On an exhilarating but exhausting new EP, the Indonesian rapper strives for maturity but remains at his best when he’s at his silliest.
Rich Brian’s music is a breakneck odyssey through one man’s encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture, careening from one reference to the next. Per usual, the 22-year-old Indonesian rapper and viral sensation’s latest EP, Brightside, resists even the gentlest tap on the brakes. “I wanted to remind people that I still love to rap,” Brian said in a press release. And remind us he does, switching up beats and flows with merciless speed, often several times over the course of a single track. It’s exhilarating at times and exhausting at others. Though the EP runs less than 13 minutes, by the end of the fourth and final song, you might feel like you’ve been busting through wall after wall like the Kool-Aid Man, strapped into the passenger seat of a Tesla that never seems to die.
The beats on Brightside are clean and seemingly meant to denote seriousness, both in style and aspiration. The menacing piano riffs that blossom into lo-fi sadboy chords on “New Tooth” evoke the production favored by Tyler, the Creator, while “Lagoon” and standout “Getcho Mans” take on the hysteria of a Denzel Curry song. “Lagoon,” however, taps into that style for only about 45 seconds before slacking into a moodier beat. It’s a shame, because the feverish first half is one of Brian’s most arresting maneuvers to date. His drawl plods on the second half as he debates the relative merits of Porsches, Lambos, and “Tess-uh-lah”s (which “ain’t got no guns but the wheels automatic”). Though Brightside checks off more mainstream-rap-hit boxes than ever, Brian’s greatest strengths have always been his embrace of absurdity and his penchant for quip-slinging and provocation—lines like “pussy bald like Joe Rogan.” This brand of silliness is far more believable than his stabs at profundity, as on the blatantly 88rising-manufactured depression-core anthem “Sunny,” which opens right on the nose with, “Going through some shit.”
Despite the superficiality of his lyrics and the exaggerated vocal affectations, these songs are well-produced and still kind of a riot. Collaborators Diamond Pistols and Powers Pleasant are heavy hitters, embellishing the music with a darker and more frenetic pulse than Brian’s previous work. Still, there’s a reason that “Getcho Mans,” featuring fellow Indonesian rapper Warren Hue, is Brightside’s best track, and it’s not just Powers Pleasant pulling weight: It’s that both rappers seem more interested in having a good time than making something marketable. More than his musings on the pitfalls of fame, the laid-back absurdism of the song’s lyrics (“Man, I’m only joking,” he admits at one point) renders his music compelling in spite of its flaws. We get to enjoy Brian at his best—when he’s least concerned with being taken seriously.
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