You can spot a Lyrical Lemonade video before you see the bright cartoon carton in the corner. Over the past decade, 27-year-old Cole Bennett has wedged his way into the hip-hop landscape—first as a high schooler hungry for the latest releases and then, quickly, as a director who could anoint a new artist, or at least a new single, with a propulsive, technicolor video. Watch enough of his work and you’ll recognize his go-to moves: the swirl of neon as a sneaker streaks across tile, the animated jolt that brings a chain wiggling to life, the isolated words that twitch dramatically into the foreground. Bennett knows how to zero in on what’s working in a song, how to amplify the mood or emotional register that makes it compelling. With this, he’s built an empire; he reportedly turned down a $30 million offer to retain control of Lyrical Lemonade as the video production house expanded to include merch, a festival, and now, inevitably, an album: All Is Yellow.
Bennett has an undeniable gift for recognizing nascent talent—his videos provided early signal boosts to rappers like Juice WRLD and Ski Mask the Slump God. In theory, he could harness that skill to power an album, to curate a dynamic tracklist that captures some distinct point of view about the sound of rap today. Instead, he stuffs 35 artists into 14 tracks, most of which feel like half-baked thought experiments. Gus Dapperton and Lil Yachty? Why not! Jack Harlow and Dave? They have zero chemistry, but hey, maybe! Sheck Wes hurls ad-libs in the background of “Fly Away” before JID shows up to rattle off melodramatic mixed metaphors: “The journey is a battle/The travel is evil/Let’s spread our wings/Fly like an eagle.” Gothboiclique’s Lil Tracy clumsily interpolates Blink-182. The total effect is cramped and frenetic and unrelenting, like a Jenga tower that collapses over and over and just keeps adding pieces to the pile.
After a while, chaos becomes its own kind of consistency. But it’s hard to discern a purpose in the album’s thicket of lukewarm beats and sporadic bursts of melody. “Hummingbird” comes out of nowhere, with UMI cooing a treacly verse (“It’s been a while since I was 17 again”). Juicy J’s lecture at the end of “First Night,” a convoluted diatribe against one night stands, is even more confusing. Lil Durk’s melodic flow gets boiled down to a spangly punchline: “I’m trying to prove that I’m a star!” All Is Yellow mostly seems like an attempt to justify its own existence, as if enough high-profile features can amount to a spectacle. Sometimes it almost works; there’s a thrill in hearing Eminem’s voice right after Cordae and Juice WRLD finish rapping over his “Role Model” beat, or in the way Lil Yachty commands attention as he glides through “Fallout.” What’s conspicuously missing is Bennett’s ability to highlight these moments that make a given artist feel unique and worthy of your time; he flattens the lot, then stacks them all together.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
