Take “Present,” a slow banger filled with flitting acoustic guitars and syn-slapped beats and whooshes. The bari-tenor lets his lower octave dip and rumble righteously. Somewhere between world-weary and wilding out, the “Scenic Drive” tape ups his usual game considerably. Along with fashioning streaming hits, these cuts expanded his sonic breadth beyond lo-fi synth-hop and his emotional dimensions beyond low-level anxiety. While his albums were nearly devoid of guest features, Khalid more than made up for them with between-album tracks such as “Love Lies” with Normani, “Lovely” with Billie Eilish, “This Way” with H.E.R.,and “Eastside” with Benny Blanco and Halsey. Khalid defined the ills, chills and thrills of mall-kid, post-millennial angst with first-album hits such as “Young Dumb & Broke,” “Another Sad Love Song” and “Cold Blooded,” then went on to refine his palate with his sophomore effort, 2019’s “Free Spirit.” Like Frank Ocean without the tension, or the Weeknd without weirdness, Khalid played a unassumingly soulful young man’s game fresh out of high school, with 2016’s spaciously sleepy ballad “Location,” and his equally drowsy but daring debut album, “American Teen,” the next year. When R&B-pop wunderkind Khalid tweeted in October that his next work “was no longer an EP, it’s way more special to me,” the heartfelt 23-year-old vocalist-songwriter set a high for what would become his first “ tape” – don’t call it a mixtape! – “Scenic Drive” Dropped Friday morning, “Scenic Drive” is a pulsating, minor marvel of economical soul-hop that satisfies all that Khalid fanatics have come to crave - that high dozy warble, those out-of-the-blue hooks - while pushing his new-found exigency (and lower range) into the future.

Khalid album review