Vices: How a Small Artist Has Created a Brand New Genre

Weiland+for+High+Snobiety

Weiland for High Snobiety

Gavin “Weiland” Huff, most commonly known as Weiland, is an emerging music artist from Tampa, Florida. After an unfathomable amount of delays, Weiland’s sophomore album, Vices, was finally released on April 22, 2022. Prior to Vices, Weiland’s music was situated in the trap/hip hop genre, however, Vices is completely different to his prior work. Weiland went from making songs with gangster rappers like Chief Keef to making music that I can only describe as synthpop one would imagine on the score of the movie “Scarface”. 

 

Upon first listen, I was put off. The snippets Weiland teased for Vices were completely different to what was on the album. However, upon a second listen I was absolutely blown away. Jarod Fisher, known as “Fish”, produced many of these tracks under the guidance of coveted industry producer, Mike Dean. Weiland and Fish repeatedly showcase their chemistry in this album on tracks like “Better Place”, “Dangerous Woman” and “Can’t Save Her”. The best way to describe the style of this album is a modernized Daft Punk, with influence from the 80’s. As weird as that sounds, almost paradoxical, it works extremely well with Weiland’s vocals drowned in reverb and other effects like vocal glitches and repetitive adlibs. The lyrical content of this album consists mostly of repetitive choruses paired with sound effects and reverb-heavy mixing, harmonizing with Fish’s countermelodies to make sonic art. 

Although the album doesn’t contain any explicit language, upon reanalyzing the lyrics, it is obvious that there is a deeper and more mature meaning behind the lyrics centered around love and heartbreak, potentially alluding to some destructive habits Weiland has, or his “Vices”. The music itself is quite paradoxical, with upbeat instrumentals, contrasting this with depressive vocals. Having been a big fan of his music for years since his SoundCloud rap days, I believe that this work is one of his best, and I am excited to see where he goes with this vision next. However, I must say, I wish the original rendition of Vices was officially released, where he combined influences of synthpop with his familiar rapping style, from all the leaks and snippets I had heard from that album, it easily may have been one of the best, if not, the best work to come out of the underground music scene. Regardless of the old version, I believe that Vices, sonically, is a 9/10 album, only falling short in the over-repetitive usage of heavy reverb and distortion in its mixing and lack of variety in beat selection.  This album will have a great effect on the underground music scene and will age like fine wine. I recommend this album to people of all ages, there is appeal for every type of person, using nostalgic beats with modernized lyrics; essentially being postmodern