J. Cole - The Off-Season
It’s been about a year since anyone from the big three in hip hop has dropped a project, and J. Cole decided now would be as good of time as ever to drop his new project, The Off-Season. It’s been just over three years since Cole’s last project, but he’s been teasing three separate projects, with The Off-Season being the first one. It continues the basketball theme his mixtapes had a decade ago, and he’s easily the most hungry since those mixtapes. Instead of relating with his audience or doing lots of storytelling, he’s just getting some bars off. None of these songs seem like he was trying to reach for any audience, he’s just doing this for himself. I wasn’t quite sold on this project during the first couple listens, but once I played it in the car, it clicked. This isn’t the sort of project you sit down and dissect what he’s saying. But if you’re listening to it in the car, you’re just paying attention to his flow and the beats, all of which are great. Songs like “My Life”, “Pride Is The Devil”, and “Amari” all have these trap beats with Cole switching flows left and right over it. It’s hard to write a review for this one since it’s such an informal project, but it’s a great album to ride to in the car while we hope his masterpiece is still coming with The Fall Off.
St. Vincent - Daddy’s Home
This album really surprised me. I had heard of St. Vincent before, and even listened to her album Actor after a friend recommended it, but it didn’t really stick with me. She always seemed like a weird artist, but the weirdness just wasn’t connecting with me yet, until this project. The lead single, “Pay Your Way In Pain,” really threw me off the scent of this album. That track is an extremely compressed, 70s rock hit that clearly has lots of Bowie influence. It’s not bad at all, I quite enjoy it, but that is not what this album is. It stays in the 70s, but it takes a lot more influence from funk, soul, and indie music at the time than the glam rock sound. To stay with the instrumentals, much of this album has loads of background harmonies, tight grooves, a slower pace, those 70s keyboards, and even quite a bit of sintar. This is the most lush production I’ve heard on an album in quite a while, but that doesn’t distract from St. Vincent’s voice. She’s able to do whatever style fits in the context of the track. “The Laughing Man” has these background vocals that sound straight out of Janelle Monae’s The Archandroid, while the wails on the title track remind me heavily of Prince and James Brown. Even the quietness/Pink Floyd-esque of a track like “Live in the Dream” proves to be no match for her. She’s not doing any vocal or instrumental theatrics on this project, but everything comes together perfectly into one of the best projects I’ve heard so far this year.
Mach-Hommy - Pray For Haiti
No one really knows who Mach-Hommy is. He’s always pictured with a bandana as a mask, even before the pandemic. The only information available is what we see in the pictures and that he’s somehow connected to Haiti. But with just his music, he’s caught the attention of legends. Jay-Z is a big Mach-Hommy fan, has been pictured with him multiple times, and has even taken cues from Mach on his new material. Dr. Dre was listening to his music a couple years ago, and both Drake and Kevin Durant have posted about this album in the few days it’s been out. This album is Mach coming back to Griselda after their separation a few years ago. Without spoiling it too much, this feels like another Griselda addition to my favorite projects this far. Each listen has just unfurled layer after layer of rhymes and samples. The first half of the album has some fairly traditional hip hop beats that allow Mach to showcase his rapping ability. Songs like “Folie A Deux”, “Marie”, and “Kriminel” are fantastic examples of Mach’s lyricism and flow ability. He’s also speaking Haitian Creole at a few points on these tracks and the album, like the chorus for “Kriminel”. The album gets more experimental starting at “Murder Czn” with Westside Gunn. Mach actually does some singing on it, but the authenticity and charisma of the performance makes it work. “Au Revoir” has one of the most gorgeous instrumentals I’ve heard all year. The guitar lick and female vocals from Melanie Charles are incredible! There are still things I think he could improve on, or change for myself to enjoy it more, but that feels more like a me problem and not with his music. Pray For Haiti is the grandiose return to home for Mach that lives up to fan’s ludicrously high expectations.
Olivia Rodrigo - Sour
I’ll be the first to admit that “Driver’s License” didn’t have the impact on me that it did on most people. It was a well written track, but she wasn’t doing anything unique enough to justify the hype, in my opinion. Sour, on the other hand, is actually a pretty decent pop album, especially for a debut. To make a parallel to the other teenage phenom, Billie Eilish feels like the independent weird girl who follows her own vision that everyone knows is special, while Olivia Rodrigo is the popular girl that not many expected to be this talented in the arts. Now, the big problem here is the subject matter, which is Olivia’s first heartbreak. It will either bring you back to being in high school and experiencing your first heartbreak, or it will seem like a slog of extremely melodramatic ballads. Sonically, even though the project is a bit slow, everything is written and produced really well. The more rock influenced tracks, “brutal” and “good 4 u”, are easily my favorite moments of the project, even if they do sound a lot like Paramore. “Brutal” especially has a surprisingly heavy guitar lick during the chorus that makes it sound directly out of the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack. The influences of Taylor Swift and Lorde are still heavily laid on here. Taylor actually gets a writing credit on “1 step forward, 3 steps back” because they used her melody for the chorus. Olivia also has a pretty solid voice, even though it’s not that unique. Sour proves that Olivia is far from a one-hit wonder with the potential to create some great music in the future.
Jorja Smith - Be Right Back
Many artists are dropping small EPs to hold off fans until their official album, and now it’s Jorja Smith’s turn to drop one of those projects. At 8 songs and just under 30 minutes, this is a bit more robust than most people’s hold over projects, but Jorja does come through with solid tracks all the way through. The problem is, the entire project can feel like one long song. The instrumental pallet is extremely similar, but most of the individual songs are solid by themselves. “Addicted” tells the story of a broken relationship, while “Gone” is about losing a friend in a car accident. “Weekend” ends the project on a high note with Jorja giving her significant other some advice during the chorus, but her vocal range on this great is easily one of the best performances in her entire career. “Home” is a gorgeous acoustic guitar led ballad with an instantly memorable chorus melody. Be Right Back doesn’t come near her debut album, but I don’t think that was the goal. Instead, it fulfills her goal of giving fans some quality music to listen to after not dropping a project for almost three years.
Meraba - AZEB
Mereba’s associated with a lot of my favorite artists, including JID and Earthgang. Instead of the hip hop songs they do, she was an R&B singer and even tapped JID to make one of the prettiest ballads in a long time, “Sandstorm”. Her inclusion on last year’s label project Spilligion actually involved a lot more rapping, but this project shows her continuing the spiritual R&B vibe. AZEB doesn’t show the culmination of her talent, but it shows her uniqueness as an artist. Mereba’s in a similar vein to Erykah Badu when it comes to making spiritual music. She’s obviously not up to Erykah’s level, but that’s the sound that Mereba has. Even her voice has a similar unique tone that Erykah has. To break away from the comparison, most of the tracks on here are sparse in instrumentation and rely on her voice and writing to carry them. A song like “Go(l)d” is a perfect example of this, especially with her talent for writing spiritual tunes. I do wish that she would branch out a bit more in the instrumentals, but this is still solid for now. Also, she was able to hide a pregnancy the entire 40 weeks and coincidentally had her first son on the same day this project was released, so all congratulations to her!
Paris Texas - Boy Anonymous
Paris Texas was one of the artists I found this year that I was most excited to hear a full project from. This is their only project on streaming services, and it feels more like a work in progress than a full artistic statement. The experimentation on a lot of these tracks is crazy. “Pack 4 Da Low” features an aggressive 808 with what sounds like a fuzzed out guitar adding the melody to the track. It’s the most similar track to the lead single and my personal favorite track from them, “Heavy Metal”. The choruses on the rest of these tracks work really well. A song like “Better Days” feels very underwritten in the verses, but the melody during the chorus immediately gets stuck in the listener’s head. Also, a lot of the outros to the tracks help make them feel complete. “Situations” is saved by the minimalistic bridge and outro, and “Casino” explodes into a quick ending that transitions perfectly into the next song. There’s just too many messy moments that make me not sure about the entire thing, but that’s ok. They seem young and they already have a unique sound no one else has, so I’m sure the future is only upwards from here.
21 Savage & Slaughter Gang - Spiral: From The Book of Saw Soundtrack
21 Savage doing a soundtrack to a horror film makes perfect sense, but this project only ended up being four tracks long. Despite the length, there’s still some really great stuff on here. The lead single “Spiral” features 21 delivering his murder bars over a beat with lots of saw references. Even someone like me who has never watched any of the movies was able to recognize the musical samples they put into this beat. Young Nudy continues the menacing sound with his own solo track, “You Ain’t Hard”. There’s a weird track next that has a radio ready chorus and three verses from three different rappers I’ve never heard of. It’s in a weird place in this tracklist, especially with a trio of huge names on the final track, “Emergency”. Gunna handles the chorus and gives his own verse, while 21 Savage and Young Thug add their uniqueness to this track. Personally, I’ve never been that much of a Gunna fan, and sadly, that continues with this track. So even though this one will likely be a fan favorite, I prefer the first couple tracks on here. Either way, this feels like an appetizer to what a full 21 Savage horror movie soundtrack would be like.
Young Nudy - DR. EV4L
Young Nudy is someone I’ve heard about for a while, but never fully listened to any of his work before. I knew he’s been associated with 21 Savage, and that’s definitely the vibe that comes across with this project. Even with the album title, DR. EV4L, it’s obvious what this project feels like. It’s full of dark, trap beats with Young Nudy flowing on them about the horrors in his life. The entire project stays in this lane, and it will for sure make an entertaining listen for fans of trap music. For me, my problem is that it all blends together too easily and becomes unmemorable. I couldn’t actually remember any melody, bar, or flow on the album after it ended. I know if any of these songs came on, the chorus would help remind me of the track, but I can’t independently remember anything on the project. This is a great example of what I would call mindless trap music. It was an enjoyable listen all the way through, but DR. EV4L won’t leave much of an impact on the average listener.
The Black Keys - Delta Kream
The Black Keys have had a rough time with their past few albums. With the success of Brothers and El Camino, they went further into the mainstream and safe rock music. Delta Kream is a look into their past, as the entire project consists of covers from old country blues songs. Almost half the songs are covers of Junior Kimbrough, but R.L. Burnside and Big Joe Williams both get multiple songs each. The project is definitely a return to the blues sound that they got popular with, but there is a bit missing in my opinion. This project was recorded in a ten hour span over two days, and even though that leads to some authentic playing, it makes the songs feel too sparse. Instead of the detailed instrumentation on some of the other rock projects these past few weeks, this one feels like a few people just playing some blues covers. Which I suppose it is, so I can’t really be frustrated about it. This isn’t a bad project though, every instrumentalist sounds great on their respective parts. Dan’s voice is pretty hit or miss on the project, but he sounds nice the majority of the time. I’m glad they returned to their blues roots, but hopefully they can come with a slightly more finished project next time.
Bruiser Brigade Records - TV62
Bruiser Brigade has been having a great 2021 so far. Three members have already put out projects on Bandcamp, and this one is a quick label project. Each member has at least three songs on here; including J.U.S, Fat Ray, Bruiser Wolf, and Danny Brown. I’m sure most people are here for the four new Danny Brown tracks, and even though I was also most excited about those, the other rappers are still really good. “Dylon” by Danny is probably my favorite song here. The straightforward beat, Danny’s extremely high pitched voice, and tight flow make it sound like something he would’ve released a decade ago. It’s not an over exaggeration that Bruiser Wolf has the single weirdest flow I’ve ever heard, and it works nicely on “The Dopest In The Building”. Also, having hilarious lines like, “But I prefer the white girl like the royal family,” helps make this one memorable. J.U.S is also a personal favorite out of the crew who really shines on here. TV62 is here to prove that Detroit rap is in a good place.
YG & Mozzy - Kommunity Service
YG and Mozzy have become the two of the biggest west coast rappers out right now, so a collaboration project from them is almost certainly tearing up the whole coast right now. Even with YG making worse music than before, I was worried this one would be even worse, but it lives up to another solid west coast release. Mozzy is a newer rapper and he holds his own on the entire project. YG continues his solid run with his performances on this album. It’s still nowhere near the best music YG has ever made, but there’s some quality bangers on here. I don’t think I’ve ever heard YG flow as fast as he did on “Gangsta”. “Bompton to Oak Park” is the closest to the old west coast style I love, and thus makes it my favorite on the tracklist. The project heavily relies on features, even with only 10 songs, and G Herbo comes out easily above the rest. Another quality west coast hip hop project, but it still lacks anything great about it.
Twenty One Pilots - Scaled and Icy
I try not to put expectations on music I listen to, but this project still managed to punch significantly lower than my already middling expectations. Their 2018 album Trench was albeit a bit long, but great all the way through with these heavy pop-rock tunes. Even going back further than that, their hits have always been entertaining to me. “Stressed Out”, “Ride”, “Car Radio”, and “Heathens” were all some of the radio songs I actively enjoyed. This is their first project in a few years, and sonic change is definitely for the worst. Everything is now stripped of the individuality that they used to have. It’s not that these songs are bad, but there’s so many other artists that would do these songs so much better. They continue the trend of very accessible, upbeat pop music with a tinge of 80s influence that the industry has been going in, but they’re doing it in the most bland way possible. Especially with people like The Weeknd and Dua Lipa dropping fantastic pop albums that help turn the 80s sound into something unique to them, Twenty One Pilots feel like they’re falling to the wayside with this project.
Patrick Paige II - If I Fail Are We Still Cool?
Patrick Paige II is actually the bassist for the R&B group The Internet. Steve Lacy and Syd have had the most success outside of the group, but Patrick might be my personal favorite out of them. Those other two feel like they have lots of potential, but not fully there in their solo material. On the other hand, Patrick was able to combine R&B, hip hop, and soul into a fantastic debut project with Letters of Irrelevance. If I Fail Are We Still Cool? focuses heavily on the hip hop side of his career. When asked in his Reddit AMA about why the sonic shift, he responded that it’s a hidden talent of his he wanted to shine more light on, and he’s totally right. He’s flowing just as well, if not better than most rappers out. He’s able to balance the personal rhymes with the straight bangers better than almost all up-and-coming rappers I can think of. There are lots of nice features on here too, including Syd dropping some bars and Saba proving once again why he needs a new album soon. Do I kind of miss the vibes of something like “Voodoo” from his last album, yeah. But, I can say that Patrick released another exceptional project that rivals even his group’s projects.
Audrey Nuna - A Liquid Breakfast
Audrey has been on my radar for a while, but she’s just been taking her time releasing any project. A Liquid Breakfast feels like a debut project, as it’s just a collection of 10 songs that showcase her talent. The first few songs start off in straight banger territory. “Comic Sans” with Jack Harlow shows how she can make a song easily listenable, but with lots of little weird moments that make it unique among other trap bangers. In my opinion, these bangers are where she shines the most. The opener “Typical” doesn’t sound that typical at all, especially with the song stopping and starting constantly throughout the tracklist. “Cool Kids” has this electronic, watery beat during the chorus that would’ve fit nicely into Big Fish Theory. On the flip side, the singing on the back half of the album tends to be very hit or miss. A song like “Top Again” with Saba works nicely with Audrey only singing on the chorus, but I’m not sure her voice is strong enough for this much singing. Either way, it seems like people love her singing, as “Space” is becoming one of her biggest songs. I saw someone compare this to Tkay Maidza’s breakout project from last year, and that is definitely the feeling that Audrey gives off here. All that’s left to see is how much each individual person will enjoy this, but Audrey proves her talent and more on A Liquid Breakfast.
Comentarios