rate.fmrate.fmLog in

Review

Get the app

Albums

Ego

Bibi Bourelly

2016

Ego

Release Date:  2016

By Pitchfork

Reviewed October 28, 2015

If you didn't know Bibi Bourelly had written "Bitch Better Have My Money", you might think she's up after Lera Lynn at the sad bar in "True Detective". "Ego" sounds more like the White Stripes than it does like Rihanna. That inclination may explain how she got Rihanna to sound so punk. Just 21 now (though she announces that she's 19 in the song's opening lines, along with the fact she has a "big ego"), Bourelly has a voice that's more than lived in, scratchy with a lifetime's worth of unfiltered cigarettes. She uses it at a medium pace here, taking on the barely sung cadence of a dirty blues singer. But when she riffs a repeated word ("I won't never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever give a fuck") you get a taste of the nimbleness she's hiding. On the song's bridge, she finally pounces. The bigness of her voice there is impressive, though she lets it out for just four lines of braggadocio. If that's what it takes, we wish her all the success in the world.-=-=-=-

8:00 PM · Oct 28, 2015