Only Diamonds Cut Diamonds

Only Diamonds Cut Diamonds is the debut studio album by British electronic artist Vegyn. Released on 8 November 2019, it received positive reviews from critics.

The album is Vegyn's first major release as an artist, and comes after initially gaining attention for his work as a producer with artists including Frank Ocean and James Blake. It consists primarily of instrumental hip hop, and heavily incorporates sampling and field recordings.

Only Diamonds Cut Diamonds was released 5 months after Vegyn's last work. Text While Driving If You Want To Meet God!, a 71-track mixtape which was described as "sprawling" by Hypebeast,^[2] was mainly intended to put much of his unfinished, throwaway tracks to use. Vegyn said of Text While Driving that "It was just sitting on my computer. I could let it rot in the digital coffin, or I could kind of just like let it live as is".^[3] Only Diamonds was intended to be a more focused affair, centred around a richer collection of ideas.

The album was developed from a set of initial ideas across two to three weeks, and polished over the course of about six months.^[4] A significant amount of the album was recorded over three or four weeks in a friend's studio in Los Angeles, usually in the middle of the night.^[1]

Only Diamonds Cut Diamonds consists primarily of instrumental hip hop. The album has relatively few guest vocalists, as Vegyn wanted to avoid being overly reliant on featured artists.^[1] There are only three credited features on the album – "Nauseous / Devilfish" features American rapper JPEGMafia, "I Don't Owe U NYthing" contains a verse by British artist Jeshi, and "You Owe Me" includes a verse by French rapper Retro X. There are several other artists who appear on the album uncredited; rapper Freddie Gibbs contributed vocals to "Fire Like Tyndall",^[5] and Owen Pallett, professionally known as Final Fantasy, provided strings on several tracks.^[1]

The album makes heavy use of sampling and field recordings, many of which were recorded on Vegyn's Motorola Razr cellphone.^[3]

Two tracks from the album, "Cowboy ALLStar" and "Blue Verb", were released to YouTube on 1 August 2019, prior to its announcement, with accompanying music videos.^[6][7] All music videos released in connection with the album feature people dancing in public spaces.

The album was officially announced on 25 September 2019, at the same time as the release of its lead single, "Nauseous / Devilfish" featuring rapper JPEGMafia.^[8][9] The same day, a music video for the song was released to YouTube.^[10]

In the lead-up to the album's release, music videos for "It's Nice To Be Alive" and "Debold" were released, on 17 October and 8 November respectively.^[11][12]

On 8 November 2019, the album was released by Vegyn's label PLZ Make It Ruins.^[13]

In a review for Paste, Harry Todd compared the album to Frank Ocean's albums Endless (2016) and Blonde (2016), both of which featured Vegyn as a producer. He wrote that "like both, the album revels in immaculately juxtaposed textures".^[14] Hunter Reed for the Daily Emerald said of the album "There are hardly any low points, and its variance in instrumentation, samples and mood have depth and space for multiple listens".^[5] Joe Goggins of Crack gave the album a score of 8 out of 10, comparing it favourably to Vegyn's previous project: "Only Diamonds Cut Diamonds is an altogether more refined affair, underpinned by a quickly-established sonic palette that encompasses woozy synths, scratchy percussion and field recordings".^[15]

All tracks are produced by Vegyn unless otherwise noted. Credits adapted from Tidal.^[16]