Kehlani Gives Exactly What's To Be Expected On 'It Was Good Until It Wasn't' - Nothing More Or Les

Unlike what the album title might suggest, there isn’t a point where this album stops being good. Instead, it’s both good and bad simultaneously for the entire runtime. Kehlani has quickly climbed the ranks of the music world with massive hits and records that have taken the R&B scene by storm. That’s not to say that she’s the most proven artist out there though, as I think people typically come to her for very safe, digestible and sexually charged R&B that you can honestly get anywhere else. She hasn’t done much of anything musically to distinguish herself from the rest of her competition so far, so going into this I was kind of just hoping to hear her find more of an identity. That’s not to say that I expected anything besides more of the same, but in my mind the best case scenario for this album would be that I’d be able to tell it apart from the regular Summer Walkers and Rihannas of the world. I don’t think there’s much of an argument suggesting that she’s done much of that on this album, as this (for better or for worse) is once again exactly what anyone would expect it to be.

As I alluded to at the start of this review, there are definitely good and bad aspects of this thing. It’s essentially R&B fast food, it’s fairly decent tasting and will never ever surprise you. This album won’t impress or disappoint anybody whatsoever. If you know what you’re getting into before you start listening, you will simply just leave this album being reminded of what Kehlani sounds like. The production on this is smooth and sugary in the best ways, and stands out as the most enjoyable aspect of the entire album for sure. There are plenty of really great beats and instrumentals that honestly never falter from start to finish, but they also don’t ever try to change anything up. If you’re expecting very standard and par for the course sounding R&B instrumentals, that’s exactly what you’re going to get on this thing. However, as standard R&B instrumentals go these are definitely clean and well chopped enough to be at the top of the barrel. Kehlani’s vocals are also pretty great in the grand scheme of things, delivering a breathy yet mesmerizing performance that is very easy to enjoy. When you first start listening to this album you’ll find yourself lost in the cheap accessibility of it all, enjoying the sonic presence of it for exactly what it is. What’s unfortunate is that there is absolutely nothing underneath the surface more than a pleasant sounding aesthetic and well sung vocals. I guess you can’t have something mindblowing from every album or else there wouldn’t be any mind blowing albums. In a weird way that means I’m happy regular albums like this exist to help flatten the quality curve a little bit.

The lyrics on this are once again just exactly what you would expect. All of the songs ae about running into exes at the club, having sex with 20 different people every day, bragging about how much better at sex you are than your friends even though you have no idea if that’s true. There is not a single song on this album that will actually make you think about anything at all in terms of lyrics. Once again, that’s not necessarily a bad thing considering there is definitely a place for mindless music in the world. However, it’s also far from being a good thing as it just further contributes to how indistinguishable of a record this really is. It would have been nice to hear Kehlani talk about a single thing that makes her not sound like the most boring and basic individual out there, but as somebody who can enjoy some Lil Pump it doesn’t bother me much. The only part of the lyrics that actually bugged me were the few instances of gun sounds and faux-intimidating lines about how she knows boys that will shoot other boys. I can handle dumb and basic lyricism, but those moments honestly just made me laugh. Listening to Kehlani talk about guns is like when you accidentally swear around a five year old and they go and tell their parents. The only feature I really enjoyed on this was James Blake as well, as I’ll never be able to get enough of that dude’s voice. However, he doesn’t exactly bring anything lyrically impressive to the table and arguably has the worst line on the whole album with “me, the juice to your squeeze”. Tory Lanez had a pretty decent flow too, but other than that there isn’t anybody on this record that brings anything different to the table whatsoever.

The songwriting on this is super predictable as well, unsurprisingly. Every single element of this album falls into the same pattern of just being so regular and plain. There is nothing different about this album that anybody with a radio in their car has heard before, and the song structures shockingly don’t change that. Every song is a normal 2-3 minutes of verses and choruses that don’t actually have much stylistic change besides differing melodies. I don’t remember hearing any beat switches that took my breath away or vocal inflections that felt like they fundamentally changed the songs up at all. Instead, Kehlani continuously delivers songs that are written in the exact same mold with the exact same lyrical content and exact same production style. Grieving is easily the most unique sounding song on the record with a bit of a darker tone, some off-kilter (in a good way) percussion and that aforementioned James Blake feature, but that’s the one exception. Everything sounds sonically really great and super clean, enough to make this a very enjoyable album on the surface level. In fact, I could probably listen to this on repeat for a good while before it ever annoyed me or caused me to actually dislike it. It’s perfectly manufactured to be regular, and I guess it’s hard to have actual strong feelings about something that’s so fantastically regular that it technically never gets old.

This is an album that I will never come back to, but it’s also an album I will never turn off. It’s one that doesn’t really do a single thing offensively wrong but also doesn’t do a single thing well enough to be worth seriously commending. It sounds really good and Kehlani is a fantastic singer, but so are a million other albums and singers out there. Quite a lot of those million others are much more likely to take some great risks and distinguish themselves from their peers in the music world, too. I guess I can’t blame anybody for being a fan of Kehlani as it’s near impossible to actively dislike this music. It’s got all the great surface level qualities of good Pop music. The problem is that it doesn’t have a single quality of its own, good or bad. There is no way to actually tell what this album is in comparison to any other mainstream R&B release that’s all over the airwaves right now. If you’re someone who just loves syrupy and digestible R&B music and this is a genre that you just really love regardless, you’ll probably adore this. Honestly, I’d even strongly recommend it if you’re somebody who is into artists like Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez or Alessia Cara. You’ll probably really dig this too. If you’re somebody like me who listens to a ton of different music in search of something that really sticks out though, don’t bother. Kehlani’s sophomore LP It Was Good Until It Wasn’t was good and wasn’t good all at the same time, from start to finish. It’s a very slick and well produced mainstream R&B record that will not offer you anything you haven’t heard many times before, but there’s nothing about it that’s actually bad. It’s run of the mill R&B fast food. - 6/10 (Best Songs - Water, Everybody Business, Grieving ft. James Blake)