Jaden Smith has released “The Sunset Tapes: A Cool Tape Story” in the fall of 2018. A separate project from his then current SYRE album series. This tape stood out to me because it is under shadowed by his larger projects and features a more experimental sound compared to previous work. On this tape, Jaden starts to experiment with autotune, as well as raising and lowering the pitch of his voice in post-production as if he was a chipmunk. Truthfully, I don’t know the artistic intent behind this, maybe it was to depict some sort of psychological impairment brought on by drug use, who knows?
Focusing specifically on “Distant”, what I love about this song is the second half where he makes heavy use of the harmonizer. (I know I focused on harmonizer use in last month’s blog but I need an excuse to share a Jaden song.) The harmonizer in this song makes the wake of his voice so wide and expansive, it’s difficult to stick to a single octave when listening. Jaden also interpolates a spoken word poem (or I guess rap? Even though it doesn’t carry much of a melody) about how much will be wasted since a love interest isn’t returning mutual feelings. Jaden’s production always impresses me (highly recommend the intro sequences to the SYRE projects, giant’s of production they are), even when lyrical substance is lacking the production often makes up for it.