Hip hop
Daniel Caesar has shared new album ‘Never Enough’.
The songwriter’s outstanding, soul-baring debut LP ‘Freudian’ landed back in 2017, with follow-up ‘Case Study 01’ hitting home in 2019. Clash caught him live in London, with writer Shahzaib Hussain rhapsodising: “It’s warmly intimate and personal, a communion for the many millennials in the audience who like Caesar relive the peaks and troughs of young love in a synthetic age.” A bold creative voice within R&B, he began teasing his return earlier this year, dropping hints on social media.
Out now, ‘Never Enough’ is his return, it was seemingly born from a period of self-doubt, with sessions pushing Daniel Caesar further than ever before. Chatting to Apple Music, he commented: “It was really aggressively seeking out truth and trying to learn about myself and about the world in which I live, because I want answers…”
He added: “That’s the most important thing to me. I think I’ve been dealing, struggling a lot with my desire to know things versus my desire to be liked.”
A full Clash review is incoming, but first-listen highlights include the haunting ‘Valentina’, the introspective R&B offered by ‘Disillusioned’, and the creative ode ‘Vince Van Gogh’.
Much of the record deals with pressures both internal and external, exploring personal aspects of self-doubt and the distorting impact of fame. Those themes reach their apex with the forlorn and ghost-like ‘Toronto 2014’ chiming: “If only I could find a way through space-time/Back to when I was happy being me…”
The curiously titled ‘Homiesexual’ has split social media over its title – yet it’s proving to be one of the album’s more engaging aspects.
While Daniel Caesar’s internet cancelling still hangs over social media responses, it seems that fans are enjoying his return. Indeed, NFR Podcast labelled album cut ‘Always’ “frontrunner for songs of the year. This is so beautiful…”
As he sings on ‘Unstoppable’: “And who’s gon’ stop me? / I’m unstoppable.”
Check out ‘Never Enough’ below.
