Welcome To The Brat Pack

Welcome To The Brat Pack is the debut studio album by English singer and songwriter Dakota Prescott. It was released in the United Kingdom on March 21, 2016 by Next Generation Records. The album was met with positive reviews from critics, praising its throwback style and individuality, and ended up being included on many year-end lists for best albums of the preceding 12 months. Welcome To The Brat Pack has spawned the singles "The Recipe" as well as the promotional singles "80s Bomb", "$ex Tape" and "Hearts". Upon release, the album became a massive success, charting at #1 in the United Kingdom.

Background and writing
In 2012, Dakota created her own YouTube channel, and posted a new video at least once a week of her performing either an original song or a cover. Dakota's subscribers quickly began to rise and by January 2014 she had over 60,000 subscribers. It was at this point Dakota began busking in the streets of London and telling her subscribers where they could find her. It was by chance that Next Generation Records owner Coral Harris had noticed Dakota's videos online and attended one of these gigs. Harris was massively impressed by what she saw and invited Dakota for a formal performance at the Next Generation Headquarters. Dakota performed in front of Harris and Kleo, and was signed to the label by the pair instantly. Harris and Kleo made no secret of their latest signing, and both claimed the singer was their new 'protégé'. They took Dakota under their wing and introduced her to some of the top names in the industry.

Dakota kept all her fans updated constantly on the album's progress. Songs such as "London Fuckerz", "80s Bomb" and "Fuck It!" were discussed by Dakota. Dakota released three promotional singles throughout the year in order to gain attention and generate some interest in the album. "80s Bomb" was released in May 2015, "$ex Tape" followed in June and finally "Hearts" in August. Finally, Dakota's album was revealed to have a release date of 07 December 2015, however the albums release was quietly cancelled and no further information was given until February, when Dakota revealed the albums delay was due to her "wanting to improve the quality" of the music and a new release date of 21 March 2016 was announced.

The albums title is based on Dakota's nickname for her fans. Due to her bratty attitude, Dakota's fans nicknamed her "Queen Brat" therefore she ended up referring to all her fans as her 'brat pack'.

Lyrical content
Dakota has described the album as "extremely diverse". The album features a variety of different themes, vibes, and instrumental sounds. Regarding the diversity within the album, Dakota stated "“I’m challenging people to sit through a bunch of songs that all sound completely different from each other. It’s quite an emotional investment. It’s art. It’s what I want to do. The world needs this album.”

In an interview with Notion in October 2015, Dakota stated "the album is such a mixed bag, you've got political statement songs, club songs, Jamaican influenced songs, rock & roll songs, there's such a variety."

Singles
"The Recipe", the first official single released from Welcome To The Brat Pack, was released worldwide on 21 March 2016, alongside the album. The song features English singer Kleo.

Other releases
"80s Bomb" was released on 18 May 2015 as a promotional single and charted at #2 on the UK Digital Chart. On 05 June, Dakota revealed her next promo track would be titled "$ex Tape" with a release date of 22 June 2015. The song also charted at #2 on the Digital chart. The third and final promotional release, "Hearts" was released on 17 August 2015 and charted at #4 on the Digital chart. All three promotional singles also charted on the Airplay chart.

Critical reception
"Welcome To The Brat Pack" received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, Welcome To The Brat Pack received an average score of 75, based on 25 reviews. In rating the release four stars for Rolling Stone, Will Hermes claims "Welcome To The Brat Pack is no retro gesture: Dakota runs the album's rock & roll guitars and attitude through enough distressed digital production and thumb type vernacular to make this the first fully updated iteration of punk pop in ages... Like so many of the pop pleasures here, it's a sentiment that just never gets old." Miles Raymer writing for Entertainment Weekly in an A- review, suggests "Welcome To The Brat Pack is pop-punk, radically redefined and dragged, middle fingers waving, into the future." A three out of four star review came from USA Today by Brian Mansfield, where he pens "On Welcome To The Brat Pack, Prescott doesn't just tweak the ear-candy pop template, she blows it up, then pries the shiniest bits from the asphalt. It's still sweet once she's finished sticking it back together, but it's got a bit of crunch, too." In a four star review for AllMusic, Heather Phares says "Welcome To The Brat Pack's mix of youth and sophistication is more than a little volatile, and sometimes it feels like Prescott is still figuring out what really works for her music... Nevertheless, it succeeds as an introduction to Dakota Prescott the Pop Star while retaining her whip-smart songwriting and attitude."

Dan Weiss writing for Spin, presented the album with an eight out of ten, suggests "Welcome To The Brat Pack is just an exceptionally good pop album... Those are rare enough as it is." A four star review came from Slant, where James Rainis believes "Dakota's debut effort, Welcome To The Brat Pack, is the sound of a long-incubating star emerging so fully formed on an international stage that it's difficult to figure that an artist gifted with so much sneering bravado was ever thought of as an underdog... Someone needed to author the aural equivalent of the body shot, and Dakota Prescott has provided the platonic ideal of just that: a party album charged equally with punkish rebellion, hip-hop cool, and pop universality." Jamieson Cox for Pitchfork Media, who granted the release a 7.6 out of ten, comments "Welcome To The Brat Pack isn't an endpoint for Dakota—she's already talking about her next record, inspired by J-pop and 'intensely weird and childlike'—and it's not her finest work, but it's plenty good enough to rope a cohort of new fans into what's promising to be one hell of a creative ride." Jon Pareles, reviewing positively for The New York Times, emphasizes "'Welcome To The Brat Pack' is far more direct; it's smart, loud, cheeky, gimmick-loving pop, intent on making every song go bang... The ambition and calculation on 'Welcome To The Brat Pack' are overt but not a deal-breaker. It's a brittle, professional album full of sonic treats."

Chart performance
The album was released in the United Kingdom on March 21, 2016, alongside the debut single. It debuted at #1 with first week sales of 95,712 copies sold, almost 20,000 more than the next nearest album on the chart.