Quadeca is a 22 year old singer/songwriter, producer, YouTuber & rapper from Los Angeles, California whose early mixtapes Work in Progress, Nostalgia for the Now, Bad Internet Rapper & Out of Order were all received negatively as was the full-length studio debut album Voice Memos. His sophomore effort From Me to You proved to be decent & looks to make a stylistic departure on his 3rd album albeit deadAir Records debut given the contrastingly high praise nearly every teaser has had across the spectrum.
“sorry4dying” desires for his loved ones to heal from his death over an instrumental built around art pop, neo-psychedelia, alternative R&B, ambient, cinematic classical, glitch pop, folktronica, experimental hip hop, indietronica, new age, post-rock, emo rap & deconstructed club whereas “tell me a joke” fuses art pop, folktronica, glitch pop, chamber pop, alternative R&B, ambient pop, post-industrial, progressive pop, post-rock, trip hop & midwest emo to humorously cope with his passing.
He soon enough finds himself in spiritual limbo on “don’t mind me” bringing experimental hip hop, art pop, alternative R&B & neo-psychedelia together to talk about his mother reasonably being unable to move from her son not being with her anymore digging up old photos & looking at his belongings as a way of seeking some sort of closer just before the folktronica inspired “picking up hands” revisits his childhood home as a ghost to discover the repercussions of his death has had on those he cares deeply for.
“Born Yesterday” was my favorite single expanding beyond folktronica in favor of art pop, glitch pop, emo rap, ambient pop, progressive pop, dream pop, indie folk, neo-psychedelia & psychedelic folk of the 2 talking about watching his friends & family suffer leading into “house settling” featuring Danny Brown after the “memories we lost in translation” interlude attempts to have his family join him in the afterlife through a carbon monoxide poisoning as a way of curing his loneliness in the afterlife.
We get a bit of a post-punk vibe on “Knots” talking about walking around with ties around his neck & chest l prior to the songwriting during the piano-heavy “fantasyworld” originating from a poem Quadeca wrote as a kid flashing back to a point in the story when he was still alive. “Fractions of Infinity” blends neo-psychedelia, art pop, gospel, dream pop, progressive pop, emo rap, experimental hip hop, choral, ambient pop, trip hop, alternative R&B & post-rock realizing it won’t be enough to emphasize how he feels until the closer “cassini’s division” becomes one with nothingness.
“song to go home to” starts the deluxe run suggesting the chances of him picking up this individual from their walk home could be the last while the ambient psychedelic folk single “spring summer fall” sings about looking across the house & the baby steps not taking so long. The atmospherically melancholic “Gone Gone” sings about disappearing without a trace but after the “knots” interlude, “i’m not ready for heaven” comes to that very realization over a guitar & an accordion. The final bonus track “new goodbye” reads off as more of a 45 second outro amending his initial farewell.
The self-awareness of Quadeca’s early material mostly being trash was a huge sign of I Didn’t Mean to Haunt You marking a turning point in his career & it does so with a conceptual artistic reinvention. His production embraces the sounds of art pop, folktronica, glitch pop, experimental hip hop, ambient pop, neo-psychedelia, emo rap, post-industrial, alternative R&B, chamber pop, ambient, cinematic classical, indietronica, new age, post-rock, deconstructed club, progressive pop, trip hop, midwest emo, dream pop, psychedelic folk, post-punk, gospel & choral with the lyrics portraying cohesive tale of purgatory.
Score: 4.5/5
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