Teezo Touchdown – How Do You Sleep At Night?
With an unrelenting rockstar persona, strangely structured choruses, and sometimes outstanding vocal performances, “How Do You Sleep At Night” feels more like an eccentric ensemble of ideas than an album.
Since 2020, Teezo has been on a progressive upward trajectory towards stardom. Since first garnering underground attention with songs like “I’m Just A Fan”, “Mid” and “Social Cues”, Teezo has become an elusive and exciting presence in the mainstream rap community by featuring on songs with Don Toliver, Travis Scott, Tyler the Creator, and Lil Yachty, wowing audiences with his “outside-the-box” verses and rock-inspired vocals.
After being purely a “feature artist” for the past year or so, Teezo intends to steal the spotlight for himself with his debut Album “How Do You Sleep At Night?” and show off his complex, multi-faceted rap/rockstar personality.
The album’s opener, “OK” feels like a 2000s pop-punk house party with short bursts of heavy metal guitar chords and Teezo’s multi-layered, booming voice on the chorus, reminiscent of bands like MCR or Weezer.
What’s most noticeable is Teezo’s strange vocal mixing, which makes his voice sound sped up, giving him a unique quick-fire flow that feels like bullets hitting the beat.
This same flow is used several times on the album, but Teezo uses it in such a way that it doesn’t get tired or repetitive. Take “You Thought featuring Janelle Monae, for instance, where he performs with an RnB-infused style, rap-singing his way through a slower beat that contrasts his fast-paced vocal style.
Teezo still dips into his pop-rock bag, however, with songs like “UHH”, which feels like a modern take on Prince’s zany Rock-RnB style, and “Too Easy,” which feels like all-out trucker music in the first half (yes, trucker music).
If you’ve gotten this far into the review, you can probably gather by now that this album has a lot of sounds and tries to be a lot of different things at the same time, which sometimes serves its own detriment.
There are a lot of songs where it feels like the first half gets in the way of a much better second half that should’ve been fleshed out to be the full song, with “Too Easy” being the main culprit of what I’m talking about.
The second half is a gorgeously performed R&B song that has a great hook and sublime vocals to match; however, it’s road-blocked by an inferior rock performance that feels like it could be a part of a WWE theme song (no offence to any wrestlers reading).
Some of his hooks completely misfire too, looking at “Nu Nay’s” annoyingly childish chorus and the “going-oing-oing” post-hook ending on Familiarity,” which is bafflingly cringeworthy.
Oh, and the “weeee” sound effect he makes in the chorus of “Mood Swings” …… really Teezo?
Still, in an age where artistry seems to be fading and being the same is the new artistry, Teezo’s album does indeed feel like a breath of fresh air, despite some of its lacklustre moments.
On “How Do You Sleep At Night? Teezo creatively shines and exudes a sense of creative freedom that is rarely seen in the musical climate anymore. Even if it’s not to your liking, he dares to be different.
SCORE/GOOD: Album Highlights: OK, You Thought ft. Janelle Monae, UHH, Impossible, Sweet, Too Easy (2nd Half)
Album Lowpoints: Familiarity, Stranger, The Original Was Better, Mood Swings, Nu Nay
[We rank albums on a scale of Poor, Mediocre, Good, Excellent]
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