In the two years that have gone by since Alyst dropped “Vibin’,” the first song I heard to bear his name in the byline, I think he’s gotten a lot more focused with his linguistics, especially in how he structures a narrative. While he’s being more melodic in this track than he’s ever been before, he also sounds a lot more poetic in his delivery, developing contrast without losing any continuity in his verses. He’s come a long way, and a lot of his peers could stand to take a page out of his book, aesthetically speaking.
This groove is admittedly rather inelegant, but it needs to be. Let’s be honest here – Alyst’s vocal is too classy to lean on an even rhythm and sound as powerful as it should, and by going with a grittier tempo in this performance, he’s able to really spotlight both his diction and the decadence of his natural voice. He’s leaving the meaningless extras on the sidelines and instead pulverizing us with the muscularity of a melody, which takes a lot more courage than most of the rappers in his league are able to muster.
The hook in “Gold” doesn’t blush the way the harmonies do, but this is largely thanks to the synthetic faceting beneath the bassline. There’s a place for synth melodicism in hip-hop, and from my perspective, it’s in a neo-balladic offering like this one. Alyst isn’t outright crooning, but he might as well be; the warmth of the instrumentation makes his every word all the harder for us to resist, which in itself is a talent that plenty of players would spend the entirety of their careers either trying to cultivate or possess in some other capacity with little or no luck at all.
Alyst is coming into his own big right now, and though he might not have been trying to shame the competition, he does as much when he steps up to the microphone in “Gold.” Affluent Oscar Sanchez does his part to make this a gem of a single, but at the end of the day, it’s going to be the main man himself getting the credit for its success, as everything from the arrangement to the production style is centered on giving us a prime preview of his ambitions. I’m feeling Alyst’s vibe, and I think other rap fanatics are going to say the same thing this January.
Heather Savage
