The 2017 mixtape So Sensitive from Richmond rappers and producers Young Pocket$ & Alfred. is a whole vibe. It's one of those albums that just seems to give more to you every time you listen to it. I feel its mercurial nature is attributable to the approach the artists took to compiling and shaping it, and that the nature of their collaboration accounts for its lasting generosity to the listener.
As far as I can tell, they weren't trying to make an album in any specific tradition or style of rap or R'nB, but rather sought to use rap music to set a certain mood, weave specific textures, and to explore the connection between sound and color. Basically a synesthetic playground of boundary breaching infatuations and playfully transgressive curios.
While the rhymes that both artists, as well as a small battalion of guests, lay down on So Sensitive are helpful to conveying the liquid nuances of the album, taken on the whole, the album feels like it is best-understood post-linguistically. Very much like some poems- the kind where the rhythm and the cadence carry as much or more meaning than the words. Poems whose truth can only be grasped by allowing your ego to fade into the recesses of your consciousness as you ride the wave of psychic/sonic motion that carries you through the splashy tributaries of someone else's brain.
So Sensitive is like floating in a deprivation chamber in this way, except instead of depriving you of external stimulus, the pool of tactile dream emulsion that you've been immersed in expands the field of available sensations rather than restricts it. Experiencing the album in this way makes the title doubly important in my opinion.
So Sensitive is often used as a label to characterize someone who has withdrawn into themselves and away from others. That is not how Pocket$ and Alfred. are categorizing themselves on this record. They are "sensitive" because they are receptive to others' moods and the pleasure of their company. So Sensitive is therefore an encountered as an experiential toolkit to help you do the same.
