Rapper/singer Iann Dior came into the public eye amid a storm of hype and marketing so intense he named his debut album Industry Plant, nodding to the allegations that he was created by the music industry as a means of cashing in on trends. The sound of Dior's earliest songs was trendy enough to draw these kind of assumptions, made up of booming trap instrumentals that met with melodic flows and emo elements not too far from the chart-topping style artists like Juice WRLD and Trippie Redd were breaking through with. A year after his debut, Dior's nine-song EP I'm Gone stays true to the style he arrived with: rap songs with moody instrumentals and melodic flows about troubled relationships, wealth, and turning to substances to ease the pain. Songs like "Sickness," "Pretty Girls," and the Lil Baby-featuring closer "Prospect" all fit this mode of Dior's music, with lyrics about shopping, mental health issues, doing drugs, and unhealthy love delivered over well-produced beats. The rock-rap hybrid "Sick and Tired" features Machine Gun Kelly and Travis Barker contributing to a peppy, upbeat track vaguely inspired by the COVID-19 quarantine. Dior's songs explore the regular topics of money, sex, cars, and fame, but his lyrics are more vulnerable and uncertain than the average rapper. For this reason alone, I'm Gone finds Dior coming into his own ever so slightly more than his earlier work, evolving into more than an anonymous trendy rapper by letting more of his personality come through.
© Fred Thomas /TiVo