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Track Review: Potent Whisper - 'One Second Chance' Ft. Andrae Bentley
RnB/Hip Hop | Monday 10th June 2013 | Jake
Brit school graduate Potent Whisper has been making his own brand of semi-conscious UK hip hop since 2011, blowing up a year later with the release of 2012's singles 'Between The Lines' and 'Boom Bap Bounce', both of which received airplay on Radio1. These singles were well received, fresh production and great features combined with Potent's bouncy kind of aggressive delivery made them the successful tunes that they were.
In Potent's latest offering however, he drops nearly everything that made his last releases great. 'One Second Chance' is essentially a song about messing up a relationship and wanting to fix it, or in Potent's words 'receiving one second chance'. Potent's dealt with love before (see 'Moving In The Moonlight'), so lyrically its not a massive departure for him, but with such an overused topic its difficult to handle it well without being boring or clichéd. Unfortunately, Potent falls into this trap with cringey lines like 'I never deserved your love, you were a virgin I was the first you touched', 'You can be on the beach in the sun in my arms' and arguably the worst which happens to be the chorus sung by Andrae Bentley, 'You're my sun and moon I'm in love with you'.
Lyrics aside, Potent's delivery feels weak - he's pretty much talking over the beat - this isn't necessarily a bad thing but its certainly not where Potent shines, check out his delivery on 'Between The Lines' and 'Boom Bap Bounce' for a funky bouncy flow that compliments the energy in his voice and makes him interesting to listen to.
Another area where this tune falls short is the production. In his previous work production from Wu-Lu (Mileage) and Dirty Stanz backed up Potent's MC'ing nicely and a few of them would definitely work as stand alone instrumentals, which in my opinion is a sign of quality production. Not so much in 'One Second Chance'. Major Keys and Sheri Whitehead handle the music here and to be honest I really don't feel it. It sounds simplistic and cheesy (I guess it backs up the lyrics) with the same boring chord progression repeated on guitar almost throughout, a simple keyboard riff that comes in occasionally with no variation, and finally a minimal drum pattern with no breaks that's lazily looped through the whole song.
To top it off, the video that accompanies this song is amateur. I didn't come in expecting something like Kanye West's 'Runaway' but a great video can be made on a low budget, check out Potent's video for 'Move In The Moonlight' for a great example of this. The whole (black and white) video has this dodgey blurry filter over it, the kind you'd see on a Bollywood music video. The actual shots themselves also have an amateur feel to them although this may be down to the direction of the video more than anything else. The acting in this video is also sub-par, bordering comical - having said that though, Potent comes across well here displaying sincere looking emotion and convincing body language.
Although its good to see artists varying their style and with departing stuff they're comfortable with, I just feel this isn't what Potent should be doing. His strengths lie in his more bouncy, aggressive tunes and I feel Major Keys and Sheri Whitehead could have offered more production-wise to support this. Not his finest offering but if Potent acknowledges this hopefully he'll stick to what he's good at. Check out the tune and video here:
Jake P @LoopBe1
