There's a vague poetry to Jason Derulo's latest album title, Everything is 4, and it's one he tried, even more vaguely, to summarize in a recent TIME interview: "The number four is a sense of completion, almost." It's easy to see what the 25-year-old singer might be getting at—the number suggests balance, structure, and rhythm, with plenty of musical and metaphysical significance—but Derulo seems more attracted to the general idea than the specifics. Clichés persist for a reason, after all: they can be incredibly effective. "We want to go see a great movie because we want to be moved," he said later in the same interview. "We want to laugh, we want to cry, we want to feel something." Sure enough, Derulo has always aimed directly towards the hot-blooded center of a situation, be it lust, love, or heartbreak. It's not about nuance or distinction: it's about impact, drawing the most inclusive and thereby, most powerful, emotion out of three minutes and change.
Such is the secret to Derulo's success, particularly as of last year's Talk Dirty (a savvy, U.S.-exclusive repackaging of his third full-length, Tattoos). His best songs are so vast and all-embracing in scope that, paradoxically, they become ultra-specific to their moment in time; as with pop-crossover monoliths like Usher's "Yeah!" or Flo Rida's "Get Low," his hits have a tendency to bloom into zeitgeist mile-markers despite not being "about" much of anything at all. And though critics persistently peg him as unmemorable, Derulo's presence on the charts is by now intractable. He was the most-played male artist on all of radio in 2014—this from the guy whose most recognizable calling card was once his insistence on singing his own name, and is now his insistence on not singing his own name. He's a quiet trendsetter, though even his influence is hilariously faceless: "Talk Dirty" instigated the sudden rise of what Derulo himself called the "instrumental hook," its dominant recorder solo, of all things, directly inspiring hits from Ariana Grande, Fifth Harmony, and Flo Rida.
On Everything is 4, Derulo continues Talk Dirty's shift from indiscreet R&B huckster to audacious pop juggernaut. He's always been able to slip between genres with relative ease: he's collaborated with Florida Georgia Line, done acoustic Imogen Heap interpolations, evoked the puppy-dog hookiness of early-00's pop punk. But on Talk Dirty, Derulo honed in on more explicitly club-friendly sounds, positioning himself as one of R&B's few capable EDM fusionists, along with the likes of Ne-Yo and Chris Brown. The album was far from cohesive, but he seemed to have a clearer idea of his strengths: fewer simpering campfire ballads, more brazen grabs at the Top 40 jugular.
Everything is 4 doesn't stray far from this formula, though it veers further towards 80's pop, funk, and overt Michael Jackson worship than his previous work—and while the results are varied (defiantly so, even), the highs are higher than ever. "Want to Want Me" is Derulo's best song, a crisp, feel-good blast of infatuated power-pop that feels warmer and more lived-in than any of his previous singles. "Try Me" goes breezy and Balearic, with production from Norwegian newcomer Matoma and an inspired-sounding guest verse from Jennifer Lopez. Album closer "X2CU" coats post-breakup stunting in Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis gloss before trailing off into a sweeping, Terius Nash-esque outro. But for every hit here, there is an egregiously stupid counterpoint: "Get Ugly" is a brutal attempt to reprise the ubiquitous "Wiggle," though the result is more like "Sexyback" re-imagined under the influence of a half dozen Jaeger bombs. "Broke" is the ultimate low point: a bluesy clunker that unites (at long last!) Keith Urban and Stevie fucking Wonder, who is forced to interpolate "Mo Money Mo Problems" over hokey harmonica breakdowns. It's not pretty.
But for all its blatantly ill-conceived moments, there's something charming about the sheer audacity of Derulo's often bizarre choices. Even when it falls flat, there is character here: real risks, and hints at a point of view, mixed in with the usual grab bag of assorted lust/love platitudes. And though the criticisms regarding his lack of a strong and identifiable persona, a "Thing" to call his own, are certainly well-founded, Everything is 4 makes a case for Derulo's shape-shifting vagueness as compelling, especially in the age of the celebrity overshare. The more we are able to learn about our musical heroes via social media, the more complicated our relationships with them become. In that sense, it's weirdly refreshing that Derulo has bypassed the almighty cult of personality in favor of proud unknowability.
