Jay’Mi Vazquez- Managing Editor
Music Videographer and Director Cole Bennett of Lyrical Lemonade released his first studio album titled “All is Yellow” on Jan. 26.
Celebrating Lyrical Lemonade’s 10th anniversary, the project is compiled of 14 tracks, featuring 34 artists, some of whom Bennett has worked with in the past.
Although Bennett himself does not make music, it was exciting for listeners to hear a project compiled by a videographer who is deeply involved within the culture.
Once released, “All is Yellow” was an interesting experience.
Some previously released tracks were on the album like “Fallout” featuring Gus Dapperton, Lil Yachty and Joey Bada$$, “Guitar in My Room” featuring Lil Durk and Kid Cudi, “Hello There” featuring Lil Tracy, CORBIN and Black Kray and “Stop Giving Me Advice” featuring Jack Harlow and Dave.
The early release of these tracks helped listeners visualize how star-studded this album is.
The biggest downside to the project is that it lacks cohesiveness moving from song to song. However, it showcases numerous genres of music, including lyrical rap, gospel, trap and pop rap.
The intro song, “Fly Away,” featuring Sheck Wes, Ski Mask the Slump God and JID sets a false standard for this album as one of the better songs on it.
After “Fly Away,” the rest seem like pointless collaborations weaving through genres that do not blend well with each other.
On tracks with three or more artists featured, like “Hummingbird” with UMI, SahBabii and Teezo Touchdown and “First Night” with Teezo Touchdown, Juicy J, Cochise, Denzel Curry and Lil B, the merging of genres was chaotic.
However, each artist found individual moments to shine in their distinctive styles, which was common on the project.
On tracks with one or two artists, the dynamic was better than these stacked feature songs.
“Doomsday” with Juice WRLD and Cordae was a good example of this. It had an equal balance of style and cadence throughout with its “boom bap” styled raps.
“Stop Giving Me Advice” with Jack Harlow and Dave was another example of a song that did not overcomplicate itself with genre merging.
The videos that went along with most of the songs were creative. Bennett added a visual motif with yellow curtains in each music video that went with the project. He also had artists wearing suits and yellow ties in each video.
As a concept, it showed unity and togetherness from video to video. Unfortunately, the unity and togetherness were lacking on the actual songs.
