A lot of modern popular music, in my opinion, is unfairly lumped into the same category. Often, the term ‘pop music’, is recognised exclusively as anything that's agreeable enough to earn the approval of a family of road trippers with nothing but FM stations to keep them company. Adopting that mentality discounts years of development, and even more fluid styles, though. Of course, there are cases deserving of such naive scrutiny. Some stars aim to be the backdrop to a packed car and nothing more. Khalid is one of those stars. Having already spent the past half-decade proving that you can make a career out of not caring, he goes again, subtly motivated to extend his subdued, sleepy reign of terror from radio stations the world over on ‘Scenic Drive’, his latest tape. Like his last album, and the one before that, it’s just another deposit of Khalid songs, and that's about as colourful as the descriptors get.
Khalid’s best ever song, ‘Talk’, had nothing to do with his limited talents. Producer-duo Disclosure, who were too aware of Khalid’s plainness to try and change it, instead worked around him, ingeniously illuminating his otherwise limpid voice on their terms. For just over three minutes, Khalid sounded genuinely invested. Nothing here even comes close to replicating that magic, nor does ‘Scenic Drive’ even try to. In their defense, both JID and Ari Lennox, the two responsible for the brightest stints on the album, aren’t given enough time on their respective songs to change the outcome of Khalid’s half-formed crooning. Even when he takes the foreground during a duet with Lennox on the title track, he still finds a way to get drowned out. Without any significant way of absolving himself of responsibility for long, Khalid’s weakness becomes exposed, there are virtually no star qualities about him.
On first inspection, you’d assume that’d block his route to fame. But his necessity to search for something he’s truly talented at, resulting in a spread of OK versions of everything, has made Khalid radio and Spotify’s golden boy over the years. He’s so bleh at everything he tries, there’s rarely room for complaint, either. In the space of the tape's 9 tracks, Khalid finds room for the acoustic-led ‘Open’, which leaves only the strum of a barely-there guitar to cover up the white-bread voices of Majid Jordan and himself, as well as ‘Present’, a song that doesn’t even belong to a genre. It tickles the edges of hip-hop due to the percussion and could be easily mistaken for a Jacquees song thanks to Khalid’s aimless, meandering voice, but ultimately falls to the pile of filler Khalid songs. Deep down, he likely knows these aren’t lively enough to become hits, so to fill that void, Khalid opens the tape listening to a highlight reel of his own commercial successes on ‘Intro’. He fears he’s just one radio station switch away from being forgotten.
That poor, indiscernible decision-making spills into the beige production palette, too, which, although broad, is ultimately uniform. In trying to be a people pleaser, Khalid forfeits almost any reason to pay attention to him in the first place. Doing just that has never been easier, especially when the lumbering guitars of ‘Retrograde’, the loudest song here, are bogged down by the collective docile demeanours of Khalid, 6LACK, and Lucky Daye. ‘Scenic Drive’ operates like a lazy susan, rotating a spread of seemingly delightful, varied treats. After spending more and more time with it though, almost everything starts to taste the same.
Where Khalid makes it a priority to maintain his usual notably indistinguishable sounds so as not to fissure his image for his frequent, involuntary listeners, ‘Scenic Drive’ finds room for more focused writing. Not only does Khalid, the quintessential vibe-first artist, foster the type of druggy, warbling sound ideal for late-night cruises, he also sings about them. ‘Backseat’ even takes place in the back of the car, somewhere dimly lit so Khalid may enjoy himself, “Weed smoke, windows up, sittin' in the parking lot”. His priorities remain the same since ‘8TEEN’ became a sleeper streamer smash, (“Damn, my car still smells like marijuana/My mom is gonna kill me”) he just now presumably owns his own car. That’s nice, Khalid. Not so easily forgotten, however, are the intricacies of the knotty relationship mulled about on ‘Voicemail’. So long as his observations maintain the sting of lines like, “We don't even touch, should I stay in my lane?/I don't wanna bug you”, he can sing it without any emotion whatsoever. Amazingly, he does.
As is the case with most of Khalid’s tepid music, the silver lining to all of this is that ‘Scenic Drive’ is mostly harmless. Yeah, it takes nearly half an hour of your time, but should you follow the loose instructions and listen on a scenic drive, Khalid will have accomplished his purpose. This isn’t likely to change your opinion on the guy, nor does he want it to. Khalid is still content vying to take up room in the car, both his and yours. For anyone wondering if he was bored of being the poster boy of background music by now, ‘Scenic Drive’ suggests that this may be the only destination Khalid will reach.
Scenic Drive - Khalid - 3/10
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