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Jun 14, 2024‘Dopamine’ isn’t a raw confessional either but a balanced, art-directed exercise. It’s a debut that hits the programmed sweet spot, conversant with contemporary trends and greater RnB and soul traditions.
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Jun 14, 2024It may have taken six years, but ‘Dopamine’ sounds like the (damn) album Normani was meant to make all long.
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Jun 14, 2024All over Dopamine, Normani owns her pleasure with the pride and confidence of the star she was always destined to be.
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Jun 18, 2024DOPAMINE, her highly anticipated debut-slash-comeback album, still can’t shake the anonymity of her ensemble days, but it lays the foundation for what Normani will be known for: her Southern roots and a voice as plush as a pair of fuzzy dice.
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Jun 21, 2024Normani stays one to watch, and for now her fans have some very solid material to enjoy until she decides to come back.
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Jul 9, 2024While nothing quite matches the baddie intensity of "Big Boy," Dopamine works nicely, conjuring a vibe of sultry, post-club afterglow.
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Jun 17, 2024Dopamine is a reflection of who Normani is as an artist at this particular moment in time, and it reinforces the notion that there is indeed value in taking one’s time in order to deliver something of substance.
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Jun 14, 2024“Dopamine” is an album that could have been a dissection of what she’s been through, or an understanding of how R&B can effectively meet pop on the playing field. But as it stands, it’s simply there, as pleasant as it can be, a token for fans who presaved the album and, more hopefully, a stepping stone to what could one day be her full potential.
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Jun 14, 2024Does the record deliver after all these years, then? Occasionally, but not satisfactorily when playing with the tempting what-ifs.
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Jun 14, 2024No doubt the album will satisfy lovers of understated soul, but the hangers-on from Normani’s pop days will take more convincing. Either way, after so long a wait, you might hope for a bigger dopamine hit than this.
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Jun 14, 2024Dopamine understandably strives hard for perfection, but it can feel strangely anonymous at times – such as the way her yearning for a faraway love on Distance is suffocated by a polished sheen. But when Normani fully lets loose, as on the gyrating Grip, and the house-inflected Take My Time, there’s a real sense of that superstar everyone hoped to see back in 2018 finally taking centre stage on her own damn album.