The path is so well charted that it's practically a ritual. Young artist creates track; track becomes hit; hit becomes phenomenon, artist becomes famous. The track is undeniable and thus, ubiquitous. Your parents are aware of it. Fans start to hate it, though nowhere close to as much as the artist does. And then, when the artist goes ahead and decides to make new music, everything he does, from the promotion to the concerts, looks like a Sisyphean attempt to escape its shadow.
The Brooklyn producer Baauer is observing the rites. He has called his Billboard-topping, YouTube-dominating 2013 craze "Harlem Shake" "corny and annoying as fuck" and his new album Aa represents his "defiant" new beginning. For Baauer, the problem is exacerbated by the fact that he had less to do with his own song's rise than strangers on the Internet. They were the ones who performed the alchemy that changed it from a jam, to an Essential Mix standout to a viral soundtrack. "I birthed it, it was raised by others, and now it's like my weird, fucked-up adopted teenage kid coming back to me," he said at the time.
Sometimes, talented career artists become one-hit wonders (Carly Rae Jepsen) and sometimes, clowns who have stumbled upon, or stolen, something infectious do the same (Vanilla Ice.) The experience can be particularly difficult for an artist like Baauer, a raw, young musician with interesting ideas who has yet to fully develop. Following "Harlem Shake," Aa might feel to some like an undercooked, scattershot album, experimental to its own detriment. But if Baauer were an unknown musician —which, artistically speaking, he still essentially is — it'd be a rimshot of a debut, crackling with energy and humor, well-paced, with no dud tracks and more than a few infectious ones.
Aa is devoted to the block-party spirit of hip-hop, in keeping with most of Baauer's work, and at a time when various genres of electronic music are downplaying the black sources of their sound, it's refreshingly willing to share both its influences and the limelight. Many of the tracks in its adrenaline-spiked back half are dominated by other artists, as Baauer took advantage of the connections afforded him by "Harlem Shake" to collaborate with M.I.A., Pusha T, Future and Rustie. Their appearances aren't wasted. Features function like power-ups on Aa, allowing the album to ascend in excitement, leveling up to an almighty peak. (Baauer's clear love of collaboration and respect for the sounds he incorporates might also serve as a balm to those who were irritated by the way that the mainstream "Harlem Shake" dance craze completely ignored the original, Cam'ron-approved dance.)
The album's melting pot feel is consistent with that of Baauer's less-famous releases, the EPs Dum Dum (2012) and ß (2014). His methodology is consistent: He excavates the undergirdings of genres like hip-hop, R&B and dancehall, and swaps in a new foundation, often composed of wobbling, thundering bass. After a couple of exploratory warning shots at the outset of Aa — the Rustie-inspired opener, "Church," the drum n' bass n' trap banger "GoGo!" — the album settles into a groove on the explosive R&B of "Body," its first inescapable track, which splits the difference between the producer's past work with AlunaGeorge and the soiled romanticism of electronic artists like Giraffage.
From there, it's a steady climb with stops along the way in Discovery-era Daft Punk soundalike ("Pinku") and peace councils between back-alley grime and Bonecrusher-style mob music. ("Day Ones.") On songs like these, Baauer demonstrates his ability to identify and recontextualize bite-size melodic candy, and "Harlem Shake's" rise starts to look less like an Internet accident and more like inevitability. Check out the way he plays the Tetris theme song into the back end of "Sow." It's a goofy, addictive gimmick that loses none of its melodic power for being so.
In the tradition of many of the best electronic releases of the decade, Aa is a collage. But its patchwork of influences isn't a way for the producer to avoid pressure. Instead, Baauer and the other artists meet the heavyweight expectations head-on. "Temple," the M.I.A. feature here, is vintage Mathangi: She sounds as fresh and London-cocky as she did on Arular. And "Kung Fu" doesn't dare to waste Pusha T or Future. Pusha and Future have two of the most iconic voices in contemporary hip-hop, and Baauer clearly understands the appeal of placing them as foils on the same track, the brick-hard snarl and the ecstatic lament.
If you want a file to show up at the top of an alphabetically-organized folder, you can throw a bunch of A's at the front of its name, and ensure that it will be there. But as much as Baauer may want Aa to define a new beginning, to crowd out everything else he's done so far, there's no easy way for him to erase "Harlem Shake." He's doomed to be evaluated in the context of what will likely represent the peak of a certain kind of career success. The best he can do is what he's done here: rectify the wrongs of the craze that the track spawned while building on what it did right. Take advantage of the opportunities it's granted, throw an album-length party and encourage the dancers to come correct.
