Just a year after releasing her debut, Intro To, the Moroccan-born, Queens-raised Dounia brings us The Avant-Garden, a similarly chilled out, ideal for getting high (if you’re into that sort of thing) ten-track album that spares no amount of exploration on the value of taste over having actual money (the former of which just has to lead to the latter, doesn’t it?).
Establishing the ambience of entering a (marijuana) smoke-filled room to match the lazed out look of her album cover, “King of Queens (Intro)” immediately speaks to the lifestyle Dounia embodies as a result of carving it out for herself, which all started with her social media presence on Instagram as @haramshordey777. Gaining prominence through this medium for her outspokenness regarding body positiveness and not conforming to mainstream standards of beauty (which is to say thinness), Dounia parlayed her following into an opportunity for a music career. As she phrases it from the start of The Avant-Garden, “Anyone with taste is my motherfuckin’ market.”
And what better way to reach that motherfuckin’ market than through music, which Dounia stated has always “been a part of how [she] function(s), ever since high school, posting full-blown subs to a boy via song.” With this form of expression long within her bones, Dounia has paired it with the already built-in persona she has cultivated (and all by the age of twenty, when some of us were still whiling our youth away in college).
One could say the entire premise of The Avant-Garden is taste–whether you have it or not, and, to boot, the fact that money cannot buy it, you simply have to be on that rich girl mood to comprehend the sort of life you were always born to have despite your faulty circumstance of birth. Hence, Dounia brags, “Throw a soiree though I’m still hungover/They’ll pop up ’cause they know it’s Dounia/Ain’t a fan, then that shordey tasteless.” Yes, there it is, an iteration of that word to describe the crux of the album.
Continuing with her braggadocio on “Avant Garde,” Dounia declares to all her so-called competitors, “You a cornball and I’m avant-garde, yeah.” Which sort of takes Beyoncé calling her haters “corny” on “Formation” to the next level. Her claim, however, doesn’t seem to hold up entirely on “Rich Girl Mood,” the concept behind which has been done many times before her, often with ever so slightly more edge. Regardless, it is the indisputable banger of The Avant-Garden, and should probably be played every time you throw your faux mink over your shoulder as you enter or exit a room.
Slowing it down slightly with “Hard Candy,” Dounia again can’t help but reveal her unbridled devotion to her Queens roots (where she will always book a flight back to when shit gets too wack) but also the concept of money and class being a state of mind as she emphasizes, “I’m the type of fly money cannot buy.” Well-aware that being “outlandish” as she is in her confidence can be offputting, Dounia likens herself to hard candy: “sweet and difficult.”
That said, the acoustic-tinged “How I See It” addresses the aforementioned “difficult” side of Dounia as it pertains to communication and refusing to gas any current object of affection (that might sound gross, but it just means she isn’t going to blow smoke up anyone’s ass, even if he might be eating hers). Assuring, “I ain’t tryna gas ya, you know when I mean it/I ain’t tryna gas ya/I call it how I see it/Meet me in the back, yeah, I can tell you’re fiendin’/Meet me in the back, yeah, tell ’em that you’re leavin’.” Not teasing about luring whoever it may be into the back, there is a certain sadness–a poetic addressing of how a girl has to keep it “hieroglyphics when I go ‘head and text him”–but well, blame it on the nature of self-imposed game playing paired with the twenty-first century, the result of which adds up to: “Can’t communicate, so we stay playing charades.”
Straying away from this rare favoring of talking too overly about boy toys, “Darija Freestyle” finds Dounia taking pleasure in doing the bare minimum when it comes to being fabulous–in short, “I’m just tryna bounce coast to coast/Drivin’ top down, c’est pas grand chose.” Spreading her top shelf aura throughout the land, Dounia admits, “I’m just tryna chill, relax in some villa.” Who isn’t? Yet not everyone has the presence of mind to simply will it to happen with their combination of grifting and empyreal qualities. And maybe this is at the core of the lesson Dounia wants to impart to us with the album.
Extending her ironic examination of that which makes life worth living–decadence–“Ice Cubes” solidifies the listener’s belief that Dounia really is just a simple girl underneath all the bravado and claims of wanting the trappings of wealth as she admits, “Four more days in L.A., then I’m catching a flight/Not sure why it isolate, craving the east side/Jersey party with no list, that shit more my vibe/If I’m shy, I’m just tryin to analyze/All the lost kids/They all takin’ tabs like they tidbits.”
In another case of irony, this leads into “If You Wanna,” on which Dounia and Breakfast N Vegas urge, “Maybe we can spend time, maybe we can unwind, maybe we can get high.” But while Dounia might have been judging those L.A. kids for “takin’ tabs” as she touts wanting to get high on this track, one thing that remains consistent from the motif of “Ice Cubes” is that she doesn’t want to hang with anyone who embodies the phony baloney that comes naturally when signs of affluence are present, insisting, “If you got a front, leave that shit all at the door/Sense a deeper vision that I’m willing to explore.” This ebb and flow of her tongue-in-cheek insights into being ghetto fab switch to the other spectrum on “50/50.” As the second to last song, Dounia melds her two favorite subject matters–boys and cash–as she commands, “Drown in my entitled greed/Let money shut up my needs,” this being a means to distract “empty boys who love impulse and never feel [her] disconnect.” But what does it matter? Twenty-first century girls know better than to let emotions cloud their eyes from the prize–which is, to be sure, forever money.
Closing with a more porno-ified version of “King of Queens (Intro),” “Queen of Kings (Outro)” serves to remind (mimicking Cat Power’s bookend song shtick on Woman), one last time, that Dounia is “mad casual,” cannot be held down and then repurposes the lyrics from track one: “Throw a soiree though I’m still hungover/They’ll pop up ’cause they know it’s Dounia/Ain’t a fan then that shordey tasteless.” This harkens back to something Nicki Minaj asserted long ago: “She ain’t a Nicki fan, then the bitch deaf, dumb.” In this sense, Dounia cements the eerie, long-accepted trend touted by Emma Roberts as Jill Roberts in Scream 4 when she balked, “I don’t need friends, I need fans.” This, of course, translates to followers–hopefully, as in Dounia’s case, enough to lead to a music career that allows one to flippantly mock wealth while also displaying reverence for what it can get you.
