The end of the album is sobering-yet-promising with honest lyrics about home and faith before an abrupt cutoff that will have you looking back at your own life. “Horizon” might be Sey’s best vocal performance on a house track thus far and the outro to “Caramel” is undefeated. “Stay Around” got him on the radio and kept the momentum moving forward with more opportunities presenting themselves everyday. “Ride” found him channeling 90s R&B vibes while “Lil Ma” sounded like a collaboration between mixtape Rocky and whoever the headliner was this year at Lollapalooza. As the production progressed, Sey continued to experiment with flow and melody. Jay1da of HighVolume fame provided the reggae vibes on the eclectic “Don’t Go” while Florida’s ChaiMuzic added dreamlike trap sounds with “Stay Around”. newdarkage contributed hometown Grime vibes to the Patrick Bateman-inspired “Crazy” and Trakboy added his signature synths to the menacing “Tell Me Something”. As an executive producer, AX called on TheDREAMERS and outside producers to help shape the sound of the project. Hi-Fi Stereo was the culmination of lost jobs, new surroundings and a shift in tone and energy. Experimental and abrupt, the album ends all too soon, yet it feels convincing and complete, and Staples’ sobering revelations linger.
Reality inevitably intrudes: “My black is beautiful, but I’ll still shoot at you,” he says, unflinching. He may sing “We just wanna have fun,” but references to “dead homies” resurface in song after song what purports to be party jams become hymns to the fallen. With the album’s cover art, Staples deliberately borrows the gleeful, cartoonish vibe of Green Day’s Dookie, playing up the contrast between those anthems of teenage angst and his own. Throughout FM!, he applies that sardonic, pitch-perfect wit to a wild, compressed experiment of twitchy songs made with California collaborators Ty Dolla $ign, Earl Sweatshirt, Kamaiyah, and more, in a format that mimics the iconic rap radio show “Big Boy’s Neighborhood.” “We gon’ party til the sun or the guns come out,” Staples sings on the opener, “Feels Like Summer,” tire-slashing the idyllic illusion of California, his home. Dropped in angst-ridden, pre-midterms early November, Vince Staples’ FM! is the exact length of a television sitcom-22 minutes-and as snappily edited as one.