SremmLife 2 - Review
As a follow-up to their 2015 album SremmLife, rap duo Rae Sremmurd make a conscious effort to shirk people’s expectations with SremmLife 2, delivering an album that manages to exist in two spaces. Both as a sequel that builds off of what came before it to create more earworm club rap songs and as a new album that builds distinctive sounds that manage to be totally different than their previous style. It’s almost experimental in that way, while being loud, fun, more than a little stupid, wrapped up in a playful package. It’s not a complex album by any means, but it remains fresh throughout the time that you are listening to it.
Encore - Review
Listening to DJ Snake’s smash hit collaboration with Lil John “Turn Down for What”, gives you a certain expectation for his music and about Encore, his debut album that just came out. Something big, flashy, bombastic, and more than a little stupid. Full of pulse-racing EDM tracks that will worm their way into your brain and leave you jumping for more. What we got was ok at best, with a few tracks that will sit with me for all of the wrong reasons.
D.T.S.N.T - Review
After hearing the beat on Drake’s “Weston Road Flows” and finding out that the young artist who had created it was putting out their debut E.P, I knew that I had to give it a listen. Hearing it was familiar. The sound reminded me of the Drake track, but also of so many more that came before it. Smoky vocals and a muted beat carry through the album, with a few hints of something unique that manage to surface around the edges. Heavily inspired by recent trends in electronic music, the R&B infused beats ultimately fail to stand out as anything more than a novelty.
Religious Rap
Coloring Book, the newest “mixtape” from artist Chance the Rapper, highlights many interesting things about the rap music industry. It’s a mixtape with timed exclusivity on Apple Music, a free album that might put him in the running for album of the year, and exists as a heavily gospel influenced album in a realm where self-described “Christian music” is looked down upon. But by circumventing that label and refusing to categorize his album in that way, Chance has delivered a musical bombshell that has fans asking what they are really listening to.
Read More…Major Key - Review
Ever since DJ Khaled's ridiculous snap trend earlier this year, the term "Major Key" has become almost an internet meme. He's taken social media by storm and he is not afraid to let you know. He pulled all of his amazing array of strings to assemble an impressive rogues gallery of some of the biggest names in the business to drop rhymes over his production.
Bobby Tarantino - Review
Seemingly out of nowhere, Logic dropped a mixtape on us. While he is still working on his next studio album, which he is now referring to as a concept album, this stealth mixtape should hopefully keep fans sated for a while. Clocking in at only 11 tracks including its intro and an interlude. It is short, sweet, and to the point. All things that I love in an album.
Coolaid - Review
A new Snoop Dogg album isn't exactly an uncommon occurrence. As his 14th studio album over the years of the Dogg's rapping career, Coolaid sits at the front of a very long line of music, spanning the history of rap music. And while it is distinctively Snoop, with breezy, marijuana-infused rhymes, it still manages to be shockingly different, joining the Doggfather's style with more contemporary, trap-influenced beats.