Review Summary: Behold, the hip-hop equivalent of cannon fodder!
Big Sean wants to be Kanye West. This is not a new ideal or aspiration (Common, who is much more “deep” than Kanye, really wants to be Kanye), but Big Sean takes this to a new height (or low). From the “Runaway” keys on album opener “Nothing Is Stopping You” to the constant repping of Detroit to an almost Chicago level (“talking ‘bout Chi-Town!” anyone?), Sean tries harder to evoke the feeling of “Dropout” era Kanye than try anything to refine or shift his sound.
Let’s get one thing straight: Big Sean isn’t necessarily a really good rapper. Much like contemporaries Rick Ross and Chief Keef, Sean operates in the realm of hashtag rap, with most of his bars functioning or relying on the premise that simple, even sophomoric puns and wordplay make for good rap. But unlike Drake or even Kanye himself, Sean can barely keep up with his own beats or themes, making off-beat mentions to “Trapanese” and people’s mothers. On “10 2 10,” his flow is essentially aping Chief Keef. “I woke up working like I'm Mexican/That mean I work from 10 to 10” he screams as the Young Chop-produced trainwreck kicks off. What are we to make of this racist “Finally Rich” outtake? It’s a bitter bit of irony that the track where Big Sean raps about how hard he works sounds like it was made in 5 minutes in FruityLoops, with lyrics written and rapped by a middle school dropout. The first truly enjoyable track on this album is the fourth one (“Toyota Music”) that boasts a FlyLo-like bassline and an almost vaporwave-inspired soundscape. This instrumental, courtesy of Xaphoon Jones of Chiddy Bang and Ellie Goulding fame, helps to demonstrate his promise as a producer and even helps Sean sound good. Sure, Sean isn’t necessarily doing A+ work here (or even B work) but at least his presence feels less grating.
Speaking of Ellie Goulding, she shows up for a feature on “You Don’t Know,” another beat highlight. Ellie’s been off for a long time now (pretty much since her breakout post-“Lights”), but her feature and this beat are the first true testament to her ability as a straight EDM/electronic princess. It’s also No I.D.’s best work on this album, besting his contributions to the aforementioned “10 2 10” and most of the album’s latter half.
But the worst part of this album comes in Big Sean’s lack of a coherent artistic vision. If he was going to go all-in on the “mini-Kanye” angle, that would’ve made for at least a good album (because even discount Kanye can stand heads above the rest, see “Yeezus”). If he’d gone all-in on being a #trapstar, that would’ve made for a banging album. But the majority of “Hall of Fame” is Sean vacillating between “introspective” tracks about starting from the bottom and throwaway filler pop-rap tracks. Tracks like “Fire,” “Ashley” (which features an unusually pitchy Miguel) and “Beware,” which carries perfunctory appearances from tired singer Jhene Aiko and a long-fallen-off Lil Wayne, are all straight pop, and destroy the album’s attempted flow. Then there are tracks like “MILF” and “Mona Lisa” where Sean tries really hard to achieve ratchet fame a la “The Motto.” All of those tracks are pure crap, and “MILF” will likely be the point where people throw their physical copies of the album out the window. And why in the world is Nicki Minaj here? Juicy J’s appearance is understandable (because “Bandz a Make Her Dance” of course), but one would think that Nicki would be a little more respectful of herself than this. Her verse is self-deprecating and entirely beneath even her. When you hear Nicki opining the value of women writers, verses like hers here make you think she desperately needs a ghostwriter.
For Big Sean, the best moments are when he tries to evoke the feeling of his breakout single and inarguable best effort, “My Last.” Songs like “Worlds Ablaze,” “Toyota Music” and, in some ways, “You Don’t Know.” All the other moments, when he’s trying to be Chief Keef (“MILF,” “10 2 10,”), Kanye (“Sierra Leone,” “Nothing Is Stopping You,”), Drake (“It’s Time,” “All Figured Out,”) or even Jay Z (“Mona Lisa”), fall horribly flat; even the low standards that Chief Keef and modern (read: MCHG) Jay Z have set for themselves stand tall above Sean’s output here. Which, to me, is sad: Detroit deserves a better popular hip-hop representative. Let’s hope Danny Brown stays on.
