Preston Oshita—who records as Towkio—does not want to settle for just good enough. Last year the 21-year-old acknowledged to the Chicago Tribune that following the respective successes of fellow SaveMoney members and childhood friends Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa, there are high expectations for him on his first full-length release. He addresses them directly on *.Wav Theory'*s Chance-featuring second track "Clean Up": "I get it get it, your friends did it, they famous/ And you rap, too, so when you gon' make it?" On his debut, he attempts to find a voice that is distinctly his own, to varying results.
Towkio's best trait is his ability to craft an effective pop track. He can flow nimbly, but the content of his lyrics often veers toward saccharine, rendering him more vocalist than rapper. "I Know You", for example, is a simple love song, but FKJ's smooth production and Towkio's catchy sample-aided chorus make up for less creative lines ("And I could take you there/ Like two shoes, girl, we make a pair"). On "Free Your Mind", Towkio rides a house beat, offering some basic uplifting words ("I can free your miiiiind!") alongside Donnie Trumpet's horn playing and breaking into short, catchy clips in the third verse. He knows how to keep the listener's attention, even if he has not yet figured out how best to provide substantial lyrical depth.
Towkio's attempts at wisdom tend to read as buzzwords or markers for profundity, rather than anything meaningful. The title track that opens the album features dial-up sounds and waves crashing, as well as the various connections among "The brain, [which] controls the heart/ The mind, [which] controls the brain/ The sun, [which] controls the moon/ [And] the moon, [which] controls the waves." Although admirably starry-eyed, the concept is generally lost on an album largely consisting of poppy, dancey love songs. Towkio finds his way to some genuine emotions on the Kaytranada-produced "Reflection", the story of a cocaine-addicted woman he still loves. The song digs deeper because of its tight narrative, attention to detail, and grounding in reality, in addition to Kaytranada's melancholically danceable beat.
As a pure bar-for-bar rapper, Towkio relies too heavily on backpack similes and punchlines to convey hackneyed ideas, as on "Clean Up": "I give them monkey bars, them bitches hold weight/ The game like 'Madden' in '08, I swear it's fucked up." On "God in Me", however, he compares himself playfully to an "infant or a puppy," not something you would catch more self-conscious rappers doing. Unfortunately, he ends up losing the beat—a reminder that he is anything but a finished product.
The Social Experiment's Peter Cottontale serves as the mixtape's executive producer, alongside Towkio himself, and the Chicago quartet's sound is apparent throughout, with official credits on five of the 12 songs. The songs on the tape strike as either "cool" ("RN", "Reflection", "Break You Off") or "happy" ("Clean Up", "Free Your Mind", "Heaven Only Knows"). Because Towkio deals in abstractions, there is little conflict or tension on the album, and the ideas with which he is grappling exist in the clouds. He admits as much on "Break You Off": "What we have in common is the conscious/ So I speak on the subjective 'cause the rest is nonsense." Towkio's nebulousness leaves .Wav Theory as an enjoyable album that asks few questions and gives few answers.
