Album Review: Major Lazer - Peace Is The Mission

You could plot it on a graph.

X is the curve of Diplo’s celebrity. Y is the accessibility of the sound of his Major Lazer project. As his celebrity rises, the more he hangs out with Skrillex and Katy Perry, the more his sound becomes washed out and likely to land on commercial FM radio. The first Major Lazer album with UK producer Switch, Guns Don’t Kill People… Lazers Do, was as nasty and scary as it was genius, as much a game changer as it was radio repellent. Yet now, the Major Lazer sound is a mere shadow of that as we’re left to pick over the bones for any meat left behind.

New album, Peace Is The Mission, is yet another market-clogger of mainstream trap and E-fuckin’-DM, with its familiar dancehall themes often the only adhesive holding it together. The indie-trap of Be Together, generic pop-dance of Lean On and pop-dancehall of the Ariana Grande-featuring All My Love demonstrate just how bland the sound has become.

Yet the set is not without highlights: dancehall superstar Chronixx rips his way through Blaze Up The Fire. Roll The Bass takes it back to the early sound and Night Riders sees Pusha T, Travis $cott, 2 Chainz and the long lost Mad Cobra fuse modern hip hop and dancehall, Diplo’s trademark ludicrous synth riffs either ruining or enhancing things taste-depending. Once his underground vanity project, Major Lazer seems now Diplo’s flagship sailing toward chartland, and it’ll be time for many to hit the lifeboats.