WITH THE SHIFTS: ALBUM REVIEW
maassai’s newest project, With the Shifts, is a beautiful and soulful masterpiece that pushes beyond her typical style into something more complex. While maassai has always been an incredible lyricist, in the past, her projects have been looser and more free-flowing. With her newest project, maassai crafts a tighter narrative which adds a cohesiveness that elevates every song on the project. Everything maassai releases pushes her art to a new level, but With the Shifts is a transition beyond any scene or sound into her own world.
From the very first lyric on the record, you know you’re in for something different. “Ya’ll know niggas who will put metal in your back like a piggy bank just for pitty sake,” is one of the hardest bars I’ve ever heard, and I rewound the tape several times before I even got past the first line. The project is full of wild one-liners like this, where maassai uses vivid imagery that makes you think deeper than surface level. Lines like, “you know we used to pick the cotton out,” rang in my head as maassai continues to demonstrate why she’s one of the most exciting lyricists out.
But, maassai has always had bars, so that’s no surprise. What takes With the Shifts to a new level is the melodies all over this project and the way maassai brings together all of the individual elements that made her music exciting in the past. Maassai uses melody quietly. It never takes over the track, and it never feels forced. The melodies just flow from the lyrics. Sometimes those lyrics sound better rapped and other times they naturally bring a little singing with them. The song, “Grace Jones,” dedicated to the legendary model and singer, is almost entirely driven by melody, with maassai using a chanting flow that she previewed on unsounded points of view last year. Her vocals are layered, which allows her to subtly interact with the changes in the beat over the course of the track.
Everything about this project plays right to maassai’s strengths. She feels comfortable and relatable at every point on the album, and the more you listen, the more you begin to feel like you’re right there in the studio with her. It’s such an intimate and insular album that feels welcoming at all times. The song “to fly” feels like a warm hug as maassai and KUMBAYA trade off verses about finding meaning in the smaller things in life. It’s both energetic and relaxing and you feel the chemistry between maassai and KUMBAYA. “to fly” represents the album at its peak and suggests so many exiting things about the future of maassai’s music.
Everything maassai does vaults her artistry forward. She refuses to stay in place and embraces anything that pushes her out of her comfort zone. With the Shifts is her most compact and lyrically dense work yet, and as she pushes more into the soul-grounded sphere of hip-hop, it will be exciting to see where she goes next.