Jhené Aiko made fans wait more than six years for the follow-up to her March 2020 Billboard 200 No. 2 album Chilombo. But on Friday (Sept. 11), their patience was rewarded with the release of the singer’s just-announced fourth full-length album, Westide Whimsy.
The packed and stacked 20-track LP that Aiko has said is an homage to her home city of Los Angeles, finds the seven-time Grammy nominee paying tribute with a crew of fellow L.A. natives, including Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, Tyga and OHMA, as well as reported upstate boyfriend, San Francisco native Larry June.
The ethereal ballad “So Good” finds Aiko, 38, and Lamar, 39, trading lines about the perfect love, with K.Dot languidly singing, “Face, stupid/ Body, stupid/ Hottie, stupid/ Got me, stupid/ Beauty and the brains, aye, what we doin’/ Money out here, baby, what we, I say.” Later in the song, he slips into a laid-back flow over the song’s subtle beat, rhyming, “Bamboo hula hoop, we locked in/ 911 too cute, we boxed in/ Knock it off your b–ch boof, we are not friends/ Her mama got some ass, too.”
The wide-ranging collection opens with the one-minute jazzy song snippet “Wild Cat(s),” which subtly slips into the dreamy leave-the-pain-behind ballad “Ghost” and the hazy, piano-forward love-lost lament “Break.” The first collab drops in on track four, with TDE’s Ab-Soul tossing in supportive ad-libs on the simmering kiss-off bubbler “Love Bomb.”
While the groove remains reliable midtempo on “Ceiling (Freestyle),” “Nothing Nice to Say,” the Tyga collab “Like, Whatever” the Motown-esque “Don’t Be That Guy” and “He Belongs,” an homage to an elusive man who “belongs to the streets,” the beat ticks up a couple notches on the June-guesting slow roller “Neighbors.”
The collection drifts to a gentle landing with the lets-take-it-slow homage to a “unicorn lover” titled, naturally, “Unicorn,” as well as the sound bath-like “Nami’s Haiku,” meditative “A Living Light” and the OHMA-featuring closer “Golden Coast,” an homage to the resilience of the City of Angels on which Aiko sings, “Shining through your darkest nights/ You still got a lot of light/ You’re still a classic/ Magic every time.”
Listen to Westside Whimsy below.