.īut Sun City is lighthearted to a fault. Khalid’s most successful branching-out moment is when he becomes the latest artist to jump on the money-printing reggaeton bandwagon for a bouncy track with Empress Of and background vocals from Spanish singer Rosalía. On “Saturday Nights,” a guitar ballad that sounds like the ending credits on a CW teen drama, Khalid’s juvenile lovestruck songwriting comes to surface: “All the things that I know, that your parents don’t.” The song follows in the path of another Charlie Handsome acoustic guitar production, Post Malone’s “Go Flex” but with none of the edge.
But that versatility also weighs down Khalid exposing how he’s not exceptional at one single thing but just pretty good at a bunch. Khalid prides himself on versatility, a stylistic range that is showcased throughout the EP-no two tracks are the same.
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