>>73852387I think one big thing you're forgetting is that Mori's initial brand was of this "underground reaper-rapper". Just doing things on the down-low, songs about her own personal struggles or just coming from "her" in general.
e.g. Live Again and EoAL serve as a sort of goodbye to her past, Dead beats was a homage to her cute dorky awkward comedic side, Off with their heads serves as both an inspiration and a callout to VTweeters who don't put out any content, Red was an amalgamation of all her feelings and insecurities towards her career etc.
Just from getting into UMG itself, I think her brand sort of shifted in the heads of most of her listeners. When she made it into a label, she was no longer "underground". She was "one of the big guys".
This had two effects.
One : Her "underground" brand people would no longer want to listen to her "sell out music". It's unconscious, and most people won't express it, but the feeling will be there. Which means a lot of her core audience would stop listening to her music.
Two : Signing up to a label means you've "made it", meaning criticizing her music was now far more "acceptable". Shitting on up and coming underground artists isn't really a good look, but shitting on mainstream artists? Everyone does it.
Problem is, she wasn't really "mainstream" level yet that she could talk through that hate and perform anyway. And her songs, like you said, did have a change in style.
But I think the worst problem was that the lyrics stopped being reflections of "her", and just generic stuff that's found in a thousand other songs. This is what a lot of people /here/ mean when they say the SOVL was gone from her music.
