Vince Staples - FM! The EP-length studio album trend continues. Thanks Kanye, very cool. Vince Staple's new album, FM!, is a bite-sized concept album that finds itself within the realms of a radio talk show, complete with appearances from LA radio show host Big Boy. Although Vince is still one of the coldest rappers of the modern generation, and in the past has experimented with all kinds of unique sounds with fairly consistent results (example: his 2017 Big Fish Theory album) nothing on FM! holds up against his better work. The beats are surprisingly generic for a rapper of Vince's caliber; only one track, 'Relay' features production as interesting as, say, the beats on Summertime '06. Even so, Vince plays with a few different voices on both this track and others throughout the album (such as 'Outside'), sounding far more nasal than perhaps intended. The guest performances are equally unsatisfying, with all disappearing before they're made a real impact (with the exception of Tyga, where even 35 seconds is far more than enough); Jay Rock appears on track 'Don't Get Chipped', but only for a fleetingly short chorus. Earl offers a similarly lean appearance on the album, but he's gone faster than he arrives - a mere 15 seconds of bars before the album snaps into the track, The concept of FM! is neat - it's like dropping into a radio station for 22 minutes before turning it off again - but this concept is flawed, considering the radio isn't very exciting. 49/100 Anderson .Paak - Oxnard I'm still unsure to whether Anderson .Paak is a rapper or a singer. That doesn't matter, however, because he does both fantastically. Oxnard is a creative and exciting blend of hip-hop and R&B, splitting between the two more evenly than his breakthrough album Malibu did - that album tended to lean towards the R&B side. It was adored by fans and critics alike, and I certainly saw merit in it, but I'm a bigger fan of rap music, so I'm extremely glad to say that there's a bigger rap focus on Anderson's third album. Executive produced by Dr. Dre, the album is bass-heavy, funky, and seriously sonically satisfying. Beats on tracks like 'The Chase', '6 Summers', & 'Saviers Road' are irresistibly catchy, and .Paaks singing has, in my opinion, improved drastically. His singing voice was always divine, but when I heard him sing on Malibu, I felt that his vocals lacked punch, and struggled to make an impact when used as the focal point of a track. He also raps with a cool charisma, breezing over the opening track as he first appears to ask "You know I hit it almost every time and then I miss one /How we gon' get ourselves up outta this one?" The feature list is also satisfyingly stacked - Kendrick Lamar, Pusha T, Snoop Dogg, and Q-Tip all appear have outstanding guest verses. Kendrick casually flexes on the fun track 'Tints' that if you're a cop and pull him over, you might see one of your bitches in his passenger. Pusha thinks back about the disbandment of his hip-hop duo Clipse on 'Brother's Keeper', Q-Tip does the same about Phife Dawg on 'Cheers', while Snoop appears on 'Anywhere' to offer a guided tour through the Los Angeles streets of 1989. Speaking of 'Anywhere', it's no doubt one of the best songs of .Paaks career, and arguably of the year - it's a beautiful song. The beat is slow, steady and funkier than a 1992 Dre beat, .Paak's singing is gorgeous, and when The Last Artful, Dodgr (another artist who appears fond of placing punctuation about their name in strange places) comes in for the chorus, the track transcends to heavenly. The album unfortunately suffers in the final stretch - the last 2 tracks, 'Sweet Chick' & 'Left To Right' slightly disappoint, considering the tier of quality proceeding them. .Paak stated that Oxnard is the album he wanted to make when he was a teenager in the early 2000's listening to albums such as The Blueprint & The College Dropout, and he appears to have followed the formula quite closely, not forgetting to mirror Jay-Z's disappointingly sexist / racist The Blueprint cut 'Girls, Girls, Girls' with 'Sweet Chick'. 'Left To Right' is a head-scratcher at best - the put-on Jamaican accent doesn't help at all, and the album is left to end with an underwhelming finish. However, all 12 tracks leading up to these 2 duds are the 49 grooviest minutes you'll hear in 2018. 80/100 J.I.D - DiCaprio 2 When I put this on, I was not expecting to hear the best Kendrick Lamar album since 2015. Ok, that's a joke. But when the first true song from DiCaprio 2, 'Slick Talk' came on, I might have pulled the nastiest face I've ever pulled. "Activation, activation / Maturation, process, rap game too saturated"... The first verse of the album isn't even 30 seconds long, but there's about as much internal rhyme as some rappers will write in their entire careers. His flow is astounding. It's hard to describe, but it's unique as fuck, and instantly hypnotizing. The beat on this song abruptly changes, and J.I.D once picks back up for a slower, but more methodical set of verses, with a fantastic cadence and sharp, witty bars that cut like knives. "I’m in my own lane, Jack / N***a said, "J.I.D. so flame, I propane rap"". And what's even more incredible, is that he stays this consistently good for the entire album. He raps circles around J. Cole on the violent 'Off Deez' (and I have to give it to Cole, it's easily his best verse since 2014 Forest Hills Drive, and a unprecedentedly lively performance, but even firing on all cylinders he only just keeps up with J.I.D), does it again on the next track '151 Rum', does it again on the next track... I could continue. Halfway through the album, he slows things down for some softer songs, and he's a master at this style too - 'Workin' Out' is a great moody piano ballad, and 'Tiiied', another R&B-flavoured track with guests Ella Mai & 6lack, is one of the strongest for me on the album. The instrumental builds to grand heights by the end with a sweeping electronic backdrop,and the guest vocals are wonderful, even if 6lack drops the slightly cringey line "how you let it drag-on, Spyro". J.I,D returns to his aggressively catchy rhythm by the final leg of the album, pulling out all the stops for tracks like 'Just Da Other Day', where he can make the simple lines "Just the other day I was goddamn broke / You got a five, I got a five, let's smoke" sound ear-gasmic. It's a rare trait that he shares with legends such as early Snoop Dogg & Eminem, and he's using it to full effect. The album ends with the wryly titled 'Despacito Too', which, contrary to it's name, is both an absolute banger, and absolutely worth asking Alexa to play. The drums punch viciously hard, yet J.I.D floats over them like a cloud. Dreamville has made a serious power move with DiCaprio 2, and J.I.D has reinstated the dominance they lost when Cole decided to rap album folding clothes. 90/100 Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs
Was I excited as everybody else was for Earl's new album? Yes, and no. The years since his last album, 2015's I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside have seemed to stretch endlessly, and the hype was at a fever-pitch after waiting so long. However, I was reserved in my expectations - it's well known Earl as deviated from the media spotlight in his studio-album silence, drifting from his former contemporaries and instead working in the underground rap scenes of New York. He's collaborated with multiple rappers over the last two years, doing production work for far-lesser known artists such as Denmark Vessey, Wiki, Mach-Hommy & MedHane, and chilling with up and coming rappers such as MIKE & Standing On The Corner. It's good to see him expanding his ranges, but I wasn't a fan of much of the music produced out of these camps, and was concerned that Earl's own output would take a similarly abstract and unfocused turn. While critics and fans can't get enough of Some Rap Songs, I unfortunately found no interest in it. His new album sounds much like what I heard on MIKE's July album Renaissance Man, which was an album I found as dreary as I found it long-winded. Some Rap Songs crams 15 tracks into 25 minutes (once again, thanks Kanye) so literally only three of those reach the 2-minute mark, and the lone verse Earl has on (almost) every track is drawled, sleepy, and slow. The opener 'Shattered Dreams' is the same few keyboard notes and repetitive vocal sample repeated for two minutes, while Earl's vocals are mixed so low it's difficult to make out what he's saying. He does the same on the next track 'Red Water', and at this point, we're already getting past the first 20% of the album. There's no room for repetition with an album and songs this short, but he's already wasted 5 of his 25 minutes to it. The album does have an interesting instrumental here and there - 'Cold Summers' is a great lo-fi beat, and Earl's lyrics are finally audible here, but the songs only a minute long before it's gone! This cycle basically repeats until the end of the album. I'm personally not seeing the hype here, despite my best efforts and multiple tries of the album. I hope that Earl's next album is more stated, and less reclusive - because for me, Some Rap Songs isn't even letting me in. 50/100
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Albums I missedReviewing even one album per week with a full-time job isn't easy, so once a month I briefly comment on albums I'd have liked to review, but didn't get the time to. |