Big Sean - Detroit 2. I really like parts of this album. Some of the coolest bits are these interlude monologues from Dave Chappelle, Erykah Badu, and Stevie Wonder, where they riff on some aspect/memory of Detroit. The Chappelle one is legitimately funny, a great story of Danny Brown giving him some sort of laced weed before a show and then Big Sean's dad being kind to him in the dressing room after he bombed. A few of the tracks are very good - I like "Wolves" with Post Malone, I look up and dig into "ZTFO" each time it comes back on, and "Lithuania" also catches my ear each time. The beat on "The Baddest," which bites paret of an old beat that I can't recall, is hard. Tons of collaborators on here, from old guys like Lil Wayne and Diddy to young guns like Travis Scott and Young Thug. The pieces that I don't much care for are the entire tracks that are pretty much R&B smoothies - "Time In" or "Everything That's Missing." They're just boring to me. But the real rap tunes have Sean just sounding hungry - the opener "Why Would I Stop" has a great trap beat and a nimble, non-stop flow over the top. The problem with the album is that the lyrics do nothing for me - the flow and beat sound good, but if you dig into the lyrics, you get left with an empty stomach. There's also a wild track that features Eminem and like 40 other rappers, called "Friday Night Cypher," that cruises along for 10 minutes near the end of the disc - weird thing, its like 15 short songs/raps that have been tied together into one track for some reason. The Post Malone track is the top streamer by far, at 43.1 million on Spotify.
Kurt Vile - Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (ep). I love this little EP. It kicks off with a perfect cover of John Price's "Speed of the Sound of Loneliness" that makes me super happy each time it comes on. And "Dandelions" is just plain beautiful. The guitarwork is lovely and percussive in its little intricate patterns, with very basic drumming in the back (and what sounds like a mandolin cruising along back there too). And he does another Prine cover on here - with Prine himself accompanying him, called "How Lucky." It isn't a tune that I knew before this EP. But knowing that it is a Prine tune is so perfect - it sounds like a Prine storytelling tune, just a jaunty walk down some sidewalk making observations to the time of a lightly-tapped tambourine. And their guitars together are so good - brothers in plucking. "There was all these things that I don't think I remember... how lucky, can one man get" - a good reminder to let it go and let it be.
Nas - King's Disease. I've never really loved Nas. I think I came to Illmatic late - others had already decided that he was a Mount Rushmore-of-rap guy while I was paying more attention to Ice Cube, B.I.G., and the Beasties. I don't dislike him, but I just never think of him when I'm thinking of the best rappers ever, and you won't find me going back to his classics when I'm feeling like old school rap. That being said, the beat and flow combo on "NY State of Mind" is as cool as it gets. This disc is really heavy on collaborations - all but five of the tracks have someone else listed on them, from Anderson.Paak to Charlie Wilson and Big Sean to A$AP Ferg (and then people I've never heard of like Brucie B. or Lil Durk). The top track is the one with Ferg - "Spicy" - with 5.6 million streams.
Westside Gunn - Pray for Paris. I have no recollection of where I found this album, but it's pretty entertaining rap. The beats are the good stuff - lots of sampled sounds and low on the high hats. The album opener is a weird auction skit where something, I can't tell what, is sold for four hundred million dollars. The internet tells me that it was the sale of a da Vinci. The killer track, and by far the most streamed, is the absolutely-so-laid-back-it's-upside-down "327." 10.2 million streams.
No comments:
Post a Comment