D.R.A.M.: "Signals (Throw It Around)"

Virginia rapper D.R.A.M. has had a banner year: He landed a Beyoncé co-sign. He went viral. And he watched as Drake’s “Hotline Bling”, a replica of his hit “Cha Cha”, nearly topped the charts, pushing his own song aside in the public’s collective memory. But his biggest hurdle has been coming up with a proper follow-up to “Cha Cha”—a problem he has rectified with the R&B slow jam “Signals (Throw It Around)”. A standout from his latest EP, Gahdamn!, “Signals” looks to turn an unspoken mutual attraction into something more.

Almost inherently, this is a song about consent, and D.R.A.M. uses traditional color-codes to denote the barriers to entry: green is a permitted touch, yellow is a dodgy response, red a full-on cold shoulder. He spends the duration of the slow-burning track trying to decipher these conflicting micro-communiques in hopes of hitting pay dirt. D.R.A.M. deems certain actions from a nameless female as sexual cues, but she refuses his advances. In his eyes, she’s a temptress—”And when I get you drunk, all up in the club/ You say that you trynna come over but you ain’t tryna fuck (what the fuck is up?)”—but he hears her “no.” It’s the same line of thinking that turned Netflix & chill into a sexual innuendo, though D.R.A.M. is explicit.

“Signals” is one of two post-”Cha Cha” D.R.A.M. highlights (including “$”, and not counting his spot on Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment‘s Surf), taking a serene soundscape outfitted with bird sounds and a cooing synth and filling it with his thickening timbre. He milks his woolly voice until it strains, pushing ever so slightly into falsetto before dipping back into his more traditional range. The trotting beat, which breaks down into an isolated drum and bass rhythm in the mid-section, bleeds into a bouncy, dance-friendly R&B house blend. He leaves it open-ended, but he’s asking the right questions. With its infectious groove and embracing melody, the song’s biggest signal is that D.R.A.M. is headed in the right direction.

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