album review: ‘dark times’ by vince staples

The thought that has most characterized my last few Vince Staples reviews is, ‘I don’t know what I want from Vince Staples anymore… and I’m increasingly okay with not having a clear answer’.

I will say getting older and more aware means that tonally his work has a different resonance - the writing sinks in deeper, and I’ve come around on enough of the production thanks to rock solid compositional fundamentals so that both the self-titled album and RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART have aged very well - but I also think some of it has come with watching him artistically expand on his Netflix show, or just any number of podcasts where it’s clear he’s the smartest guy in the room, and is wise enough to know he doesn’t need to prove it. So I was quite excited for this new album - his last on Def Jam - with a familiar tight runtime…

And thus while I will describe this as a draining listen, it’s probably Vince Staples’ best album since FM!, possibly even his best to date. And what’s been interesting is assessing why this clicked so strongly with me compared to his previous two, because it’s not that far removed: Vince Staples still sounds generally haggard, and while he has a little more energy he’s not bringing the bombast he had in the 2010s, but it also works better as the production seems to be drawing a balance between the liquid, west-coast vibes and the muddier, borderline boom-bap of the beats here, along with some of his tightest hooks in years, with the clattering and scratching alongside the gurgling guitar and organs on ‘Black&Blue’, the ramshackle guitars creaking over ‘Children’s Song’, the somber keys of ‘Nothing Matters’, and especially ‘Little Homies’ with its warbling two-step and ‘Etouffee’ with its chalky groove that flips into a straight bounce track in the outro! I loved FM! because Vince Staples was sharply using west-coast street bangers to viciously satirize radio and the music industry, but Dark Times hits the balance of something that could fit near the edges of that system in composition and rapping tightness, but with a thicker, heavier texture that he’s now made his own, which helps him feel distinct from the slew of underground MCs with similar textures but more meandering structures.

And it makes sense, especially coming from Vince Staples who can play the commercial game while vivisecting, and I think that’s where this album really picked up a deeper resonance for me: it feels like the systemic awareness is once again at the forefront, not just in critique of the systems but also where he himself fits into them, or feels culpable, especially as someone who has found success. And these are notes he’s hit before across his catalog - on ‘Government Cheese’ he literally samples ‘Blue Suede’ from Hell Can Wait, a subtle reiteration of what it’s like to be within these cycle, and on ‘Black&Blue’ he references gangland posturing as ‘folklore’, a callback to ‘Surf’ from Summertime ‘06 - but there’s a deeper awareness of how these systems feel entrenched, and the melancholy feels deeper in knowing the societal changes required to get out, and it’s not like he’s gonna be the leader to it. And that blue picks up darker shades: ‘Children’s Song’ keeps it immature and ignorant until the hook is a barb for grown ass men to go spend time with their kids, break out of this cycle, the dark prayers of ‘Shame on the Devil’ where even the violent retribution is ruthlessly commodified - he knows it’s clown shit - and ‘Etouffee’ is both triumphant in trying to make that darkness work… while aware that not only historically it hasn’t gotten anyone truly out, but also how it can serve as a meager distraction from white gentrification, an echo of FM! that swings back into sharp focus on “Radio”. And he knows it’s not new, and he knows that for so many you can still wring out moments of respite or hope, but there’s a cost to that too - the guilt rears its head talking to a friend in prison on ‘Government Cheese’ knowing how well he’s done, or the love squandered so he can chase money on ‘Little Homies’, try to make something.

And this takes us to how Vince Staples writes about women on this album, where compared to RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART, this feels more personally tinged - you don’t sample the Nikki Giovanni / James Baldwin conversation for the ‘Liars’ interlude if you’re not heading into difficult territory, but I think Vince gets that conversation was an attempt for Black men and women to explain differences in systems of oppression, try to peel past miscommunications within systems and not really succeed, which is directly echoed on the story told on ‘Justin’ where Vince gets invited home by a girl to a rough neighbourhood and she has to lie to keep the situation for escalating - he ends the song muttering ‘women lie a lot’, but there are layers to that, not just in how it deescalated what could be violent, not just how lies can insert tough men into bad situations of which Vince is very familiar, not only how it’s a survival mechanism for women as well among violent men in patriarchal power struggles, but how it reads just as much on his refusal to be vulnerable, upholding traditional structures because on the streets that’s how you survive, and more than ever he feels acutely aware of that toll. The album opens with an instrumental piece called ‘Close Your Eyes And Swing’, which online fans will recognize as Vince clapping back at noted abusive scumbucket Ronnie Radkie, but how far removed is he from it, and it’s very telling that at the end of Santigold’s really pretty spoken word piece at the end of the album, she references a line from ‘Shame on the Devil’, ‘I know some hoes that'll pull up to give me some pussy before they come give me a hug’, and she bends it ever so slightly to say ‘it’s easier for a girl’, because she correctly judges that Vince is holding himself in this dark place purposefully. And thus “Radio” also feels like a key to this album: not just in the music where it could feel like there was nothing to lose, but in the second verse challenging his misogyny and cutting deep when he gets dumped, a real moment of tangible vulnerability as he struggles to find someone to talk to as smart as him, a loneliness that might even be self-enforced.

And thus it makes sense that he sees art as a way to potentially spread a spark of hope, where the mantras of ‘Government Cheese’ and ‘Little Homies’ allows him to look forward and ‘Freeman’ highlights his desire to surpass any white power structure or acclaim… but he’s also acutely aware of how artificial even this all is, where after Santigold’s monologue we get the performance applause line, where even on songs about hope he references feeling ‘trapped in dreams’, because even if he can hope to shake it up like a Polaroid picture - an Andre 3000 reference that feels poignant - it’s on a song called ‘Nothing Matters’ that liberally samples D’Angelo and Lauryn Hill, two artists who saw the industry and tried to find their own ways to bend within; and he’s not going to try and control folks either - that’s the way of the puppet master, he can only show a change that might work. And it’s fucking bleak… but these are dark times, and while FM! felt righteous, the catharsis here is fully realized; you have to find some way to keep living.

So as a whole… yeah, this album is absolutely great, to the point where I struggle to find many flaws with it. It’s dense as hell, packed with bangers, you can enjoy it for the pure flex but also some powerfully heartfelt storytelling, and the production is probably the best fit for Vince Staples as a rapper to date. There’s a part of me that wants to call this one of the best of 2024 - the question is gonna linger because I know my track record when it comes to material that feels this nihilistic in content and construction - but it’s certainly goddamn close and I’ll appreciate some phenomenal rap in the mean time. Excellent project, and while I’ve been arguing Vince Staples albums deserve a deeper look, this one cements it - give it a proper shot, check it out!