Rising artist HEwas recently dropped his new single ‘WHOLEthing’ on his Spotify page, featuring a musical collaboration with industry veteran Afroman, known his definitive, 2002 Grammy award-nominated album Because I Got Here. The result is something from a stylistic and technical level that has the free-flowing, untamed nature of a musician reveling in his youth and not concerned with image, married to the cool, calm, and assured craft of Afroman – the latter’s spitballs of I can’t take you to shows ‘cuz you c*ckblock other hoes and Now I got to box you out of my life ‘cuz you lost your mind and again boxed my wife enough insurance to boot. The song is edgy, but not heavy, and of a fairly light-hearted nature – taking more notes from a the stoner version of R&B a la Wiz Khalifa than the hard notedness of an Eminem.
The song isn’t interested in hefty issues, rather it’s a fun piece of emotionally deep escapist entertainment – complete with the jarring shifts between HEwas’s high-pitched flowing lamentations of love lost, the line Could you cut up a piece of lovin’, I’m not ready to feel the whole thing a particular standout. Such heartfelt sentiments are then neatly undercut by Afroman’s materialistic cynicism, a highlight of the latter including I’m bluffing my face, I’m riding my ride. Stop trying to FaceTime – all the time. The thematic pendulum swings wildly back and forth, such a process itself contrasted with the cool, ambient synths and steady beat making up the background of the song.
SOUNDCLOUD: https://soundcloud.com/iamhewas
The presence of ‘Wholething’ on the rap scene is a signifier of R&B’s continued growth and change. What used to be a genre criticized for its misogyny and noted for its fixation on hard knocks, rough times, and life in the ghetto has become a platform for more mainstream narratives, worries, and articulations. The bones of the genre remain the same, but the flesh they’re clothed with continues to vary.
Many now are expanding upon the poetic aspects of R&B and rap in particular, continuing to expand the medium into something that can be tailored to individual aesthetic and processes. In the case of ‘WHOLEthing’ specifically, the song’s repeated bait-and-switching on so many levels is belied by the superficiality of its lyrical content. After all, how deep can a song be with several particularly explicit sexual epithets offered by a guy sounding fresh off the bong? Well, pretty deep.
Ultimately all aspects of ‘Wholething’ form the basis for its punch and craft, and in the process makes one hope to see HEwas and Afroman collaborate again many times over. The two make a good team, similar to other musical projects of varying genres where the experienced gather with the young. It’s magic time because of the vividness of the talent involved, the lack of sardonicism with blooming potential curbed by the hardened nature of the knowledgeable professional. The result is something catchy without being dumb, deep without being heavy, and fun while still probing.
Loretta Kim