"Doing The Best I Can" opens with a voice note from Aminé's father. That decision sets the whole track before a note is played. This is a song about the weight of becoming the person your family needs you to be, written by someone who grew up the son of Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrants in Portland, Oregon, and spent the better part of a decade building a career that probably made very little sense to the people closest to him. The song sits in the middle of 13 Months of Sunshine , Aminé's long-awaited third album. Where some of the record leans into loose summer energy and KAYTRAMINÉ-style bounce, this one slows down and asks something harder. Critics have compared it to the emotional reach of "Mama" from Limbo . We think that is right. It is the most exposed he has sounded in years. Aminé has always been sharper than his comedic singles let on, and songs like this are where that clarity shows. The attempt at sounding unbothered everywhere else on the record makes this one hit harder when it arrives.
Aminé