The Best Song on Post Malone’s New Album Hollywood Bleeding Is...

We’ve now had four years and roughly five thousand songs worth of Post Malone, which, it turns out, is enough time and material to become almost completely inured to what an enigma he is. At this point, you hardly notice that he looks like a Danny McBride parody of a SoundCloud rapper (some even swear he’s “totally kind of hot”). His absurd rap generator stage name is taken for granted as much as Jay-Z or Cher. His genre blurring has become the norm. He’s every bit the pop star of a Justin Bieber, and somehow that makes sense to everyone.

Post’s new album, Hollywood Bleeding, his third, is as much of a contradiction as he is, and yet, it too will likely be chugged without much notice. The 24-year-old recently left Tinseltown for Utah, and the 51-minute album finds him moaning and groaning (truly, in the most sonically pleasing way) about Hollywood’s vampiric culture: “Hollywood's bleeding, vampires feedin',” goes the first line.

It’s a bit of an ironic sentiment coming from someone who’s growled about being called a blood sucker himself. Though the V-word has mostly been levied at Post for his insensitive relationship to Black culture, he’s also never had a problem with indulging in Hollywood’s superficial vices (the guy’s been taped showing off a friend he pays to handle his beer bong). On his biggest hits, he calls women “hoes,” he details wild parties, and he boasts about “spendin' all my fuckin' pay.” If he was bitten, it was back before he became famous: “Slumped over like a dead man / Red and black, 'bout my bread, man,” he sings on his breakout hit, “White Iverson.”

So no, Hollywood isn’t the product of someone who suddenly became enlightened. Rather, Post comes off like a guy who’s been burned one too many times. Throughout, he deplores his haters and addresses a blanket “you”—a compilation of women who don’t care about the man beneath the tattoos. Ahead of Hollywood’s release, he told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe that he was aiming to be personal and affecting, that he was “not trying to make hit records.” But on Hollywood, Post mostly just scratches the surface of tired rockstar tropes (“Quit actin' like you been with me this whole time” “You thought that it was special, special / But it was just the sex though, the sex though”); it’s tough to take him seriously.

All the more so because everything about this album, from the guest list (Future, Halsey, Travis Scott) to the tracks’ short run times (they average three minutes) to the peppy beats, bracing hooks, and viscous choruses, is engineered to dominate the charts. Four of these tracks have previously been released as singles. Three of those songs have been Top 5 hits, and about half of the new material could easily chart, too.

The fact is that, intentionally or not, Post is outstanding at making hits—and he might even be getting better at it. I imagine that in the future, when pop songs are made with artificial intelligence, Post Malone will be the machines’ greatest muse. Reviewers often note how good he is at dinging the ear’s pleasure bell; but what Post is really remarkable at is tricking you. He’ll slip in a corny line or a schlocky note—something that actually reveals himself—and then seconds later he’ll put you in a trance, have you bobbing your head and singing along. Despite myself, a frequent response I have to hearing Post Malone songs is: I didn’t not enjoy that.

Case in point: On Hollywood, Post bookends himself in a song with Ozzy Osbourne and Travis Scott (on the eerie “Take What You Want”); he shouts out the Jonas Brothers (on “I Know”); all in all, most songs hew trite (see: “Enemies”). He has bad taste, but also perfect pitch, and together those things usually make for a winning combination (an exception is “Internet,” which is irredeemably cheesy).

The best example of Post’s magic, though, is “Allergic.” Its first six seconds are simply silverware-ish jangles. In the next six seconds, Post sings in sweet harmony. Then comes a sporadic, barely comprehensible pop punk burst. Somehow after throwing in more odds, ends, and pinches of sugar, like a kid baking a cake without a recipe, Post finds his way to a doo-wop-ish chorus—”So sad but true…”—with a melody that sounds like it’s been used by Hamilton Leithauser... and, somehow, it works! It’s sticky in a nice way. The yeast rises just right. Despite being about a toxic relationship, it’s vaguely romantic. You’ll probably want seconds. Improbably, it’s my favorite song on the album. If anything, it probably helps that I’ll never really be able to get my head around the recipe.

Originally Appeared on GQ