In today’s music scene, a lot of rappers work with the same old shtick of the mumble rapping lyrics about women, money, and drugs over trap beats with dark and dreary instrumentals. Yet, some musicians decide to take a leap and break away from this mold. Owen Finn is different from what you would typically categorize as a “normal” rapper. With aid from producer, Alex Fumo, Finn had recently released his debut album “The Dark”, an album full of eclectic R&B and rap songs that range from party jams to relatively deeper and more introspective songs. This release shows itself as a stark contrast from many of the releases we see nowadays from this genre.

The first thing one would notice from the album is Finn’s unique vocal style. It is not necessarily the cleanest vocal approach, but what Finn lacks in classical technicality he makes up for in pure personality and charisma. Finn’s persona is at the forefront of this LP bringing up the energy throughout the entire album. His vocal styles range from standard rapping, to calm and relaxed vocals, and even soulful/gospel-esque singing that shows off the versatility of his musicality. You can tell on each song that he is passionate about every word he’s singing and means everything he says.

This extends to the production on the album, which also has a vast array of styles that goes on within it. Songs can be very sample heavy, relying on a lot of older sounds and samples from early TV, but then extends to songs that are entirely original compositions and instrumentals, showing off the range and versatility of Alex Fumo as a producer and this gives the album a lot of character and personality. Genre wise this album ranges to being very R&B driven and soulful, it even contains bits of influences from indie rock. This album really shines on songs like “Blue” and “The Dark pt. 2” where the quirkiness of the Finn and Fumo shines through a lot more, again giving the music more of a unique character.

Unfortunately, some of the songs do fall in the same trappings that are very typical of music within this genre. A good chunk of the lyrics during a few songs in the latter half of the LP fall into these traps, which would be fine if Finn was saying anything different about these topics, but many times this is not the case. It is also a little disappointing because songs like “Crumble” and “Berries & Batter” shows that Finn has many interesting things to say about topics like not losing hope and crumbling due to reliance on substances like drugs.

Overall, I feel like Owen Finn’s debut showed off a lot of amazing potential from an artist that is very unique from his contemporaries. There is a lot of interesting ideas both musically and lyrically within this album that makes it worth the listen for anyone looking to support local Chicago musicians. Even though not everything he talks about in this album is 100% “fresh and original”, there is enough on here that makes “The Dark” an interesting and fun listen for any music fan.