1977
“You used to strip for a nigga,” Terius Nash reminisces on “Used To Be.” “Now, you got nothing but lip for a nigga.” 1977, a free, “unofficial” album from the urban pop titan usually known as The-Dream, is full of crassness like this: poorly articulated male scorn rooted in juvenile, you-made-me-cheat reasoning. “Just me and my bottle of Patron singing this drunk song,” he bellows on “Wedding Crashers,” and for once he nails it: The album seems like it’s full of the slurred, narcissistic half-truths that lurk at the bottom of a shot glass. Equally flat is the production, where Nash trades in his radio killing Southern bounce for a moody synth-fest that rarely coalesces – imagine R. Kelly produced by The Weeknd. Def Jam was smart to shelf this.
Listen to “Used to Be”: