Ladies & gentlemen, Bobby - Logic's turn-up alter-ego - has returned. We know the drill by now; The Bobby Tarantino series serves as between-album bonus projects, and Bobby Tarantino II follows directly in the footsteps of it's titular predecessor. Coming down from the lukewarm critical response of his third album, Everybody, Logic has unfortunately accumulated a lot of negative stigma around his name. No longer an underground favourite, the now Grammy-nominated artist spent a vast majority of 2017 being the butt-end of the "Logic is biracial" meme, a meme largely enjoyed by uninformed members of the internet who, having heard no Logic projects from before last year, believed every last song he had ever written was about the struggle of being both black, and white. As usual, adopting his Bobby persona is Logic's excuse to shed the conceptual depth he attempts exclusively on his albums and write back-to-basics and catchy rap songs, with stakes (and thus expectations) low.
Compared to Everybody, this project sidesteps a lot of those past flaws, but has plenty more in its own right. There are no four-minute speeches, wasting what could have been great tracks; there are no spoken word passages, wasting what could have been fantastic features. BTII draws a line almost perfectly down the middle, splitting the album into two half-offerings that will both appeal to one respective audience, but not both. There are lots of trap-style songs, and there are lots of old-school rap tracks, reminiscent of the music Logic created at the very beginning of his career. This divide is so apparent, and so vividly clear, that more than one track has both styles incorporated into it, and even makes reference to that; for example, 'BoomTrap Protocol' (a portmanteau of "boom-bap" and "trap") attempts to blend trap-style vocals with a more traditional instrumental backdrop, to varying levels of success. The best attempt he makes at this type of crossover, however, is the standout 'Warm It Up', which cuts the song into four sections that work independently from one another. Using only fantastic sounding boom-bap drums, and an icy piano sample (I think it's a piano) Logic resurrects his former backpack-rap style in the form of a "Young Sinatra feature" to drop two awesome, braggadocios verses, where he claims he could "murder your whole album in one 30-second snippet" and he sounds like he can, too. But for the chorus, the drums change to a slowed down, hi-hat heavy trap tempo, proclaiming "Fuck that rap shit, this that trap shit (Bobby!)". Although it takes away from the overall energy of the song, it isn't enough to ruin it, appearing only twice and lasting briefly, making this one of Logic's best raps in years. There are more worthy rap moments on BTII; '44 More' (the sequel to the fan-favourite '44 Bars'), 'State Of Emergency' and 'Indica Badu' are all great, excelling with their good instrumentals and good rapping, although the latter may be the least inspired lyrically of the three; Wiz Khalifa is featured, so can you guess the subject matter? It does however feature another fantastic beat, which Logic claims to be "J Dilla" - It's build around a funky, funky bass line, & simple drums, making it a low-key instrumental highlight. And on the note of features, both Khalifa and 2 Chainz (guesting on the 'State Of Emergency' track) provide great features, both sounding right at home on their respective beats - 2 Chainz in particular has been outdoing himself for at least a year now, tackling the bombastic, loud, energetic, and bassy beat head-on with ease. The track 'Yuck' finds Logic subliminally responding to Joyner Lucas's one-sided beef with him, dismissing his attempts at a feud and saying "Cats beef with Logic, yeah, they prayin' I respond / If I ever did, I dead you in this game with no respawn / peace, love, and positivity that's all I want with you". It's another great rap moment, and helps redeem Logic from the pothole he has found himself in post-Everybody. But for all the good things about this mixtape, there are of course the bad. As evidenced by the introductory skit (which, for anybody who doesn't watch Rick & Morty, the appeal is lost) there are concrete differences between the types of music Logic makes, and some of those types aren't very interesting or great. 'Contra', for example, has a completely generic modern-sounding trap beat, and a triplet-flow to make every last member of the Migos proud of him. It's not the only bland attempt at commercial rap either, as on 'Wizard Of Oz' Logic drenches his voice in so much auto-tune (which he acknowledges in the lyrics) that Travis Scott's heart would stop and T-Pain would beg for mercy upon hearing it. It sounds bad. The instrumental is similarly uninspired, with the dime-a-dozen high hats ticking, ticking, ticking away in the background, and bass kicks beating the eardrum into submission for two straight minutes. Tracks like these are scattered across the project, culminating in the blindingly obvious club-and-radio aimed single 'Everyday' at the tail end of the album. Produced by the Deadmau5-inspired large-headwear wearing EDM producer Marshmello, you don't even have to close your eyes to imagine this being played in clubs to raving audiences in a dark room, complete with lasers, strobes, and fog machines. You can hear the chorus screaming at you to chant along, going like this: "I work hard every motherfuckin' day-ay-ay-ayy", repeat. In that context, this track would work just fine, but in my opinion, that's where songs like this should stay. If you can stomach this, and the other duds peppered about the 43-minute runtime of BTII, however, there are some good moments to be had. Overall, it's difficult to grade mixtapes such as this against his albums, as their intents are so extensively different, but if the preach-heavy concepts of Everybody weren't for you, then this should definitely be a more enjoyable pill to swallow. For those who prefer so-called "album Logic", it's still a worthwhile listen, and I'm sure you'll take away more than a few tracks from this tape. He's still perfecting the art of merging multiple styles of rap into one, and it doesn't always work yet, but it sticks at least slightly more often than it doesn't. Blending impressive artistic intent with successful commercial music has always been a near-impossible feat achieved by very few artists per generation, and so for a low-risk fan project meant to tide us over between albums, it's definitely not a bad serving. 70/100 |
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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