If I Fail Are We Still Cool?: Signed Vinyl LP Patrick Paige II

Long before Patrick Paige II, knew how to rip bass, he knew he wanted to fly. “Since I was little I was obsessed with aviation,” he recalls. “I wanted to be in the airforce until I got older and more conscious — no, I don’t wanna drop bombs on people for no fucking reason. But flying was an obsession that started young.” It’s a fixation that permeates his forthcoming sophomore album If I Fail Are We Still Cool, a collection of tenacious affirmations stitched together with in-flight interludes and an unshakable sense of ascension.

What initially began as the makings of an EP quickly amassed into something more like a revelation once he wrote the hook-heavy “So They Say.” “I never trusted myself to write hooks, but once I wrote that, it was like, ‘oh shit, I can do this. I’m done pretending like I can’t.’” Written on the road and recorded in Hollywood at Chalice Recording Studios with the help of friends Chris Bosmith, Sean Matsukawa and Kameron Allen, the album provided Paige with a canvas to define himself. “I wanna stand for something,” he declares on “Who Am I.” “I wanna do it for the kids who got kicked out of class, beating on tables with the pens, they had no drum pads.” These moments of freeform introspection entwine with effortless grooves, such as on “Whisper” featuring Steve Lacy, Allen Love, and Durand Bernar. Elsewhere on the album, he links with Syd, Westside McFly, Saba, Ohana Bam, and Forte Bowie.

Yet for all its surrounding community, the album remains an inherently individual journey, one that only Paige can take. If he’s already introduced us to who he is as a bassist, and later as an artist, then If I Fail Are We Still Cool introduces us to Paige as a human, with all his vulnerabilities and insatiable ambition. Taken as a whole, it pays rhapsodic homage to who he’s always been while pushing further beyond the goal posts. “It represents everything in abundance that I’m willing to work hard for, and willing to elevate in every aspect.”