It must be hard to be in Black Hippy and not be Kendrick Lamar. It's a bit like being in D12 and not being Eminem, just not as bad.
Jay Rock closes out the quartet of Black Hippy solo albums to drop since Kendrick's good kid, m.A.A.d city. Highly anticipated, long-awaited, and with a very odd marketing scheme determining the release date based on how many people pre-ordered the album, this September saw the release of 90059. This number refers to the zip code of Jay Rock's hometown, Watts, Los Angeles, California, which seems to be a popular trend in Hip-Hop recently. (Drake has made "the 6" very well known indeed as reference to Toronto's zip code) 11 tracks in length, 45 minutes long, it's another album on the shorter side. 90059 begins with the excitedly hard-hitting "Necessary". A sinister beat that swoops beneath your feet and tips you upside down, which Jay uses to both attack and pray to the lord for mercy. Here you'll hear him at his most raw - unfortunately, the track isn't very long, but the dark tone Jay speaks in does extend to the next track, "Easy Bake" which features Kendrick and SZA, another TDE labelmate. Kendrick begins his verse low-pitched and threatening, and finishes it off in an exchanged shouting match between himself and Rock. The beat switches out to a less moody atmosphere to allow SZA to sing over it (I find it ironic how SZA got her name's inspiration from RZA, whose vocal delivery could not be any more brash and aggressive than SZA's voice), and before long the brooding nature is back with Gumbo. This is the track that kicks off this album's biggest flaw - I struggled to find a good hook over the entirety of 90059. Rock can rap, no doubt about it; you'll find that in high quality here. But the hooks, especially on tracks like Gumbo, are weird, annoying, or bad enough that they get stuck in your head for days and ruin your weekend. Kendrick's hook on "Vice City" (I'll talk about this track specifically later) confused me so much! "Big money, big booty bitches, man that shit gon' be, death of me." They may very well be Kendrick, but I thought you were above lines like that! Only on the final track, "The Message" was I not turned off by the song's hook. It's sung well, and captures a great image - a pair of tennis shoes dangling from a wall. For the most part, however, the hooks on these songs are the only dislikable parts, so it could be worse. "Fly On The Wall" feels open and spacious, while Busta's verse flows nicely enough despite the fact all he really says is that Jay Rock is amazing. "Let's give em' a classic" - maybe Kendrick and Jay Rock where recording their albums at the same time, and Busta walked into the wrong booth. "Money Trees Deuce" revisits Jay's flow from good kid, m.A.A.d city's "Money Trees" which can only mean good things, cause it was a great flow. The horns are ominous as fuck, the bass compliments them perfectly, and Jay's lyrics leave nothing to the imagination - it is easy to see people being shot in droves by AK-47's aimed out of moving cars to this song. There are parts where the horns stop, and I wish there weren't, cause they sound so damn good. The 'inspirational' mini-speech at the end of the song is kind of a mega-cliche though, and I'm not too sure why it's there. The title track "90059" is not one of my favorites personally, but if you're a fan of the late Ol' Dirty Bastard it might be for you, because Jay channels his spirit and flows similarly to him, mostly on the intro and chorus of the song. "Vice City", the anxiously awaited Black-Hippy posse cut, delivers - the rap style executed by all four MC's (Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock, Ab-Soul & ScHoolboy Q in order of their verses) is very interesting, fresh, and new. The drums and snares tightly follow the pattern set by the vocals. You can tell the fun these guys had behind making this song, and you can hear Kendrick laugh before his verse begins, which probably explains the terrible chorus - unfortunately, the hook here meets the same fate as the pretty much all of the album does. 90059 has it's ups and downs. It's definitely not one of the best rap releases of 2015, but it's definitely not one of the worst. It holds it's own, and isn't as exciting, innovative or memorable as other albums we've seen this year. The production is consistent throughout, with high points that don't necessarily leave low points in their wake, has good rapping, and suffers from bad hooks and an unfortunate amount of references to social media. I feel that those single-handedly make music more of a time capsule, rather than timeless art. 6.5/10 |
201820162015Scores0-30 = Bad
31-49 = Sub-par 50-60 = Average 61-70 = Decent 71-80 = Good 81-89 = Great 90-99 = Incredible 100 = Perfect Archives
September 2018
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