ARMANI WHITE’S “ROAD TO CASABLANCO” PROVES THE PHILLY MC HAS MORE TO OFFER OUTSIDE OF HIS BIG HIT

Armani White, a Philly MC, had an unusual blowout. After years of struggle, things eventually fell into place with his breakout single, the worldwide hit song “Billie Eilish,” which features a Neptunes sample and has amassed well over 40 billion listens.Now he releases Road to CASABLANCO, his first album of music since his spectacular rise and subsequent Def Jam signing (a sly homage to his 2018 Santo-produced “Casablanco Freestyle,” but otherwise unrelated).

Despite being a major label debut, this EP doesn’t try to provide new listeners a thorough understanding of the history or biographical context, which makes sense given that he isn’t a brand-new artist. Instead, the album is a triumphant celebration of his year, which saw him move from criminally underappreciated to almost unfathomably successful. It has nine songs, six of which are attributed to “Billy Eilish” producer July Da Producer, and it revels in his overblown reputation in an effort to dispel any notion that his huge hit was really a coincidence. In actuality, it’s only the tip of the iceberg for those who are just tuning in.

For illustration, “SILVER TOOTH” with A$AP Ferg uses Bow Wow’s “Take Ya Home,” another song from Neptune’s, to show that the strategy he and July developed is successful even though the end result isn’t exactly the same.

In another song called “GOATED,” which also features Denzel Curry, Armani raps on the rewards of his labor with lines such, “I bought a cot in a crib with an office chair… beach a half-mile away, but I doubt I’ll be walking there. Any egotism, though, is countered by a spirit of grateful humility as he acknowledges how far he’s come and emphasizes that the road to success wasn’t easy and was paved with challenges.

The clearest illustration is Fridayy’s verse on the Elijah Fox-Peck produced song “Proud Of Me,” where he spits, “I sobbed on my birthday, and, yes, I’m proud of that… I’ve been around long enough to witness that from the opposite side. He recalls sleeping in his car in the same parking spot where he now keeps his dream car later in the same song.

The project’s biggest strength is how it presents Armani as having the ability to maintain records beyond several generations. In this instance, he not only receives the “Billie Eilish Legends Mix”‘s seal of approval from OGs N.O.R.E., Ludacris, and Busta Rhymes, but he also gets along well with new school idols like Fivio Foreign (over the drill sound of “BIG BET”).

Armani had mastered the art of balancing loss and struggle with gratitude and silver linings in an approachable tone in his previous projects, such as the heartbreaking Things We Lost In The Fire or the sobering Keep in Touch, which he dedicated to the memory of his father. This fit in and challenged what mainstream, youth-centric Hip Hop had evolved into by the late 2010s.

The repurposed agony that drove those two earlier undertakings has naturally been replaced with a new attitude, made possible by highs like (according to his bars) earning a million dollars in a month, even though his energy is unaffected. But to some extent, his fresh perspective combined with his winning formula causes songs like “GOATED” and “BIG BET” to blend in rather than stand out, possibly straying too far into the realm of trying to score a hit.

The unlucky thing about a huge song like “Billie Eilish” is that everything Armani releases will always be compared to it. The album Road to CASABLANCO is tremendously strong even though the closest it comes to reproducing the precise magic is a remix of that magic. Although it may not explicitly break down any creative limitations, it demonstrates his ability to consistently provide quality music with a strong rhythmic variation.

If this is what he is capable of on the way to “CASABLANCO,” it is intriguing to imagine what he has planned for the final location.