Album Review: Everything is Beautiful / Everything Sucks by Princess Nokia

Across two jarringly-separate yet inextricably-linked albums released together as a double – one produced over two years, the other in little over a week – Princess Nokia displays their sensibilities as both musician and human as two sides of the same coin.

On their breakthrough album, 1992 Deluxe, Princess Nokia demonstrated a clear talent for frenetic and metaphorical lyrics enlarged by punchy, danceable production that invoked ‘90s jazz-rap and ‘00s southern trap in equal measure. This planted the seeds of a signature thematic duality in Nokia’s (aka Destiny Frasqueri) music, where braggadocios verses interspersed with aggressive refrains could be followed by slow, meditative tracks on immediate themes of loneliness or depression and not seem out of place.

The pairing of Everything is Beautiful and Everything Sucks thus represents these dichotomous aesthetics reaching full manifestation, only further supplemented in how both of their cover images suggest a comforting absence of self-seriousness. It takes only a listen to the first track of either to understand their contrasting tones and sounds. With Beautiful’s ‘Green Eggs & Ham’, opened by playful piano chords and pitched-up choir samples that warrant comparison to the likes of Chance the Rapper or Kanye West at their most triumphant, Frasqueri conveys unabated optimism. Meanwhile, Sucks’ ‘Harley Quinn’ leaps forth with an urgent siren-like pounding and a bass-heavy kick, sketching a sense of forceful antipathy and pessimism from the outset.

The lines are drawn between the two projects in a similar fashion for the remainder of their tracklists both via production and lyrical content. Beautiful retains an easygoing pace, plodding for the most part through gleeful and bouncing songs assembled from instruments with a gentler, more acoustic sound. On ‘Sunday Best’ Frasqueri raps: “Use my intuition, set my new intention / My future’s abundant, joyful, pleasant” – an uneasy yet convincing mantra for self love. Similarly, ‘I Am Free’ relays feelings of authenticity and relief, nestling a short, repeated phrase (“No ego, no ego, no ego) amidst a simple and light synth drone.

Sucks serves as the brazen counterpart, a shorter, more outrageous offering that – whilst being the project’s undoubtedly weaker half – still validly interprets ferocity as insight at the other end of the emotional spectrum. Tracks such as ‘I Like Him’, although trading lyrical depth for pure attitude, maintain an effective appeal through inventive production choices (read: an utterly addictive phone-dialling looped sample) and a surprising bit-part intro from fellow rapper Denzel Curry. ‘Practice’ is perhaps the strongest track among Sucks feisty albeit occasionally muted selection, channelling Frasqueri’s pride of her self-proclaimed outsider status – “I don’t believe in flop / Underground, mainstream / I brought punk to hip-hop” – into satisfying eloquence.

Princess Nokia’s dual-release is full and transcendent at its happiest peaks and swaggeringly addictive in its villainous lows, only occasionally lapsing into meagreness. Ultimately, however, it proves a satisfying development for the rapper’s authentic portrayal of their mind in all its blazing, rewarding, or arresting contradictions.