The highly anticipated debut album from the self-ascribed “millennial-king of white-boy R&B”, vlush™️– f.k.a. Tricky (whoops), f.k.a. lush vanilla, soon to be known as that one guy who makes cool records but never plays shows: WHO 250, stands out of 2019’s crowded R&B landscape establishing itself as a breakthrough, combining midwestern folk & art-rock tendencies with hyper-rhythmic tour-de-force professional production agent danTV. The end product is something rather inexplicable, with as much variation in tempo and energy as The Beatles' White Album, and bass so powerful the guy who mastered the album reportedly said “I don’t want to turn the bass down because it sounds really good, but it’s probably gonna distort the vocals a little, oh well.” On WHO 250, vlush delivers a classic indie-R&B record that, had it not been marketed so poorly, would have surely went on to make enough money in streams for vlush to budget out a nicer mic for the next record. Thank goodness that’s not the case– the vocals here sound phenomenal already & the lack of exposure means that you’ll still have the chance to say– “I heard of him first.”
