Hi, everyone. Greenthony Screentano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of this new Lucy Bedroque project, c.

Here we have a brand new album from producer, singer, rapper, songwriter Lucy Bedroque, who is coming back with their first proper album for deadAir, building off the splash that was made when they originally signed to the label and then immediately dropped their Unmusique mixtape in 2025. Which was a very solid, very enjoyable project. Melodic, jittery, a somewhat experimental addition to the rage canon if you wanted to label that project as such.

For a current-day underground rap project, it was perfectly good and fine on its own, but simultaneously showed a lot of potential and room for improvement, with the production being kind of rough around the edges. But again, an underground rapper making a project that's a little harsh and noisy is nothing new these days.

So with that, I went in to see, wondering how Lucy would improve upon or expand their sound. And we certainly get a few surprises out of the gate: no listed features, a slightly trimmer tracklist at fifteen songs, and the opener, "ALL SPEAKERS GO TO HEAVEN," which seems kind of like a bit of a nod to "Speakers Never Learn," which is the opening track on Unmusique. This song kicks things off with what I think I can only call MySpace screamo vocals, with a really intense, raspy fry to them. It's pretty unique for this style. I don't know if I could say I'm a fan of it, but it definitely makes Lucy stand out, even if this is the only track on the record that brings those vocals.

But going deeper into the album, I wondered what other risks Lucy might take here, or what else they would do to make this record a defining moment. And the more I listened, the less I had a sense of that. Is c a densely packed, cacophonous, and busy album? Yes. Is it synthier and slightly more melodic than your average record in the underground these days? Sure. And does it have aesthetics that lean ever so slightly toward pop and electronic music? Yes and yes. But I would argue that Unmusique did all of these things as well, and accomplished that in a way that was even bolder by comparison, even with kind of more lo-fi mixes.

I think by comparison, with Unmusique, c comes across maybe just a tad bit cleaner, and somehow less adventurous too. Almost as if Lucy was trying to kind of narrow and whittle their sound down, in a way, to where it was just palatable to the widest number of underground fans. As far as other detours and surprises, we do have maybe a couple of mellower moments in the track list, like "STONE IN FOCUS", which, interestingly, I think samples an Aphex Twin track of the same title.

Though, I mean, the way it's chopped up and then distorted, it's fried to the point where Lucy's kind of variation on, these sounds and this chord progression, it's definitely not scratching the same itch in this context. But yeah, outside of that, there's not a whole lot of other surprises, in c for me. But novelty isn't everything.

There are definitely tracks that I think stand on their own in a songwriting sense, with unique flows and choruses that actually kind of cut through the noisy haze of these instrumentals. Whether you're talking about "MARRIED TO MY JEWELER" or "C SECTION," I would also tag the vocals on the closer as being especially expressive. And maybe I would also point to "ZYGOTE", which is so compressed and condensed that the synthesizers on this track kind of sound like a gurgling wall of noise. They're just glitching out under the weight of their own size being packed into such a small space. And while that texture is certainly unique, that's maybe about the most complimentary thing I can say about it. As for the most part, it just kind of leads to a track whose production just, overall, sounds very garbled.

But that's kind of the thing. There's a consistent kind of a level of distortion and noise to nearly every track on this record that even makes the best moments on c just sound very samey. When shoulder to shoulder with all the other tracks on this project that frankly come across a bit half-baked. Because they either breeze by in a deep-fried flurry or don't really contain anything lyrically or melodically that sticks with me by the time I'm done with the song.

Be it either "SSJ2," or "THE 9TH CIRCLE," "MISS BEHAVIOR," and several others. Again, I can certainly give it to Lucy for coming through the project that, in this rage lane, sounds a little bit more textured and melodic than some of the average albums dropping out there these days.

I mean, Lucy creatively is leagues ahead of goofballs like frickin' Nine Vicious, for example. There's no doubt about that. But I still can't help but feel, for this sound, for this style, C somehow kind of ends up being a very average overall project that doesn't really stand out among its contemporaries.

Which, again, is somewhat disappointing because it seemed like things were at least headed in that direction with Unmusique. But somehow that one ended up being the slightly more interesting listen out of the two. Which is why I'm feeling a light to Decent Six on this one.

Anthony Fantano. Lucy Bedroque. Forever.