Ashnikko- DEMIDEVIL (2021)

The more I live my life, the more I feel disconnected to everyone else around me. I do go on Instagram an unhealthy amount of times every day, so I am informed about everything that goes on in the world and the memes and jokes that are relevant right now, but it's a completely different story with music. The more that streaming services dominate the market, the more likely someone can completely blow up and the general public has no idea who that person is. Pretty much Ashnikko for me. I first found out about this girl yesterday, yes yesterday, and that was only because Spotify dedicated an entire section of my home page to nothing but her music labeled "Ashnikko entered the chat". That immediately intrigued me because of her entire image, and the fact that she has TEN MILLION monthly listeners, her own Spotify billboard in Times Square for a bit, and her own wikipedia page. So this girl is popular. I had absolutely no idea she existed, and that is probably because of the app that I don't have downloaded... the one with the same name as that Kesha song.

So what is so special about this girl anyways...? I... I really don't know. I mean I can see why people like her, she looks like an anime character and writes songs about not giving a frick about anything, and sings like it, too. Her music is empowering, and basically the entire mixtape is filled with "bad bitch" songs. Thing is, there is really nothing wrong with that. We need more fresh faces in this genre of music, and with the new decade in full swing, what are these new artists going to bring to the table? It's something that we just have to wait and see. What I really don't want to see is just a straight up diss track about a general audience, aka the closing track... we'll get to that.

One thing that this album suffers from is horrible hooks and forgettable songs. Yeah yeah every album has that, but there has to be some formula that Ash uses that only works for a couple songs before it gets old, because yeah, a few songs on here are really boring. It's not unexpected that Daisy is the opening track, even though it doesn't do it's job well. It's an alright song but something about it just doesn't click for me. I feel like it grew on me and that's great, but it's still not something that I would want to go back to, but the same can be said about the majority of the songs on here. You can make an entire album saying "frick everyone and frick you" because that's totally fine, but by track 4 I was so over it. Speaking of being over it, the song Deal With It (feat 5 seconds of Kelis and... tentacle nipples...???) is actually a good song, the sprinkling hi hats and alto strings really make this one of the most special ones on here, but that momentum gets immediately slams to a halt with the song that comes right after it, Slumber Party, because let me say, it's one of the worst songs on here. The production is basically non-existent, and even though the song is a bunch of samples, hence the "mixtape" label, it really seems like they were trying so hard to make an anthem of some sort, but the end result just makes this really really boring and overly long for a song under 3 minutes.

Then we get to the really awful middle of the project, Drunk With My Friends and Little Boy. Slumber Party was just uninteresting, but Drunk With My Friends is such a bad song, in a way that I can't even describe, and what really really killed it for me was that fricking "Hey grandpa, drop the beat". And then we get Little Boy. This song really sucks. The instrumentation is uninteresting and overused that the hook doesn't even sound like a hook because nothing changes. The autotune doesn't help, and it seems like she still was drunk from the last song and the "Hey grandpa, drop the beat" returns on this song as well but it's pitched even higher than before making it more annoying than before. But here's the thing. This could be a really really great song, I really don't mind songs about how toxic anyone is, but this was just delivered in the worst way possible...

toxic... yeah... I should talk about that song.

So Toxic is one of, if not the best, songs on here. It's such a step up from Daisy, the hook is great, I love how she compares the song to Britney Bitch's Toxic, and it's just overall a bop.

And then we get to L8r Boi. THIS GIRL REALLY SAMPLED SK8R BOI ON THIS ALBUM. I fricking love that. It's such a breath of fresh air but as soon as you take a deep breath in you're greeted with the smell of semen. It doesn't matter tho, because this song is fun and I love it. I love how in the second verse she sounds like she is trying so hard not to laugh and you can tell that this track had a lot of love put into it. I love it, and this project needs to have more songs where she has this much fun, like Toxic. Songs like Little Boy are expected, however, I really want to stress the fact that music like Ashnikko is at its best when she is having fun, making songs like Good While It Lasted, being a slower and more downtempo ones on here, still is a great song. This project is just filled with hits or misses. There were meh songs on here like Cry with Grimes, and her performance was... definitely interesting, but it's an alright song. Now, the more I listen to it the more I feel like these songs are in fact growing on me, like Cry and Daisy but they're just not there yet. Others like Deal With It, Toxic and L8r Boi were the true highlights of here, but nothing. Absolutely nothing can ever compare with the god awful, really really horrible Clitoris! The Musical. uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh i really have to talk about this.

Clitoris! The Musical is one of the worst songs I have ever heard this year and it's still January. It's a song about sex and how she can never be pleasured, okay, where is this going to go? Nowhere. This song goes nowhere. I know it's supposed to go nowhere, so you need to make your style of singing or the lyrics themselves interesting, and no. You can put "cisgender heterosexual man" in lyrics to a song, and while I am none of those 3 adjectives, it still feels cringy by the absolute god awful delivery of the lyrics and the god awful lyrics themselves. It would be at least interesting if you were to compare hitting the g-spot or clitoris with something, or just at least adding something, anything, to the piano. It's a good start, but it's so awful and I hate that this is the closing moment because it leaves a horrible taste in my mouth and really somewhat altered the way I saw this in general if this is how you end your record, god i hate this song so freaking much. Not only that but I really wanted to do some research on this, maybe there was some type of intent with it, and the only reason why it exists is because Ash thought that "Good While It Lasted" was too serious. Okay so how about you just switch the placement of the songs? Switch L8r Boi with Good While It Lasted, then we have an unexpected closing moment after a trio of slow songs. That would've been better, it seriously would have been. She targets the previously mentioned cisgender heterosexual men by saying she does it so explicitly because they do the same with everyone else, and yeah, while that stuff has happened, it still doesn't make the song good.

So what have we learned here? Music like Ash's can work, there were a few bangers on here, a few meh ones, but I guess my main critisism is just that this feels underdeveloped. I am really really routing for Ashnikko to come out on top, which it seems like she already has, but what I mean by that is hype up a debut album to critical acclaim, make it great, she obviously has the potential, and I would like to say that I am not offended by any of the songs on here, the majority of them are just not for me.

4/10