His voice is sharp and the melody is clean but it only makes me want to press pause and spin a Miguel cut, something with momentum. It transitions into “Motion,” a light and glimmery smooth jam that features Khalid without any vigor whatsoever.
Khalid wants to be taken seriously on the R&B end but drops “Salem’s Interlude” which has to be the first R&B voicemail interlude to not be petty and hurtful. Khalid sounds at home having another vocalist to bounce off of and not having to carry the future hit on his own.īut Sun City is lighthearted to a fault. Khalid’s most successful branching-out moment is when he becomes the latest artist to jump on the money-printing reggaeton bandwagon for a bouncy track with Empress Of and background vocals from Spanish singer Rosalía.
On “Saturday Nights,” a guitar ballad that sounds like the ending credits on a CW teen drama, Khalid’s juvenile lovestruck songwriting comes to surface: “All the things that I know, that your parents don’t.” The song follows in the path of another Charlie Handsome acoustic guitar production, Post Malone’s “Go Flex” but with none of the edge. But that versatility also weighs down Khalid exposing how he’s not exceptional at one single thing but just pretty good at a bunch. Khalid prides himself on versatility, a stylistic range that is showcased throughout the EP-no two tracks are the same.
