At his peak in the mid-'90s, Babyface was arguably the American music industry's hottest producer/songwriter. As can be expected with a Babyface retrospective, the songs are top notch and the production is excellent. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. FACE’s variety and grit put the album in conversation with his father’s prayer from the beginning: Ray is on the right track, and his legacy is slowly beginning to take shape.Ĭatch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Beneath his cold resolve, he shows a yearning to move to the next level of stardom, and the mix of regional styles never dilutes the essence of what makes Ray’s music great. Thankfully, the handful of stumbles have little to do with Ray or his raps.
These moments distract from Ray’s presence and feel less like songs than naked grabs at specific markets. A serviceable but completely unrelated Pusha T guest verse and Wiz Khalifa’s one-man weed nostalgia act waste the interesting beats and otherwise good verses on “Dancing With the Devil” and “Kush & Codeine,” respectively. “Blood, Sweat, & Tears” is more indistinct, and boring, than its twin verses from Ray and guest G Herbo deserved. 808 Mafia and Southside’s menacing beat on the first half of “6 Mile Show” is undercut by an unnecessary ATL Jacob beat change that ruins the song’s atmosphere. Some of the album’s stabs at more mainstream-friendly production barely register.
Atlanta producer DJ Esco’s four placements mostly match the nervy energy of Ray’s best beat choices-“Tunnel Vision” and “Motown Music,” in particular, manage to be expansive without overwhelming Ray’s voice. “Overtime” is far and away the strangest song on FACE, but it isn’t the only moment where Ray navigates relatively new territory. Flint mainstay Carlo teams up with Swedish producer and Sad Boy member Yung Gud on the standout track “Overtime,” the drums and piano meshing with the spacey instrumental underlay to create a vibe that’s weird and enticing. Producer Pooh Beatz decorates “Me, Wife & Kids” with a deep low end and whirring synths, creating a menacing swing for Ray to demolish. He reunites with Icewear Vezzo on “6 Mile Show,” passing the baton like a hot potato over 808 Mafia and Southside’s wailing sirens. FACE features more Michigan names in the credits than last time, and every feature from the Great Lake State plays to Ray’s strengths. Ray’s world is bleak and flashy in equal measure, and an all-star team of guests and producers steps up to further flesh it out.
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Moods shift on a dime, from celebratory to paranoid to reflective-especially on songs like the heartfelt closer “Motown Music”-with Ray’s flat affect linking his non-sequiturs together like zip ties on a designer sneaker. He moves similarly through mid-album highlight “Me, Wife & Kids,” stuffing money into a blue Goyard bag while questioning what’s really driving his ambition (“Could be the paper or the percs, I been fucking itching”).
At the end of his verse on “Overtime,” within four short bars, he darts from protecting his nephew on the cold streets of Detroit to touring the world and wearing clothes from the Japanese streetwear brand Human Made. He likes to stack good and bad thoughts one after the other in his verses, revealing an intimacy to his words that’s at odds with his tough-guy persona. That’s ironic, considering that Ray’s writing has a sharp sense of symmetry. The same mismatch between beats that plagued Unfuckwitable lingers slightly here as well. The balance between his street-rap origins and more conventional fare still isn’t perfect, but Ray is closer to finding his sense of equilibrium. But unlike Unfuckwitable, most of Ray’s experiments here feel natural, and he’s given himself more time to spend in the comfort zone that endeared him to fans on earlier projects like 2019’s MIA Season 2.
At 20 tracks and nearly an hour in length, FACE often scans as The Essential Babyface Ray, a variety pack of beats from different subsets of hip-hop from Michigan and beyond. He’s been in the game for over a decade, and after the mainstream breakthrough of his 2021 EP Unfuckwitable, Ray is ready to show his growing range. Ray’s father’s opening prayer also complements FACE’s epic scope, and not just in surface-level references (“I know heaven real, man/I done been to hell and back,” he says on the excellent single “Sincerely Face”).
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