Review Summary: i'm duh baaad guy
The
6ix9ine story is one hell of a trip. The man's laundry list of legal issues are all but a secret at this point, and even his old gang-mates have turned their backs and ran far away from him because of his prison sentence (which also caused him to nearly fade away completely from any relevance at all) and cooperation with authorities. Taking the past three years of Tekashi's life into account, it's only natural that something like
TattleTales would manifest itself from the Dahvie Vanity of the SoundCloud rap bandwagon—and it's a wild ride for virtually all the wrong reasons.
While many would be understandably be content to write 6ix9ine off as a meme and nothing more, the sad truth is that the man is completely genuine—especially here. That actually ends up being a major problem for
TattleTales; he's so invested in trying to maintain his whole tough guy act despite the public knowledge that he is indeed a coward. Additionally, there is a staggering lack of any flow or cohesion anywhere; he rambles on without any aim or any effort, almost as if he's half-assing it all. The guest features are phoned in too; Akon drops in on the title track and does his damdest to ensure that you forget he was there in the first place, and Nicki Minaj sounds like she'd rather be absolutely
anywhere else. And with 6ix9ine's desperation to act like he's still hot stuff set to full throttle, the writing on this album is completely devoid of anything narmy that caused guilty pleasures to arise from past songs like "Gummo" ("Gooba" being the sole exception); he tries to introspect, atone, the whole drill on exactly one song (opener "Locked Up 2"); leading said opener lyrics to resemble a scene kid's disturbing mutation into half scene kid, middle school rap fanboy stereotype:
Havin' dreams about livin' my life
I've been havin' dreams about bein' outside
I've been, little baby girl, please don't cry, no
Please don't, no, no
No, no, no, no (No)
-"Locked Up 2"
Once he's done feigning regret, he dips right back into his tough guy attitude, dissing his ex-associates and haters as well as giving us poetry such as "Don't talk to me, I'll talk to you / If it's f**k me, then it's f**k you / Yeah, it's middle finger, f**k you" and "Your bestie is a d**k sucker, I big dub her / As-salama-lama alaykum, you big hater / You nothin' but a hater, hater, clout chaser". The reader might ponder, but he delivers these with a critical lack of irony.
The instrumentals are arguably the least disturbing part of this album—generic trap beats without any substance are still the order of the day, and they're all over
TattleTales; combined with the generic trap beats, the production and mastering of the album is still standard, overcompressed modern-day fare. When it comes down to it, there's nothing really positive that can be said about
TattleTales. It may be a quaint curiosity considering the insanity that rap game Dahvie has been through, but in order to successfully listen to the entire album you have to be some sort of masochist. In short, it's a soon-to-start-dying career's last roar before plummeting towards the bottom of the "forgotten crap" barrel with the likes of Silento and iLoveMemphis—and it's for the best to let this roar fall on deaf ears.
