Normani – ‘Dopamine’ review: belated, yes, but also brilliant

14 June, 2024

Normani

Fans anticipating a new album can get pretty naggy – just ask Rihanna, whose pivot from pop colossus to billionaire businesswoman hasn’t stopped constant questions about ‘R9’. Normani, who rose to prominence alongside Camila Cabello in US girl-group Fifth Harmony, knows her long-awaited solo record has become a running joke. Famously, she tweeted back in July 2018: “I have my album title y’all.” Nearly four years later, with the album still not on the release slates, one Twitter wag replied: “Did you forget it?”

So, when Normani finally announced this album’s title in February, she did so on a playfully titled new website: wheresthedamnalbum.com. In interviews, she’s attributed the LP’s lengthy gestation to personal issues – in recent years, she’s supported both of her parents through cancer treatment – and to a musical identity crisis. “I know what it feels like to be in a position to put out records that I don’t believe in,” Normani said in February.

For this reason, it’s hardly surprising that ‘Dopamine’ doesn’t include Normani’s glorious 2019 launch single ‘Motivation’, a summery club banger she’s since dismissed as too “easy”. However, the album does find space for her three-year-old Cardi B collab ‘Wild Side’, a sultry, Aaliyah-sampling R&B bop, though it’s sequenced rather tellingly at the very end.

Nothing here is quite as infectious as ‘Motivation’, though the Janet Jackson-esque funk bop ‘Take My Time’ – a song title that can’t not look pointed – comes close. Elsewhere, Normani and producers including Tommy Brown (Ariana Grande, The Weeknd) and Stargate (Rihanna, Beyoncé) generally cleave to a sleek midtempo: across 13 tracks, she glides between glistening sex jams (‘All Yours’, ‘Lights On’), atmospheric R&B (‘Insomnia’, ‘Distance’) and even a swaggering strip club anthem (‘Still’). Weirdly, a sparse track recently released as a single, ‘1.59’, is one of the few sluggish cuts here. Only Normani’s Whitney Houston-style spoken intro – “turn me up, uh, turn me up” – makes much of an impression.

‘Dopamine’ also contains a skittering duet with James Blake, ‘Tantrums’, on which Normani delivers one of the album’s punchiest lyrics: “You’re nobody – you’re just somebody I used to fuck from time to time.” It’s typical of an album that shimmers with a cool, calm and yes, unhurried confidence. It may have taken six years, but ‘Dopamine’ sounds like the (damn) album Normani was meant to make all long.