This album was penned by one of those infinite Odd Future splinter groups. The collective as a whole is known for trying way too hard to simulate a rebellious image by being extremely childish and offensive. It’s hard to form an unbiased opinion on a majority of their work when most of their dedicated fan base are about as dumb as their lyrical content or that oh-so-edgy upside-down cross that is found on the album cover. It doesn't matter if the lyrics are meant to be asinine or not since I'm here reviewing a body of music, not a list of musical intentions.
The album’s opener, “Grill”, is a load of garbage. While being accompanied by a pretty bland beat, Hodgy proceeds to passionately fap to his first thesaurus: “Correlate circulate percolate, a work of fate, it hurts to hate,” he pretentiously raps. The chorus that follows in the opening track is a grating gang chant that I could barely listen to. The lyrical content itself is pretty standard rap-fare. There are tracks that describe hustling, money, sex, or just verbal diarrhea like the previously mentioned lyric.
The sad thing is that there is potential that can be found on most of these releases. There are some decent musical elements to be found on Numbers. “65/Breakfast” had a really unique instrumental and completely listenable lyrical work. Frank Ocean’s appearance in “Astro” wasn't anything of the same quality as Channel Orange, but he manages to make the track an album highlight with his chorus.
It’s just hard to give the group any credit when the album keeps going through peaks and valleys in terms of quality from track to track, and sometimes even within one track. For every solid and no-bull*** track like “Snare”, there is some useless track like “NFWGJDSH” that just sounds like a worse version of “Grill”. The instrumental is more or less the exact same. Also, I don’t think I've heard that many gun-loading sounds in a single song. I thought they were more hood every time they loaded that gat.
It doesn't help either that there is something in nearly every track that will get on your nerves. Virtually every hook on this album sucks donkey balls. “Untitled L” arguably has some of the best verses on the record, which manage to build up an intense momentum that is completely devoid of value when an over long chant of “here we ***in’ go!” gets disjointedly pasted into the song. “Leflair” has Hodgy give another really solid set of verses that gets interrupted with a profane and atonal hook that just seems like pointless filler. The immature lyrics about rolling kush from Left Brain do nothing but make the track even worse.
Numbers is an album that is really all over the board. For every positive aspect about the album, there is something negative. There are great instrumentals and shoddy ones. There is also some swell lyrical content that is counterbalanced by bad MCs and mostly terrible hooks (excluding Frank Ocean’s appearance). This is mainly just a product that will be eaten up by trendy teenagers who probably don’t even like the music itself.
