Review Summary: It’s excessive, it’s juvenile, and it’s ridiculously catchy but D.R.U.G.S. proves to be the best collection of music that these Flatbush Zombies have put out in their career.
Before you go and listen to this album, just be warned that the lyrical focus of this album is (you guessed it) drugs. These two dudes (and producer) out of the Flatbush area of New York City are weed-smoking, LSD-taking MC’s and proud of it. While there may not be much deeper meaning to anything that they’re rapping about here, that doesn’t mean that they don’t pull quite a few respectable bars (and beats) out of their drug-riddled asses. While this album has found its best home in the iTunes libraries of college kids and worthless stoners all across America, there’s still a little something to be taken from it for everyone else.
First of all, the strongest part of this album as a whole could be the production. Eric Ark Elliot, the least known of the three zombies, gives us a great taste of his own unique production style on straight bangerz like “Thug Waffle” and chilled out, sublime, hazy purple beats like the one on “Laker Paper”. His beats seem to work perfectly with Meech and Juices’ flow and keep this album flowing from one song to the next well. Elliott even takes a break from beat-making and hops in and throws down a respectable verse himself on the song “YBA”. His competence in production distracts the listener from the occasionally underwhelming verses from the MC’s.
Moving onto the two MC’s of the group, Meechy Darko is definitely the stronger of the pair and usually gives us a few memorable lines on every track. His bars are at their best on album highlight “Thug Waffle”, in which Meech raps the hook. “Seaweed flow, must be from that weed smoke, eyes Chinese cause we’re smokin’ sour diesel” isn’t a line worthy of literary praise, but its definitely catchy and chances are you’ll find yourself rapping it to yourself after you’re done listening to the song. That line is a solid representation of his lyricism throughout the rest of the album too as we hear many more lines about his love for sour diesel and how high he is (very) such as “Today I purchased a coffin, and I ain’t even die yet, smoked about a hundred blunts and I ain’t even high yet” from the same song. While Zombie Juice’s bars may not be on par with his colleague’s, he does have a crazy sounding voice and that at least helps to lessen the negative effects of his mediocre lyricism on many of the tracks. That’s not to say that he doesn’t have the occasional good line throughout the album like this one from “S.C.O.S.A.”: “Rowdy Piper, D.C. Sniper, We ain’t like ya Zombie Brain, I need brain, I'm insane from the crane”. Overall, Juice’s lyrical ability isn’t enough to take too much away from the album as it’s filled with drug references of every sort that will at least leave the listener thinking about what the hell he could mean.
It’s excessive, it’s juvenile, and it’s ridiculously catchy but D.R.U.G.S. proves to be the best collection of music that these Flatbush Zombies have put out in their career. If you don’t like hearing about weed and acid and how much of each they do, then don’t listen to this. It’s really as simple as that.
