There is a modest narrative to BAFKwhich Nettspend tries to complete within the first 15 seconds. “It gets weird growing up,” he gargles on the intro (it's called “Growing Up”) over percussion and synth sounds that make something of a channel. Purpose-Bieber era. “I'm still a little bit of a kid… But I ain't no kid, bitch,” he squeals into AutoTune on “Tyla,” whose tumultuous inflection is clearly modeled after Chief Keef, as are blatant socialisms like, “I might get a teacher, just to fuck the teacher.” There are even a few nods to the fact that she has parents, although it seems they mostly interact over the phone. Perhaps at the behest of some executive or other, Nett was told that an album needs a hook, so here it is: the story of a kid coming into this crazy world, a world that's almost condescending in its pursuit of linear logic.
But midway through the album between “A$AP” and “Beach leak,” something clicks. Over a Jersey club mirage with an EvilGiane beat, Nettspend kicks off the latter with a couplet that says it all in seven words: “Drugs in my drink/I fell asleep.” An inexplicably hilarious Grimes sample on 'Skipping Class' – a beacon to guide the curious millennial listener BAFKIts dark path – creates a poignant backdrop for a scene where the decision to part ways with a fellow dropout (“Yeah, I'm done with you”) hits harder than the album's many forced Peter Pan-isms. There's giddy pleasure in the way the vowels roll off the tongue in an otherwise dumb line like “I just whacked some bands on a dancer” or the image Nett conjures up later in “F*CK CANCER” of thrown a few thousand pence in a wishing well, before a heartbreaking remark (“I just popped two pills, I hope he doesn't fuck me”) to scares behind the dream.
Maybe you're old enough to remember when critics called Young Thug “meta-verbal” and wondered if Chief Keef was possibly autistic, or when mumble rap filth was seriously used — graphic reminders of the instinct to reject the new and strange. But I'm not sold on the idea that this delusional, disruptive, nihilistic music, which is hard to think of in normal songwriting terms, is representative of the New Youth Sound of Today. (When I asked a friend's teenage son if his classmates listened to Nettspend, he replied with a wink: “That's like, for emo kids who want to be mysterious.”) However, it resonates when Nett scrambles his language (” We both got a lot to say/Speaking in codes 'cause we might be overheard,” he says on “A$AP”) or struggles with the limits of aura (“Trying to explain how I feel, but I just feel it in my core,” from “Tommy”) or in “F*CK CANCER,” when he wonders, “What's real?” Nothing, basically.Next question.
