Pi’erre Bourne: Good Movie Album Review

Review of Pi’erre Bourne Good Movie Album.

Despite Pi’erre’s insanely good production and attention to detail, the rapper/producer overestimates his formula and ends up “just” missing the mark.

At this point if you said that Pi’erre is one of the best trap producers ever, I wouldn’t disagree. From “TLOP 4” to, in my opinion, his most impressive work, “Die Lit”, it seems like there’s no end to his creativity, often using obscure soundbites and samples to craft these hypnotic glitchy beats, which have since become a trademark sound in the underground trap community.

Over the past three years however, Pi’erre has used his talents to advance his own discography, specifically his “The Life of Pi’erre” series which he started way back in 2016. His projects often have a unique, spacy aura about them and with every song masterfully transitioning into the next, they feel like one long journey through Pi’erre’s headspace at the time he made them.

Good Movie is no different in this sense, every song scarily transitions into the next with seamless perfection, whilst still being perfectly enjoyable individually. This time around Pi’erre also uses skits as a way to build up to the track he’s transitioning to, “Kingdom Hall” being a good example.

Vocally, Pi’erre does a lot better on this album than he did on his last project “The Life of Pi’erre 5”. His melodies are catchier, his voice sounds brighter, and overall, he does a great job of capturing that balance of being engaging yet relaxing to listen to.

It’s hard to judge Pi’erre on his lyrics because even though he’s a rapper, the lyrics aren’t what make Pi’erre’s music great. From a critical point of view, you could argue they’re repetitive and uninspiring, but from a passive point of view they fit his music perfectly. His smooth voice and sometimes mantra-like flow mould into his beats, often acting as another layer to the instrumental, in similar fashion to his peer Playboi Carti. The song that best captures what I’m trying to say is “DJ In the Car”, instantly catchy in its lyrical simplicity with a chorus that addictive when combined with the songs tempo.

The only downside to Pi’erre’s minimalistic lyrical formula is that it gets too familiar a little bit too quickly. By “Kingdom Hall” you get to thinking the project is about to wrap itself up in the next 3 songs or so, but you look at the track-list and see there’s another 9 whole songs left. At this point, although the quality of the production doesn’t waver that much, everything starts to become background noise, simply because that dragging feeling is so prominent.

It’s also in the second half of the album where Pi’erre’s pen game gets a little bit too relaxed, “Rounds”, “System” and “Safe Haven”, are just too stale lyrically, despite they’re great beats. Although I will say the closing seconds on “Rounds” is one of my favourite moments on the album melodically.

The album closes on, what I think is easily the worst song, “Heart Say”, the constant shredding of the guitar becomes too jarring to listen to after the first minute and unfortunately Pi’erre doesn’t do much lyrically or melodically to save it.

Honestly, I’m just surprised that Pi’erre didn’t have the foresight to name the last song on the album “End Credits”.

Score/Good: (No pun intended). It’s clear to see that Pi’erre put a lot of time and effort into getting this project right, the transitions are inhumanly perfect, and the beat making is leagues ahead of a lot of other cookie cutter producers out there, however, the sluggish second half and lack of trimming round the edges stops this album from being excellent.

This movie is a good “recommendation to a friend”, but unfortunately, it’s not winning an Oscar anytime soon.

[I rank albums on a scale of: Poor, Good, Excellent, Outstanding]

Written by Jake Campbell