Pusha T / DAYTONA

Of all the 7-track discs each produced by Kanye West this year, Pusha T's 'DAYTONA' is the best of them all. The album arrived on the street accompanied by controversy due to its cover, an image of Whitney Houston's drug-filled bathroom that was published in the media in 2006, and with whose West license it took over, at the last minute, paying a whopping 85,000 dollars. Although 'DAYTONA' speaks, above all, and as is usual in Pusha T's work, about drugs, at least its content is of better taste.

In this sense, Kanye West's presence in 'DAYTONA' plays for and against Drake's enemy (there is a song dedicated to the Canadian on the album, 'Infrared'). Because if nobody can doubt that it was the experimental productions of 'My Name is My Name' and 'Darkest Before Dawn' that gave personality to Pusha's work, 'DAYTONA' can hardly be considered a logical continuation of 'Darkest Before Dawn'. In fact, Kanye West's production is so notorious - those old copy/paste samples of soul and funk - that the album could be signed as a collaboration perfectly. And although it's much more concise and economical than the previous album, and when I say economic it's serious, on the album there's not a single second in silence, not even between songs, you could say that 'DAYTONA' tells us less about Pusha T than his previous works, at least as far as music is concerned. From the second zero, this is an album by Pusha T but also by Kanye West, and you notice.

First of all you notice the mastery of a Pusha T that at no time manages to bore us talking about the same thing, again and again, as The Weeknd does (for example). The album, whose title comes from Pusha's favorite clock and seeks to represent the "luxury of time" for an artist who can afford to release an album "whenever she wants", revolves -as the lyrics of Clipse did- in themes such as her past as a drug trafficker (in 'The Game We Play' she goes so far as to declare that "this lifestyle is forever") and her present as a rich and influential man in the industry. But Pusha always finds creative ways to tell us the same things, such as in the vibrant opening track 'If You Know You Know', which Pusha dedicates to his "fraternity of dealers" in memorable phrases such as "a rapper turned trapper can't turn into us, but a trapper turned rapper can turn into Puff", in reference to the highly successful Puff Daddy; or in the elegant 'Come Back Baby', where Terrence celebrates his success: "White on white, that's the Testa, black on black, that's the Tesla, see these diamonds in this watch face? All that shit came from pressure".
Si es en las letras de ‘DAYTONA’ donde Pusha T establece su presencia en el disco, la producción de Kanye vuelve a ser, por momentos, un verdadero ejercicio de arqueología musical, como en ‘The Game We Play’ y ‘Come Back Baby’, y en sus 7 pistas aporta un elemento muy clásico al sonido de Terrence. De hecho, en la sentimental ‘Hard Piano’, Pusha T rapea sobre no sentirse identificado con la nueva ola de raperos con el “pelo rosa”, clamando: “I’m too rare amongst all this pink hair, still do the Fred Astaire on a brick, tap tap, throw the phone if you hear the click”, antes de lanzar una pulla a quienes procesan una autenticidad fingida: “art baselin’ the bezel, your bustdown is bust down and don’t match the metal”. ‘DAYTONA’ suena clásico, pero a su vez nuevo, y aunque Pusha T y Kanye West parecen existir en mundos totalmente opuestos en estos momentos, como demuestra el verso de Kanye sobre su gorra MAGA en ‘What Would Meek Do?’, ambos hallan en el álbum un asombroso punto común en el que “street rap” y la suprema musicalidad y elegancia de hip-hop clásico dan con un sonido magnético y fresco. Es la reinvención definitiva de Pusha T, que seguro dará para más de 7 canciones en su siguiente proyecto, con o sin Kanye.

Calificación: 8,1/10
Lo mejor: ‘If You Know You Know’, ‘The Game We Play’, ‘Come Back Baby’, ‘Hard Piano’
Te gustará si te gusta: Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, A$AP Rocky, el Kanye productor más que el rapero
Escúchalo: Spotify