Review
Genre and Mood
Tricky’s Nicotine Love, with Francesca Belmonte, is the dance floor seen from the trip-hop corner. Stereogum heard a bloopy electro beat, The Skinny hi-NRG minimalism and thumping electronica, and mxdwn the closest Tricky had come to a traditional dance track. The feelings follow the critics: sultry for Belmonte’s furtively erotic vocal, gritty for sweaty dives and sticky dancefloors, defiant for the reason he made it.
Song Summary
The song runs a little over three minutes and was shared on 30 June 2014, ahead of Adrian Thaws, the album named after the name Tricky was given at birth. He told The Skinny it was a riposte to a Facebook message from a fan surprised at his interest in house music: you’ve never met me. Tricky and Belmonte wrote it together, and he produced it, as he did the whole album, in his home studio in London.
Musical Breakdown
No source walks through Nicotine Love bar by bar; the reviews describe its beat, its synths and its two voices, so the breakdown follows those.
Intro
No source describes the opening. Listen for what arrives first, the beat or the bass.
Main Section
The Line of Best Fit heard the synths and bass as entwined pythons and vipers, lunging and slithering amongst each other, over a firm beat. Tricky’s voice is his usual angry-languid-panting style, in Stereogum’s words; Belmonte’s is expansive. The hooks, The Line of Best Fit wrote, are simple: built to be caught on a crowded floor rather than studied.
Outro
No source describes the ending. Notice whose voice you are left with.
Concepts in Focus
Tricky has long shared his songs with other singers, and Nicotine Love shows the <a href=“https://korczis.github.io/sonic-playground/concept/featured-artist/” class=“concept-link font-medium text-primary-700 underline decoration-dotted underline-offset-4 hover:decoration-solid dark:text-primary-400” data-concept=“featured-artist” title=“A guest performer credited on another artist’s track, usually as “feat.”: a rapper’s verse, a singer’s hook or a second voice. Features bring together different styles and audiences and are central to hip-hop, R&B and dance music.“>featured artist as a partner rather than a guest: Belmonte co-wrote it and appears across the album, and Stereogum heard her vocals in the vein of Martina Topley-Bird, his collaborator since Maxinquaye.
The hook here is deliberately plain, which suits the brief Tricky gave the album, his club and hip-hop record. And mxdwn heard the track as begging for a remix. One came within weeks: Young Fathers’ StraightFace Remix, which OkayAfrica heard turn the full-blown house original into a nearly unrecognisable downtempo piece, with Alloysious Massaquoi’s falsetto and whispery vocals.
Artistic Context
Tricky is Adrian Thaws, born in Knowle West, Bristol, in 1968. He rapped on Massive Attack’s Blue Lines before his solo debut Maxinquaye in 1995, where Martina Topley-Bird, heard later on Martina Topley-Bird, Mark Lanegan, Warpaint – Crystalised - Original Mix, sang alongside him. Adrian Thaws came out on 8 September 2014 on False Idols, his own label; he called it his 11th album, and naming it after himself, he said, was saying you don’t really know me.
Impact and Reception
Reviews of the album were mixed to positive: The Line of Best Fit gave it 8/10, and Metacritic averages 67. Play it loud, and hear a trip-hop pioneer answering a doubter on the doubter’s own dance floor.
