RockLee – It’s A Feeling
“Oh baby, come over here…” croons a seductive Mel Pacifico over the main groove in RockLee’s new single “It’s A Feeling,” much her vocal channeling the eroticized flow of the melody in no uncertain language. Everything in this song and its music video has been designed to draw us closer to the soul of the harmonies, no matter what their point of origin is, and through means as technical as they are tightly wound, RockLee gets us stuck in his web of sonic romanticism like few others could in this performance. There’s no escaping the aural materials comprising his love, nor the passions they would inspire in any given audience.
The chills originate with Pacifico’s vocal, but with the addition of Uness in the latter half of the song, there’s never a moment in which the singers aren’t doing their part to make RockLee’s vision a complete one. The intimacy of the lyrics bleeds into the music seamlessly thanks to the liberal mixing style in play here, and although I don’t think we needed as much from the bass towards the end of “It’s a Feeling,” I understand the desire to keep a steady piece of muscularity in the instrumentation.
RockLee tends to be a pretty detail-oriented guy with his production styles, and in this sense, you could say that his new single is similar to everything he’s cut before now. The one big difference is the underlying surreal bend to the verses, which I would trace back to his chosen singers as well as an increased pressure to move in a postmodern direction a lot of pop musicians are feeling at the moment. This isn’t a forced track, but the creator is acknowledging a present trend and doing his part to interpret it as organically as he can.
The music video for “It’s A Feeling” is a lot more minimalistic than the actual song is on its own, but that’s partly why I found it to be such an interesting and conceptual document from the start. I get the feeling that RockLee wants us to appreciate the conflict between the imagery and the soundtrack in this release, primarily to enjoy how elegantly the two opposites are able to coexist for the duration of the video’s running time. Even when there’s an aesthetical contradiction, it has a purpose in this young man’s discography, which is just not true of his many American competitors at the moment.
I’ve yet to come away from a RockLee single feeling disappointed, and I think that “It’s A Feeling” might be the most well-rounded work he’s committed to so far. Don’t get me wrong – Mel Pacifico and Uness are as responsible for this song potentially becoming a hit as the composer himself is, but what it tells us about the future for RockLee is maybe a little more important than what it’s saying about his collaborators’ present. He’s going places bigger than his scene will ever amount to, and that’s clear when listening to this single.
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