ORION 2.0: VIRTUAL HUMAN

I wish I could give this album a higher rating. I seriously do. If I could just ignore all the lyrics to this album and listen to the music alone, it would be at least a solid 4 stars. Even having heard it and read the lyrics, I want to give it a 3 for the excellent instrumental performance. But I cannot in good conscience give this absolute horse sh*t a rating higher than 2 stars, because this album has, without question, the worst lyrics I've ever heard in my entire life. It's worse than "Goodbye 2 Heartbreak" by 93 Punx, which is seriously saying something (if you don't know that song, consider yourself lucky)?but at least Vic Mensa has a message that is, in the end, positive, even if it's worded horrifically.

However, listening to the first song on this album was enough, on its own, to prevent me from giving this album more than 2 stars. I co-DJ a prog rock radio show with a friend of mine on our college's radio station; I, foolishly, didn't pay attention to the lyrics when I put this song on a playlist for one of our shows. Thank GOODNESS we have to pre-record our shows due to COVID, because not only did I immediately stop the song and pick something else to play in its place, but we actually would not have been able to play the song for its use of the word c*nt?and not even a very emphatic or effective use of the word at that.

I wish with my entire heart that Orion 2.0 had just written all of these songs in French, because while I can still understand the French lyrics, they're under-enunciated just enough that I can ignore them relatively easily and pretend like I'm listening to good music. This album has literally two songs that aren't lyrically detestable, and it's the two songs that don't follow the album's theme. The first one is "Run for Life", which is a tribute to the Run for Life Project?the lyrics are still boring but at least they aren't blatantly terrible, and it supports a good cause. The other one is "Shagreen", the closing song on the album, which is inspired by Honoré de Balzac's 1831 novel "La peau de chagrin". Once again, the lyrics aren't necessarily good, persay, but they aren't terrible, and they aren't droning on about the horrors of social media and digital technology. I couldn't decide on just one or two lyrics to quote in this review, because they're all so awful. So, in conclusion, I'd like to share some of the most awful lyrical moments throughout this album, so that I can thoroughly convey why Virtual Human is the worst album from 2019 that I have listened to thus far.

All from the title track "Virtual Human", which as aforementioned, is the worst one: -"Our minds and eyes focused on our phones / ... / Cos we're stream puppets chained by a news feed -"...driven by hypnotic screens / If we don't know what virtual friends have said and done" -"What will we become ? / If we don't twit or snap our face on insta / Is this poetry or real life ? / Such a slump of self-love is not so rife"

From the song "T.O.W.U.": -"Individualism still rules / But now the time has come / For us to stop actin' like fools"

From the song "La Nuage", translated by me: -"The cloud has now exploded, releasing forever / All our data / Our secrets we thought buried are now revealed" -"The network has shut down / Like once was human reason / We will no longer cheat behind our smokescreens / The mirror of illusions has broken / When the cloud no longer wanted our childishness"

From the song "Silicon Cirkus": -"From time to time you'll be given a piece of drug / Cause someone's liked or commented a picture" -"We hack your minds / We log you in to make you pay / Thanks for keepin' your brains wide shut" -"You're gonna waste your time on your screens / You need your digital dose by any means"

From the song "Silicium", translated by me: -"This morning it's decided / I take the train of modernity / Towards a mindless exile / I run from reality" -"I speak through a voiceless screen / Of my sluggish ego / I wanted so much to change my game / In silicon valley"

And lastly, I leave you with the single worst lyric I've ever heard, once again from the title track: -"Serendipity is just a tale / Are we c*nt users on our computers ?"