Laurent Yiu

It's certainly a step above 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘴. but that isn't saying much, is it? On this album, Bieber attempts to break away from his pre-established and generic pop-star image by writing more personal lyrics. While the lyrics may be better than his past records, the production does not stray from the norm of mainstream pop. As a result, it doesn't matter what lyrics Bieber writes, because it all sounds generic regardless. Now, heres my biggest gripe with the album: the tone-deaf MLK samples. The song 2 Much starts off with the famous MLK quote, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere". This quote is sampled despite having no correlation with the album whatsoever other than the album name itself. There are a couple of more examples spread throughout the album, but none of them as stupid as the "MLK Interlude". In this interlude, MLK speaks about "standing up for a great cause", maybe even dying for it. You would think that Bieber follows this up by addressing a societal issue that he feels strongly about, a cause that's worth dying for. Nope. On the next track, Bieber and Dominic Fike sing about dying for a girl. There is a distinct lack of correlation between the interlude and this next track- a common theme that's shared by the rest of the album. It feels like a sequel to David Guetta's George Floyd tribute, but somehow worse. 𝘑𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦 is nothing more than a mediocre pop-album that's dragged down by some of the most tone-deaf sampling I've ever seen in music. Oh, "Peaches" is cool I guess.