Review Summary: Flat coke.
Generally, hip-hop relies heavily on the personality of the emcee. All genres and styles do in one way or another, but in the case of hip-hop it’s a very integral part of the music, look at anybody who’s anybody in hip-hop and you’ll find that their raps are all tightly infused with their charisma. Because hip-hop, specifically rap, is 90% focused on the guy up the front on the microphone, it’s pretty much impossible to ignore that and the artist uses this to deliver their ideas directly from them to their listeners.
Dan Bull’s music is just not that interesting. There’s a lot of Dan Bull in Dan Bull’s music but, Dan Bull doesn’t have an awful lot to offer music wise. His flow on Face is soft, precise, but ultimately its defining feature is its softness. Bull’s voice just kind of brushes the eardrum, just enough to be more attention grabbing then the instrumentals.
A couple of interesting topics are touched upon on Face, the rap dedicated to John Lennon (the one with the pretty self-explanatory title) has some pretty cool one liners and has what’s probably the catchiest hook on the album, but a lot of the topics on Face are personal ones. While you can’t fault this and you have to give Bull credit for laying these (what are probably) sensitive subjects down, they don’t make for anything particularly attention grabbing and a lot of these songs, to match his flow, come out sounding soft. Take the song “Dream Girl” for example, the lyrics are a nice sentiment for sure, but they don’t make me want to hear more. Much the same is the deeply personal “Portrait of the Autist,” in which Bull confronts the listener with his confession that he suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, while there comes a lot of confidence in talking about something like this, it just doesn’t make an amazing song. But to be clear, this is not entirely the fault of the topics themselves. A lot of songs like “Dream Girl” and “Portrait of the Autist” also lack a strong hook or remarkable flow on the verses, which is the only thing the stronger songs on the album really excel at.
Along with Bull’s pretty passable performances, the instrumentals on Face are all pretty… well, faceless. Much like Bull’s raps, there’s an air of harmlessness to them which blends well with Bull, but this sound is heavily relied upon for the entirety of the release and the album, though thankfully brief, seems to bleed between tracks.
Dan Bull is an artist with a pretty niche sound and audience with a pretty successful Youtube personality, but ultimately his music doesn’t stand out much. Bull delivers some interesting topics, he delivers some political and social commentary and he also delivers some pretty personal stuff, but not in a way that’s particularly rewarding to listen to. It’s soft, it’s easy going, it’s personal and it’s a little politically confronting, but none of its musical components are particularly special.
