Twenty88 (stylized as TWENTY88) is the debut studio album by American hip hop duo Twenty88, composed of rapper Big Sean and R&B singer-songwriter Jhené Aiko.
The album features guest appearances from American R&B group K-Ci & JoJo and record producer Detail.
Production was handled by Detail himself, as well as KeY Wane, Tommy Brown, Sidney Swift, Cam O'bi, Steve Lacy, Flippa and Jproof.
According to a press release from Tidal, the album tells the story of the highs and lows of a relationship, with insights into conflict, memories, love, and sex.
[7] On March 28, 2016, it was revealed that the album would feature the productions from Key Wane, Detail and Tommy Brown.
Both me and Sean are super into fantasy-driven movies and so combining stuff like robots and sex, that pretty much sums us up.
[8] On March 27, 2016, Big Sean and Aiko created a Twitter account for Twenty88 showing two videos promoting the album.
[9] Both of them changed their profile pictures to the same one shown on the account of Twenty88, an album cover that shows Sean's face next to that of Aiko, who is donning an orange wig.
Whether this is a complete one-off project or if they continue to make music under this duo moniker remains to be seen but for now, these eight songs will tide over the hopeless romantic in everyone.
Flippa and frequent Sean collaborator Key Wane handle most of the production, and similarly to dvsn's Sept. 5th, they do an excellent job of updating classic R&B sounds into something sleek and modern.
Sampling from sources as varied as Xscape, British DJ Mat Zo, old jazz standard 'Sentimental Journey,' and an effortlessly breezy '70s soul deep cut, they do a much better job than the vocalists at deploying a bunch of disparate elements for the end goal of creating something thematically linked but episodic.
Wane has been steadily building on a Graduation-era Kanye sound for years now, and his work here is yet another marked improvement on his past discography; I had never heard of Flippa before this, but he's just as impressive.