Logic is swinging for the fences with the concept behind his forthcoming album Everybody. It is about a character named Atom who dies in a car crash and talks to God, who is voiced by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. "It isn’t until he’s lived in the shoes of every man, woman, and child, race, religion, color, creed, and sexual orientation that he can be taken from this plane of existence," Logic explains. Thus, each song on the album takes the perspective of one person through whose eyes Atom has seen.
We have some prescriptions for Logic if he wishes to get the most out of Everybody. Click through the gallery to read our wishlist.
One devastating banger
The three Everybody track Logic has released thus far, combined with the videos he has shared depicting him conducting choirs and weepy string sections, do not suggest that this album is going to stuffed to the gills with bangers. Which is why we're only asking for one: a sequel to Bobby Tarantino's earth-shattering, Pusha-T featuring "Wrist." Logic's in-house producer 6ix is a musical adventurer who likes to dabble in different styles, but his propensity for making gargantuan bangers is too great for Everybody to ignore.
More gospel-tinged production
"Black Spiderman" begins with a hosanna-inducing piano loop, then adds a joyous, sparkling synth texture and a royal trumpet line seemingly delivered on high from Gabriel himself before setting off an explosion of rapturous, trunk-rattling drums. It is one of the most exhilarating songs Logic has ever put out. More of this please.
Candid discussion of race
The Everybody album trailer is set 300 years in the future, when humans have created post-Earth utopia in which racial bias no longer exists. This is the sort of inclusive rhetoric that peace-loving, positivity-preaching Logic instinctively gravitates towards, but his music is better when he's venting his frustrations and exploring the dark realities of race—as he does on "Everybody" when he speaks on the challenges and confusions of growing up as a light-skinned biracial kid:
"In my blood is the slave and the master
It's like the devil playin spades with the pastor
But he was born with the white privilege!
Man what the fuck is that?
White people told me as a child, as a little boy, playin with his toys
I should be ashamed to be black
And some black people look ashamed when I rap
Like my great granddaddy didn’t take a whip to the back"
One song from the perspective of Frank Sinatra
Logic first staked his name as a hip hop artist on his Young Sinatra mixtape trilogy. He has gone on the record saying that he will never make another Young Sinatra tape. The predicament of Atom, the Everybody protagonist who must live the life of every human ever in order to get out of purgatory, offers a loophole: if one song is told from the perspective of Frank Sinatra, he can fulfill his destiny as Young Sinatra one last time.
A Top 50 hit
Logic's only single to crack the upper half of the Billboard Hot 100 or receive a RIAA plaque is "Sucker For Pain," from the Suicide Squad soundtrack. Prior to that, "Flexicution" was his only song to crack the Hot 100 at all. (It peaked at #100.)
Still, there is no doubt that Logic is capable of a Top 50 hit. "Everybody," the first single from his new album, reached #59, and his sophomore album The Incredible True Story racked up a whopping 135,000 first week sales, easily beating out Jeezy's Church in These Streets and crushing Ty Dolla $ign's (magnificent) Free TC.