Miguel

art dealer chic

Conversations around male-fronted R&B in 2012 were dominated between Frank Ocean and the Weeknd, but Miguel Jontel Pimentel offered a third option. His debut All I Want is You—which initially slipped out of the Billboard charts almost immediately upon release—managed to re-enter and sell 400,000 copies by the time he followed up with Kaleidoscope Dream which nabbed him his first hit with “Adorn.” It genuinely seemed like he was in it for the long haul.

You know how the story goes: pop audiences are fickle. He released his third album in 2015 which—despite placing higher than ever on the Billboard chart at #2 and despite being his best album—tanked in sales, becoming his first album that failed to go Platinum. In 2017, he leaned harder into rap features to course correct, but it didn’t matter: he completely dropped out of the mainstream pop discussion, and wouldn’t release another album until this year. The way I rationalize it, the market for shallow bad boys was quickly becoming oversaturated (very true) and then we all collectively realized how lame that shit was (wish it were true).

I actually first heard of him when he was still operating as “Miguel Jontel,” gracing the underground west coast late-2000s classic Beneath the Heavens by Blu & Exile on two tracks—he went to high school with Blu in San Pedro—which is sort of like first hearing about Anderson .Paak because he was wondering if Pitchfork would ever notice him on milo’s early albums (which is exactly when I first heard .Paak): the indie rap to R&B superstar pipeline! But working with Usher immediately afterwards didn’t just prompted a dropping of any extra names as well as an almost complete separation of the underground afterwards; though Miguel still worked with Blu from time to time, the rappers that he chose to associate himself with were less and less interesting while any modesty that made his early work endearing went out the window.

Whatever my feelings of debut All I Want Is You may be, it’s hard to reconcile that it has one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard in “Pay Me,” a hateful representation of Black Eyed Peas-esque maximal pop replete with as many blowhorns as producer Fisticuffs could jam into the song. Almost just as frustrating is the Justin Timberlake-Pharrell knockoff “To the Moon” that makes me yearn so badly to listen to Prince’s “1999” when he starts things off by saying “I’ve got a rocket in my pocket / And I’m ready to go.” “My Piece” uses an annoyingly chipmunk pitch-shifted sample of Notorious B.I.G that makes me want to listen to Pusha T/Timbaland handle the same source for “Untouchable” in 5 years’ time; the line “I got a firearm fetish” is genuinely pathetic. So yeah, not a good album by any means. The album blows its load early. The prickly percussion of “Sure Thing” makes sure we don’t dwell on the clunky lyrics (it opens with the mere threat of loving a lover like a brother which is for some reason is a common sentiment among pop stars, and then almost every line in the first proper verse afterwards is worse somehow). “All I Want is You” has an easy-groovin’ bass although that even Cole can’t blunder up with his “Tryna celebrate my Independence Day, Will Smith” line. The Tik Tok generation found “Sure Thing” and made it Miguel’s biggest hit ever. They did the same thing to Blood Orange’s contemporary “Champagne Coast,” which is ultimately the better song from someone who outpaced Miguel in just about every aspect except vocals.

Case-in-point about his vocals is “Adorn” from sophomore Kaleidoscope Dream. Nothing else in his discography compares; he embellishes the song with tasteful additions, like stuttering his way to sing “Leh-leh-leh-let it dress you down” as if he’s so excited at the beauty and physicality of the woman in front of him — or too shy to ask her straight up. “Adorn” is his masterpiece, a stunning piece of actually soulful pop music that the Billboard charts could always use more of. The very next song is a thud, whiplashing back and forth from its overblown choruses and verses, although the interpolation of the Zombies’ “Time of the Season” at the end of “Don’t Look Back” is a surprise that highlighted an interest in psychedelia that set him apart from the quickly overcrowding R&B around this time. “Do You…”—cute potential double entendre in the phrase “Do you like drugs” (question) and “Do you like drugs” (sexual)—has the lines “What about matinee movies and pointless secrets / Midnight summers, swim private beaches / Rock, paper, scissors, wait! Best out of three” which are Miguel at his most romantic in a way that’s honestly reminiscent of Taylor Swift around this time. “Use Me” and “How Many Drinks” glimpse a modesty that he’d leave completely behind: asking the girl to take it easy on him as he’s nervous on the former, while hoping it takes only two or three drinks for her to consider leaving with him on the latter. “Candles in the Sun” is the serious closer over contemplative, minimal synths; note that surprise drum hit to the line “Sun goes down, heroes often get shot.” The album teases greatness in flashes but just misses the mark for me.

Awful and ridiculous cover or not, Wildheart is his peak as an album; there’s a Spartan mix to the funk that elevates the lesser material on songs like “DEAL,” and the highlights—mostly in the first half—are his best songs not named “Adorn.” The thrill over the incessant crunch of the bass on “a beautiful exit” is palpable, and he sings the chorused “We’re gonna die young” with a conviction, as if he’s atop a motorcycle with his arms outstretched. “the valley” is a lustful performance over distorted synths that’s appropriately over-the-top as he lists out body parts; Prince didn’t get anywhere playing it cool and reserved, you know. “NWA” is a sweaty groover that plays up the contrast between Miguel’s falsetto and the deeper voice of Kurupt — his most interesting rap collaboration. “coffee”—thankfully Wale-less here, who provided the obligatory hip-hop verse in the single version—has a winsome vocal melody and a physical rush in the words “Wordplay turns into gunplay / Gunplay turns into pillow-talk / Pillow-talk turns into sweet dreams / Sweet dreams turns into coffee in the morning.” “waves” is a hit that should have been; the subtle effects applied to his vocals (“Don’t stop…”) make it feel like an R&B-MGMT crossover that we never had. He doesn’t—can’t?—keep up the goods. “what’s normal anyway” features bleatingly boring choruses which try to convince you, me, everyone and himself that he can sing about more than sex, and it’s obvious he can’t. “leaves” is an attempt at alternate rock radio that compares being broken up with, uh, the first-ever use of the atomic bomb that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

War & Leisure was the moment Miguel dropped out of the conversation of good music. Lead single “Sky Walker” was the complete opposite sort of music that I wanted him to make, replete with a frat house party-catering music video that looked like there was a conscious decision to make up for the loss of sales (Kaleidoscope Dream: 535,000 units sold; Wildheart: 65,000 units sold). In an interview with Billboard he talked about the album’s “political undertones,” saying, “This album is intentionally about the ethos right now, that we are right in the middle of all this. We’re trying to flourish in the middle of all this […] but then we’re dealing with these same problems, this injustice, wars between politicians with egos. Like, 140 characters are going to get us into a war right now?” He wasn’t kidding when he said undertones. The invocation of “Korean missiles in the sky” on “Banana Clip” is as political as the album gets except when J. Cole shows up to tell a woman that she’s been on his mind as much as Donald Trump — crazy that it took until 2024 for people to clue in that Cole was lame. (Imagine holding your partner by the hands, looking her dead in the eyes, and saying you think about her as much as the president.) Par for the course for a Trump-era album — too many artists using vague vibes that was catnip for critics. He still sounds incredible, vocally—he’s the only reason to listen to “Pineapple Skies”—but there isn’t a single song here that I’d miss if I didn’t hear it again because almost all of the colour that defined his last two albums are gone; when he sings “We gon’ keep it psychedelic…” on “Sky Walker,” it’s a shameless lie. The opening song threatens “I got a mind like Columbine” which outdoes the Hiroshima line in pure tastelessness; “Wolf” has more of that bad-boy posturing including via resurrecting a dead meme (“Hide your kids and hide your wife”).

Which brings us finally to CAOS, his first album in eight years released last month. If he wanted a comeback, he would have penned a hit but there’s nothing on the album that’s as catchy as “Sky Walker,” let alone “Sure Thing” or “Adorn.” Instead, the album is surprisingly bleary to an almost lo-fi and psychedelic degree, which I find far more mature for a frustratingly immature artist. (How immature? He’s still proudly playing Call of Duty on “Angel Song.”) The title track is an interesting mix of a sample of MUSYCA Children’s Choir, piledriving rhythms, and a Spanish guitar that might honestly be his most daring song, sonically; “RIP” uses an EDM synth-line to introduce the beat drop which turns out to be a relentless drum track that he’s never rode before. But the songs just aren’t there. “The Killing” starts with the promise of a woozy bass that it ditches within seconds for a by-the-numbers trap beat; “Triggered” is a 2-minute track that worships at Kanye West circa 2013-6’s feet in 2025 (including an autotune-loaded “bridge” like the climax of “New Slaves” spliced in); he switches to Spanish on the ballad “El Pleito” on a DJ Dahi production that’s frankly beneath one of the more inventive producers of yesterdecade. George Clinton elevates the closer, but it’s too late by that point.

In 2015, while promoting Wildheart, Miguel popped off against Frank Ocean, “To be completely honest — and no disrespect to anyone — I genuinely believe that I make better music, all the way around,” he said, before adding, “It’s interesting, but we’ll see who’s in it for the long haul. It’s like a marathon, you know?” Sprint or marathon, it’s clear who won. No one thinks about this guy anymore, and besides a playlist of about ten songs, I sure won’t after writing this.

All I Want is You - C+
Kaleidoscope Dream - B+
Wildheart - A-
War & Leisure - C+
CAOS - B-