Quick Hits, Vol. 208 (Action Bronson, Milo, Mac Miller, Creed II Soundtrack)

Action Bronson - White Bronco.  Shout out forever to this guy's weird ass cooking videos where he gets exceedingly stoned and then cooks food.

I made that sandwich, or at least a passable facsimile, after watching that video a year or two ago, and it is legitimately good.  Now I make honey/sriracha sauce to put on other food because its delicious.

Anyhoo, this guy is a goofball, who raps a bunch about weird food metaphors and gangster bits.  He's at his best when he's just freestyling all over the place, like on "Irishman Freestyle," with a tight old soul sample beat in the background and his random ruminations about cars and the odd things he's doing in them.  And the end of "Mt. Edna," which rips some old anti-drug video is funny stuff. The hot sauce from the album is the title track, with 2.8 million streams.

Again, the beat on that one is chunky and melodious and unexpectedly hard.  Lyrically, this is a guy who is just pasting together a bunch of odd metaphors and thoughts and clever things, without much cohesive point or story to tell.  Which isn't my favorite thing in the world, but it still sounds dope.

milo - budding ornithologists are weary of tired analogies.  Quite an album title.  Pretty meh album.  The beats are very chilled out, laid back, basic nuggets of jazzy samples.  The raps are very wordy and complicated and dense, but casual.  And most of the song names are also very complex - like "thinking while eating a handful of almonds" or "deposition regarding the green horse for rap."  The second most heard track is "stet," with 222k streams.

You have to go into a fugue state just to do a passable job of keeping up with the flow.  So many references, in so many different subject areas.  Wild and interesting stuff.  The problem for me is that it never grabs me.  I've listened to the album like 10 times and put off writing about it because I just can't really recall anything about it.  So, instead of going through it yet again, I'll just let it go.

Mac Miller - Swimming.  I've never been all that into Miller, but still, when I heard that he had died, at only 26, of a drug overdose, I was bummed out.  He made some truly joyful funky stuff with Anderson Paak a few years back, and I was looking forward to seeing what other types of stuff he could put together.  Sadly, this is now his final album.  He gets into that same funky groove as the Paak stuff on tracks like "What's The Use?" and "Ladders."  But its a pretty chilled out album - nothing on here is a banger or hit song sound, they're all pretty laid back.  Kind of sad seeming, although that might just be his death weighing my opinion, but something about them just seems bummed out and contemplative.  I thought "Small Worlds" would be the hit, but its "Self Care," an ironic song title, for the win with 89.4 million streams.

Wow.  A video of him in a coffin, smoking?  When he died of a drug overdose?  Messed up, man.  "Jet Fuel," I think, has the best combination of interestingly cool beat and smooth lyrical flow.  But nothing on here sticks, and I'll let it go.  Such a bummer.

Creed II Soundtrack.  These evil geniuses, they sucked me in with a bona fide banger, and then the rest of the album is pretty plain jane.  The Kendrick verse on "The Mantra" is pretty good, but the song itself is bad.  Some of the verses on the jam packed "Runnin" are good, but the overall song isn't great.  But "Kill 'Em With Success" has a dope ass beat and a tough set of lyrics that makes me ready to go see this movie.

For some reason, as I walk around still singing the chorus of this song in my head, I keep wanting to say "kill they ass with respect," which is weirder than the real lyrics for sure. Dunno who Eearz is, but Schoolboy still has the juice.  But its that beat that makes the track.  The rhymes are fine, but the tough power slap of that beat is salty and sweet.  But then the majority of this album are kind of generic Mike Will beats and a current roll call of popular artists (but not too popular).  I don't need it.