- A pulse-raising tease of the Berlin-based artist's forthcoming projects.
- There's a famous still in the 1995 cult classic film Waiting To Exhale in which an enraged and newly dumped Bernadine, played by Angela Bassett, sets her husband's car on fire. Adorned in a black evening gown, she sashays away from a backdrop of raging flames with one hand on her hip and a lit cigarette in the other. She's probably experiencing one of the worst days of her life, but she looks amazing.
Aggressively feminine and colored with punky sex appeal, LSDXOXO's music was custom-made for scenes like this. After a near three-year production hiatus, the latest from the Berlin-based producer, real name Rashaad Glasgow, comes in the form of a new mixtape, Waiting 2 Exhale, described in an interview with Discwoman's Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson as a "precursor" to future projects.
Waiting 2 Exhale features Glasgow's typical bag of tricks. There's blood-pumping, Detroit-influenced techno from the '90s, lysergic "Ha" samples, left-field melodies and an overarching coquettish mood board. But this is a mixtape, which typically allows greater wiggle room for artistic experimentation. For Glasgow, this means lending his own vocals to his tracks for the first time, and he rises to the challenge with the same flippant confidence that his productions suggest.
Bouncy and irresistibly catchy, the record's highlight is easily the ballroom-influenced "Dick Like Crack," where he smirks, "Boy I know you hate me, but that keeps you coming back." Built off hypnotic vocal loops and whiplash-inducing bass, "Take Me High" is a certified DJ weapon. But there's also an array of emotional downtempo tracks, suggesting an homage to his Softcore era, when he married sludgy R&B, lo-fi hip-hop and house with in-your-face lyrics. "Sis, Don't Spiral" is a prime example. Overlaying the instrumental's stuttering hip-hop swing, a slightly distorted Glasgow comes in with the tape's most memorable lines: "Body dripping with kerosene / She's a fiend for the dopamine." It's hard to tell what will come next from Glasgow. If Waiting 2 Exhale is any indicator, it's bound to raise hell.
Tracklist01. Good Girl
02. Dick Like Crack
03. Sis, Don't Spiral
04. Summer In The West
05. Shit Hits different
06. Taking Me High
07. Coming Down
08. To The Gods