BENEE’s debut album ‘Hey u x’ will finally be released to the world on November 13, and it hears her really honing the sound and vision that she’s been cohesively building through her previous EP’s ‘FIRE ON MARZZ’ and ‘STELLA & STEVE’.
The thirteen track collection includes some surprising and exciting collaborations, but none more shocking than Lily Allen and Flo Milli. With the two icons joining forces on ‘Plain’ with the New Zealand singer-songwriter, I really had huge expectations for a sass filled anthem. And in some ways what they delivered was really sassy, but through another perspective it was also very on the nose for 2020.
The whole song is about tearing down your ex’s new girlfriend character with her being a plain jane, and it just feels borderline unnecessarily nasty. I’m all for self-empowerment and feeling like you deserve better, but by tearing another innocent female down is just not the way to do it in 2020. “What a shame, your girl’s so plain. She’s got nothing on me. Hope she stays the hell away. I don’t wanna see her” she sings before later proclaiming “You went out with that? Oh, that makes me real sad”.
It’s unnecessarily negative, and could’ve been spun in a different light to be more angry at the ex and not so much on an innocent party. It just feels like an unfortunate waste of an epic collaboration with two fellow strong female artists, and not really the negative message that needs to be shared in a year full of such darkness.