Frank Peters

I have to admit, I hadn’t heard of the Frank Peters before today so when the album dropped on my desk – ‘Frank Peters – 50 Shades of Frank’ – I was expecting something sardonic but not hip-hop infused. There’s something so un-Hip-Hop with the artist’s name, but also symptomatic of the genre’s acceptability in mainstream culture and the album’s candid approach. Artists no longer have to hide behind split-personality pseudonyms anymore and they needn’t be an egotistical caricature of an individual to make it in the industry.

MTV’s Artist to Watch 2013 and VH1’s Artist on the Rise, Frank Peters brings a trunk-load of his authentic personality mixed with that South Carolina party-hard spirit to create an album that is uniquely Frank.

Noticeably, most of the songs are preceded with an interlude seductively delivered by a female narrator in numerous different languages. I’ve decoded this enigmatic feature in many way: Immediate thoughts are that the narrators are reciting the opening paragraph of a new chapter each time - that’s easy to acknowledge with the unsubtle intertextual reference to the famous series of erotic novels that the album title punned. Then you take into account that each interlude is delivered by females from different countries which supports the aforementioned hypothesis – the significance of which possibly alluding to the book’s success internationally, predominantly in the female market – an achievement Peters may believe he shares either career-wise or romantically. One thing both texts undoubtedly share is a similar commitment to fantastical hedonism and it’s clear that Peters appropriated some psychologies to do with the pleasure/pain dynamic from the book to make his album more enthralling.

Described as ‘party music infused with real life’ by the man himself, many of Peters’ songs on this album revel in superficiality but nowadays the young generations have the means to honestly live the rockstar lifestyle, so it’s no longer a distant dream.

That’s who the album is aimed at – generation Z; the solipsistic post-millennials who love the swaggering, contemporary rap cannon fodder that consists of a heady cocktail of money, drugs, sex and violence. Peters delivers it all with an effortless Redman-esque flow and recalcitrant attitude to full-bodied, atmospheric beats that aren’t elementally complicated. Musically, the synth-based lilt of the instrumentals is inspired by the Sugar Hill Records roots of Hip-Hop, so it’s great for anyone who enjoys the old as much as the new.