Last year's self-titled debut from PARTYNEXTDOOR saw the Mississauga-born singer and producer refashion himself as something of a narcotics-fueled lech, a persona that has, in 2014, hardened into an archetype familiar to anyone with a remote interest in R&B over the last half-decade. The beats were shadier than those he sang over when he was making music under his own name, Jahron Brathwaite, and so was his character. "You got wild bitches telling you lies" he sang on "Wild Bitches", a line so Weeknd-esque that it's kind of shocking Abel Tesfaye didn't get to it first; elsewhere, he boasted of ejaculating on a lover. While his voice sounded great in the dingier digs, the sleaziness felt grafted onto his personality in a way that always felt artificial, and it clashed with his more genuine—and compelling—loverman tendencies.
Brathwaite has scrubbed this occasional creepiness from his sophomore effort, as PARTYNEXTDOOR TWO matches his self-assured cockiness with an increased benevolent streak. He spends the majority of the album in awe of the women he sings about: "East Liberty" teems with talk of sunset-watching and proclamations of "forever"; in less capable hands, a line like "the ocean's calling your name" would be an eye-roller, but Brathwaite's puppy-dog earnestness—not to mention the track's woozy, dense throb—prevents it from inducing gag reflexes. Brathwaite does open-minded sincerity much more convincingly than he does charming asshole: "I want you to turn up every night on me when I see you," he urges on the Drake-assisted "Recognize" while acknowledging upfront that both he and the woman he's singing to have other lovers. There's a refreshing lack of jealousy and possessiveness on PARTYNEXTDOOR TWO, even as Brathwaite argues that he's in a league far above his competition on almost every song here.
Dropping his defenses helps turn PARTYNEXTDOOR into a project that feels more like Brathwaite's own creation rather than one that primarily (and cynically) reconfigures of-the-moment sounds, but it's still very much a project in perpetual conversation with the rest of today's R&B and rap landscapes. Brathwaite inhabits the same world as his boss, Drake, a place where it's difficult to tell exactly where singing becomes rapping and rapping becomes singing. This time around, he unapologetically swipes Young Thug's higher-and-higher-and-higher delivery and the relentless triplet cadence that Migos has breathed life into, both of which are employed on more than one occasion.
Brathwaite isn't afraid to look into the past, either. He takes Dru Hill's "Share My World" and slow-roasts it overnight for the sweltering "SLS", and the moment the track finally takes off is one of the album's biggest thrills. "Muse" finds PARTYNEXTDOOR submerging Ginuwine's "Only When Ur Lonely" in a vat of ink, thickening it up into a viscous sludge. Not all sample choices turn out so well, though—specifically, an egregious sample of Disclosure's "Latch" on horndog anthem "Sex on a Beach" feels like a play for borrowed interest rather than an inspired recontextualization of a recent hit. Someone will flip "Latch" in an intriguing way, it just won't be PARTYNEXTDOOR.
But PARTYNEXTDOOR TWO succeeds, much like its predecessor, largely thanks to Brathwaite's aptitude for mood. His molasses-thick production continues to get weirder in subtle ways; tracks that recall early-'90s R&B suspended in amber ("Grown Woman") sit next to tracks that sound like they come from an alternate universe where Vangelis has become the go-to producer for decaying bangers. Lyrically, PARTYNEXTDOOR TWO doesn't have its eyes on anything original, and its back half suffers from a turgid sameness that eventually numbs, but Brathwaite's second album functions something like Toronto's answer to ratch&B, replacing the dirtbag charm (or ugliness, as some argue) of someone like Ty Dolla $ign with a more benign disposition.
