The 18-year-old Orrin said that moving from Brooklyn to the outer suburbs of New York helped him experiment and develop the sound heard on his second release, Nocturnal. The boredom he claimed to suffer since relocating has produced a heavy, dark, spoken-word type of record that does little to excite the listener.
Where West Coast contemporaries Earl Sweatshirt and Tyler The Creator entertain their fans with well-timed flow and intelligent lyrics, Orrin merely uses his impressive baritone vocals to construct some cringe-making rhymes.
On the first track ‘Blue Lights’ he cleverly writes, “Liquor is my vitamin C,” an early promise that is immediately wrecked by the not-so-poetic follow-up, “it makes me me, see?” This is unfortunate trend of weak lyrics lets Orrin down throughout the record.
“So my name is maybe Orrin, I can be kind of boring” may pass as primary school verse, but is hardly acceptable for a rapper who has ambitions to tour Europe (as revealed later in the record).
Rap fans are drawn to personality – an artist’s identity, voice, or unique production. Nocturnal does not reveal anything distinctive about Orrin. His deep vocals are over-produced and the minimalist bass-heavy backing tracks are uninspiring.
‘Rain’ rather shamelessly samples the XX’s megahit ‘Angels’, and whilst the beautiful backing track is a glaring anomaly to other songs, it acts as a pop-carrot that could draw in those adverse to the genre.
As Nas famously claimed on Illmatic, “I’m only 19 but my mind is old”. Orrin is 18 and his mind still needs to grow old to produce its best. Clearly there are talents, but his sound and lyrics must be refined if he is to reach the heights aspired to.
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Listen to ‘Rain’ from Nocturnal here:
