SiR comes from a musical family. He grew up singing in church in his hometown of Inglewood, California. His mother sang background vocals for Chaka Khan and Michael Jackson, and his older brother is the Grammy-nominated rapper D Smoke. With these credentials, it can seem that SiR’s path to stardom — dropping an independent album, signing to TDE, earning a Grammy nomination — was preordained. But his rise to the top was anything but smooth and left him deeply scarred, as HEAVY, his new album and first release in five years, makes abundantly clear.
The album starts with SiR feeling “the weight of the world” on his shoulders, before reflecting on his numbing lifestyle that led to a downward spiral of addiction culminating in several rehab stints in recent years: “World get on my nerves, man, this shIt just don’t excite me,” he laments on the catchy second track, “IGNORANT,” featuring Ty Dolla $ign.
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SiR’s previous albums straddle the line between traditional love songs in the vein of neo-soul greats like Maxwell and D’Angelo and solipsistic, toxic R&B. HEAVY digs deeper and exhumes SiR’s scars — some that can fully heal and others that never will. He faces the consequences of his mistakes on the Isaiah Rashad-assisted “KARMA,” bathes in his pain on the standout title track, and dons a villain mask on the hard-nosed “NO EVIL,” a nihilistic plea for help: “No point in tellin’ the truth when you’re bulletproof/And nobody cares to believe you,” he sings in a Prince-like wail.
SiR’s newfound vulnerability peaks on “ONLY HUMAN,” a self-produced track with an acapella back half where he swoops down with angelic vocals and succinctly articulates the album’s thesis: “Riskin’ it all for a floating, fleeting feeling … can’t avoid the choices I’ve made.”
The sonics on HEAVY are also a departure from SiR’s last two albums, which favor atmospheric neo-soul. Here, he opts instead for more immediate beats. His vocals — at turns buttery smooth and coarse — ooze over programmed drums and modern sounding trap&B. The album’s sound mirrors SiR’s shifting moods: frantic drums crash against gentle keys and remorseful background coos.
Though the album features SiR’s rawest and most personal songwriting to date, some stumble by his at-times clumsy pen. Take the out-of-place “SIX WHOLE DAYS,” where SiR sings clichés like, “Blinded by my own foolish ways” or the generic sounding radio grab “YOU” and its stuck-in-the-mid-2000s hook: “We gon’ make a song tonight/ It’s about you.” The counterpoint is the album highlight “RICKY’S SONG,” where SiR dispenses life wisdom to his 20-year-old nephew with specificity and heartfelt delivery.
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On the album’s closing track, “BRIGHTER,” SiR trudges through the mud and find comfort in his pain: “There’s nothin’ more amazin’ than when light starts breakin’ through,” he sings with a hard-earned smile. Overall, HEAVY allows the TDE crooner to get super vulnerable and go head-to-head with his past demons.
RELEASE DATE: March 22, 2024
RECORD LABEL: Top Dawg Entertainment
Listen to HEAVY below:
