FATHER FIGURE
Is it a flex to be a good dad? Where are the pop songs about loving your spouse? Jon Bellion has a bone to pick with the types of things esteemed in our culture, and on FATHER FIGURE, his first album in seven years, he makes clear what really matters to him. “There's nothing sadder than a father stuck inside a much, much younger man's bravado,” he raps on “ITALIA BREEZE,” a breezy ode to his Long Island Italian heritage. The singer/songwriter can be polarizing, in part because of his genre-promiscuity—he’s just as indebted to golden era NYC rap as he is to the arena-pop-rock of Coldplay and Oasis, and he even flirts with country on a Luke Combs-assisted track. But after his seven year hiatus, his sampling is more inventive, his flows more voguish, his faith more focused. Bellion has always been cocky, but on the titular track he turns his New York swagger toward the care of his family (“Father figure, known to protect / I do that shit however”) and he flips an iconic status symbol into a metaphor for self-aggrandizement: “Big Ferrari / You look so sick inside your big Ferrari / Gave up your children just to be somebody.” “WASH” is an unselfconsciously schmaltzy serenade to Bellion’s wife—a contemporary Song of Songs that blurs the line between religious devotion and spousal desire: “Treat your body like a river and / Let it wash over me;” “Lay your grace on me / Hallelu', you amaze me.” Bellion’s stilted, syncopated delivery on the chorus bursts with enthusiasm—an endearingly overeager boy seeing his spouse naked for the first or five thousandth time. He can’t contain his affection—six tracks later is “WASH2,” an acoustic version of the same song. On the second half of “GET IT RIGHT,” he slips into a nonchalant flow over a sunny sample to celebrate the quotidian beauty of domestic life:
“I know a lot of CEOs with billions and resentful kids, yikes
I also know a lot of famous people that are wishing for an average life
Talking, Tums on the nightstand at sixty-five
The good shit, babies and sleepless nights
The craziness of man and wife
The good, the bad, the dark, the light.”
Bellion has always assimilated and subverted trends, and FATHER FIGURE is most interesting when he integrates the cadences and aesthetics of contemporary pop to skewer its superficiality. But in the end he’s not stuck on polemics—he’s too busy having fun with his family.