Ever since August Alsina emerged in 2012 with his first official mixtape The Product, he's been somewhat of a curio. In essence, he's a rapper in an R&B singer's body, more likely to sing about his harrowed past and the things he's done to keep food on the table for his family than some romantic tryst. Even "Would You Know?," the lone love song on the New Orleans native's latest album, This Thing Called Life, is a conflicted ballad on which Alsina is a ball of nerves, afraid that opening up to the possibility of love would leave him vulnerable. But Alsina applies the tender, ruminative aspects of R&B—and its sense of longing, especially—to his street tales, and his second studio album solidifies his place amongst the upper echelon of modern-day R&B.
Like many of his contemporaries, Alsina shares the same interest as Jeremih and PARTYNEXTDOOR—even Young Thug—in exploring the percussive elements of rapping and the myriad of ways they can be married to melody. On sepia-toned lead single "Hip-Hop," he effortlessly slips back and forth between sweet rhythmic singing and melody-oriented rapping as he describes the environment he grew up in and how he "came up in criminal ways." The chorus of "Dreamer" finds Alsina employing a triplet cadence à la Migos, a clever flip of the rap-song-with-a-sung-chorus template. Alsina's line-blurring between rapping and singing is never quite as experimental as someone like Jeremih or Young Thug, but it feels completely natural.
Alsina's music also gestures towards his gospel roots. A singer in his church's choir as a child, he hangs hard onto the idea that salvation can be found through perseverance and a strong sense of belief, whether in a higher power or simply your own ability to get through the day. Persistence is Alsina's default mode of engaging with the world—when he's boasts about "buying the same thing three times" on "Why I Do It," a horn-laden banger featuring an engaged Lil Wayne, Alsina sounds prouder of the work he put in to get to where he is than the spoils of that work.
This Thing Called Life also corrects one the most egregious flaws of Testimony, Alsina's 2014 debut: its guests actually make thematic sense. There are only four: in addition to Weezy, Anthony Hamilton, Jadakiss, and Chris Brown all make appearances. With the exception of Brown, who doesn't subtract anything from the slick radio-ready earworm "Been Around the World" but adds nothing, the guests feel like kindred spirits rather than label-mandated concessions, artists for whom the experiences of a hard-luck upbringing are never far from the center of the frame.
The album loses a bit of steam toward the end, when another love song or two would actually be a welcome change of pace, but it perks back up in time for closer "The Encore." A joyously triumphant paean to perseverance, the track captures Alsina's wide-eyed and generous approach to songwriting: "Always thought that it would be good, but I never had it this good." It's hard not to root for someone whose music is suffused, at the DNA level, with such appreciation. He's grateful for his good fortunes even as he can't help but be surprised by them.
