Quick Hits, Vol. 107 (Gucci Mane, Trill Youngins, Rae Sremmurd, Slim Thug)

Gucci Mane - Everybody Looking.  OK, time to get back on that soapbox.  This crazy sucker put out about a million songs in 2016.  Seriously, on Spotify, 9 albums are listed as being released in 2016:

• The Return of East Atlanta Santa (13 tracks)
• WOPTOBER (13 tracks)
• Everybody Looking (15 tracks)
• TRU COLORS (33!! tracks)
• Birds of a Feather 2 (12 tracks)
• Meal Ticket (36 !!! tracks)
• Gucci vs. C-Note, 2 (18 tracks)
• Greatest Mixtape Hits (57 MF'ing tracks)
• El Chapo's Home (27 tracks)

That is 224 tracks of material released out into the world.  USE SOME FREAKING DISCRETION, MAN!!!  My guess is that the guy has worked on a ton of stuff while stuck in the pen (he was released from prison in May, he went in on a felon in possession of a firearm charge) and he just needed to spray it all out at once.  But what it makes is a bunch of mediocre garbage, instead of a carefully selected package of the best stuff to offer.  He's got a few famous guys on here (Kanye, Drake, Young Thug) but those guys can't save how mediocre this album is. Shocker that the Drake and Kanye tracks are the most listened to on Spotify, so I'll go with third place, the track he apparently put out right after he got out of jail, "1st Day Out Tha Feds."

OK.  Hold up.  That track kind of bangs (on a Mike Will Made It beat).  I'm gonna hold on to that one and let the rest go.

Trill Youngins - Rich This Summer.  Oh dear Lord.  Why haveth thou permitted this digital affront to the ears of your chosen children?  Haveth thou not pity on your humble servants? Seriously.  If I thought that the Gucci album was bad, this is up there with the worst crap of all time.  Luckily for these guys, "I got these bitches like oooo there he go" happens to rhyme with itself, so they have the rhyme part of rap already down.  Their most popular track is about how fly they look, and is non-ironically titled "I Look Fly."  And if you were curious about the title of the song, they luckily say it 479,338 times during the 3 minute song. Everything about this album is terrible.  Beats, raps, cover art, essence, scent, mouth feel, taste, everything.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

It's like this group found the worst Hot Boys song and took 10 seconds to try to copy it. Nope. Full disclosure, I did not finish the album.  Couldn't do it.  My apologies.

Rae Sremmurd - SremmLife 2.  Kind of funny to move straight from the Trill Youngins to this, as now it sounds like these are the same dudes, just grown up a few years so that they know more what a proper beat and flow should sound like.  Mike Will Made It does all of their beats (or at least most of them), which is how they ended up with their stupid ass name (Drummer's Ear backwards, which is MWMI's label), which shows, because their beats are solid.  "Look Alive," as an example, has a great, slowed down, thumping and clicking track. The lyrics aren't mind blowing or deep, but when combined with the beat I actually enjoy them - a love song of sorts with a smooth delivery.  But the big hit from this album, with almost 250 million freaking streams, is "Black Beatles."

Serious question, do you think they know that there is no such thing as a "frat girl?"  Are they just trying to troll me, mentally, as I try to figure out what word they must be saying there?  Is it "brat girl?"  No, Genius says "frat."  Or are they trying to pull a sick burn on frat boys by calling them girls?  Are the people in their fraternity transgender?  Do we need a bathroom bill for this song?  Or do they really just not know that girls go in sororities? Speaking of, short but humorous story: When me and two buddies moved out of the dorms in college, we went and met with this old farmer guy who owned an awesome house in town.  When we showed up, one of us was literally wearing a fraternity jersey, and more than likely, the other two were wearing t-shirts relating to our fraternity because that is about the only source for free shirts I had at the time.  Dude appeared to like us, but just before he slid over the lease contract, he asked "y'all aren't in one of them sororities, right?"  Stifling grins, we each very soberly agreed that, no sir, we were not in a sorority.  Such dicks, right?

Back to the music - I'm kind of confused right now.  I recall seeing a lot of twitter traffic about this song, and without clicking links, I thought that this song was somehow vital or important or something.  A look at Wikipedia says the following nuggets:

• Rolling Stone's editor Rob Sheffield ranked "Black Beatles" at number ten in his year-end list.
• Pitchfork listed "Black Beatles" on their ranking of the 100 best songs of 2016 at number 10. 
• Meanwhile, Billboard named "Black Beatles" the best pop song of 2016.

What the shit?  This is just any other party track - throwing money in the air, seeing girls go spread eagled, cream seats in the Regal, drinkin', smokin', etc.  The only difference here is that they mention McCartney and the Beatles and Lennon glasses.  Weird.  Maybe the Trill Youngins should try mentioning Bono and Black U2 in their next album and get a hit?  Oh, but Wikipedia also mentions that this was usually the song used by the hip kids when they did the mannequin challenge this year. Why does that challenge even require a song?  God, I'm old now.  

And then, over the weekend, I intentionally played it a few more times, and then randomly heard it on the radio twice, and now I'm on board.  Yes, it is a popcorn rap tune, but then again, so are a lot of other fun rap tunes.  Additionally, the tone of the bass reminds me of the underlying bass progression in Eminem's "Stan," which makes me like this even more. I'm sold.  That being said, the rest of this album can go away - I'll keep this, "Look Alive," and maybe "Start a Party."  But definitely do not want to save the garbage song "Do Yoga."

Slim Thug - Hogg Life, Vol. 4: American King.  I feel like any album title that requires more than two pieces of punctuation is bound to be lame.  Unless those are exclamation points.  Those make an album title amazing.  And like Gucci's album up above, this 15 songs suffers from some serious bloat. I feel like he could have cut out half of this and done better in the end.  Honestly, most of Slim Thug's stuff has been weak since 2005's Already Platinum.  That disc had several great tracks on it, and since then, he's just put out mediocre lyrics with relatively unexciting beats.  The top track on this album is the opener, "King," which clocks 474k listens.

I respect the message in that video and track, and just went and researched that home building company he shows in there - it is real.  Boss Life Construction, his construction company, buying up the ghetto and building nice, affordable housing in Houston - this is cool.  The Houston Mayor even apparently declared Feb. 25 as Slim Thug Day to highlight the guy's philanthropic efforts.  Nice.  But that doesn't change the fact that several of these songs should have hit the cutting room floor and stayed there.  "IDKY" or "Love Letter" (the constant "pen scratching on paper" sound effect is grating as crap) could definitely go, and just generally, this album seems to get tired, with the same sound and simple lyrics.  I like the things he's doing for his hood and all, but I won't hold on to this one.