Even if you've never listened to Logic, you've heard most of this before. Kicking off his sophomore album with the drums from Kanye West's 'Amazing' from 808s & Heartbreak, the Maryland rapper showcases both his impressive technical talent and intense love of Hip-Hop. Critics across the board are calling Logic a flow-biter, which is very understandable as there are a LOT of things you'll hear on The Incredible True Story that's been done before, but being a fellow intense lover of Hip-Hop, I can (for the most part) forgive him for the main issue he faces as an artist and appreciate the album that he delivered us without the context of the comparisons.
The Incredible True Story is far from a bad album. The production is there, carving out a polished, refined, yet smooth feel. The story is there, with none other than Steve Blum narrating. (If you're a CoD Zombies fan, you'll know who it is right away) The lyrics are there, careful and calculated, and the style that Logic delivers is really where he shines brightest. His rapping is powerful, no doubt about it. His ability to tap-dance around a beat lyrically is very impressive. His fast raps aren't gimmicky, which is a big ask from most fast rappers, balancing the quantity and quality of his triple time perfectly. From the double time on opener 'Fade Away' to the jaw-dropping triple time bars "I spit it like a Beretta you know I get better by givin' the people" over the paying-homage-to-the-90's beat that just bumps. So. Hard. on "Young Jesus" is an undeniable high. And the song only gets better - rap features are always better when the two artists spit bars back and forth, and Big Lenbo trades the mic with Logic again and again, the two blending so smoothly into the track it's hard to tell when the first stops and the second picks up. Imagine the most insane juggling performance you've ever seen - they don't drop the ball transitioning between them; not even the smallest fraction of a falter. There are other great moments on The Incredible True Story too. On 'Innermission' Logic takes the effort to rap more emotionally than he does on the entire rest of the album, especially on the second verse. What caught me on the first listen in particular was the line "I woke up on my born, 25, it's a blessing, progression everyday lessons got me stressing but I'm tesing " which of course immediately clicked back to Illmatic. What impressed me most was the fact he impressed me with an Illmatic reference - a great feat for any rapper, and especially for Logic with his knack for imitation - but what makes it even better is he impressed me with a reference to my favourite line on Illmatic. That's hard to do. I love the line on 'Life's A Bitch' so much because it flows so spectacularly, but Logic's incredible technical talent allowed him to pull it off perfectly, in the midst of his most personal verse on his most personal song. The instrumental is calming, mellow, soothing, with a gentle, softly sung but beautiful chorus from the featured Lucy Rose. It's a touching piece of art. However what follows on the next track is "I Am The Greatest" which is easily my least favourite track. It positively reeks of If You're Reading This It's Too Late influence, from the beat, to the flow, to the lyrics. The Muhammed Ali sample is clever, but I feel Logic was at his greatest a track ago, before he tried rapping over this beat that bangs out of control, spitting only half a line at a time claiming "motherfuckers get no love... From me". It just doesn't feel right; it goes against Logic's talents to just yell random things over loud noise that gets in the way of his voice. The song 'City of Stars' is his Kanye West song, where you can literally hear 'Say You Will', 'Flashing Lights' and 'Last Call' all meshed into the same track. The shifting pitch of the choir in the background is almost exactly like the one on 808s' intro song, and for the first four minutes of the six-minute epic, he sings. Yeah, another of those rap-sung things rappers like doing these days. But it isn't bad at all - in fact, it's one of my favourites from this album, mostly because of the immersive instrumentation, and the small drum loop that counts down the seconds until he drops his singing voice and picks up the pen once again, rhyming line after line the way Logic does so well. He's a master of internal rhyme, too, with lines such as "Who gives a fuck who made it, I penetrated and innovated while they emulated, give a fuck if I'm hated". Being just one of the many, many lines where Logic connects the dots expertly. The Incredible True Story is not without it's drawbacks, however. The songs are not always there on this album, regardless of Logic's skill; 'I Am The Greatest' being one, and a few hooks are a bit strange, such as the one on 'Upgrade'. 'The Cube (Scene)' is pointless, regardless of how much Logic likes the Rubix Cube, and in some cases there might not be anything particularly wrong with a song, but it just doesn't reach the high standards set by highs such as 'Fade Away', 'Young Jesus' and 'Innermission'. I was a bit more excited for the song 'Paradise' than I should have been, considering the characters in the skits where hyping it up for the entire album and it turned out to be decent at best. It does feature a really epic beat change-up halfway through, however, bringing some much needed variety to the song. This album grew on me as I listened to it more. After discovering more of the highlights through multiple listens, the cons I had been mainly focusing on during my first listen were beginning to Fade Away (no pun intended). It's a solid project that demonstrates Logic's potential very well, and an album I would recommend to many a Hip-Hop fan. 7.5/10 |
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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