Review Summary: The Snowman delivered a decent record.
A while ago, I really didn’t get the appeal of the Snowman, also known as rapper Young Jeezy. His husky voice and adlibs bothered me, and his lyrics were upsettingly simple. Despite the ruthless amount of great beats on his debut
Thug Motivation 101, it was so abundantly filled with filler, and Jeezy seemed like the weakest part of every song. His third album,
The Recession, was even worse, and despite the beats going even crazier, his formula was not only getting more generic, he was letting less guests on to his record. Then I got to his sophomore record,
The Inspiration , a record that seemed to be the most acclaimed by his fans.
The Inspiration proved that his fans were absolutely right, as Jeezy proved himself with his best record yet.
How did
The Inspiration work? Well, the subject matter and Jeezy himself is very much the same. His gruffy voice and his consistent use of ad libs are still here, and he still loves rapping about coke. What’s really the difference? For
The Inspiration, unlike his other records, Young Jeezy unifies the production work for himself. Gloriously large, theatric, and bolstering, the production is like the epic sprawling soundtrack to the snowman moving coke across the streets. “Mr. 17.5” uses generic soul samples, but constructs itself like a game shop theme song and backs Jeezy’s coke rhetoric, while “I Got Money” mixes Jeezy’s wheeze with spooky organs and funky guitar riffs.
The first six tracks of
The Inspiration start it off on a wonderful start. “Hypnotize” is Jeezy over a horror soundtrack, with gross over-dubs, whirring synths, and woozy loud bass. “Still On It”, “You Know What It Is”, and “J.E.E.Z.Y” all show small remnants of Jeezy’s wordplay and buckets of his charisma to make oozing coke anthems that are absolutely booming. “I Luv It” and “Go Getta”, the two hit singles, are sprawling pop-inspired rap epics that surely get the club popping to Jeezy’s ‘words of wisdom’.
Even with these solid first six tracks and shining production, something is not quite right on Jeezy’s
The Inspiration. Although the production is unified, and the number of absolutely solid songs is impressive, it’s just not enough to get past the fact that Jeezy is just not, in actuality, that good of a rapper. The album’s filler track show this off like Jeezy shows off his wrists. “Streets On Lock” and “The Realest” not only make his worst punchlines throughout the album known, but it’s clear he’s not to the task of rapping to those beats, two of the better beats here. However, despite generic topics and Jeezy, who a good majority of the time is not so much of a good rapper,
The Inspiration is still a solid mainstream rap record. The larger-than-life production mixed with Jeezy’s general charismatic delivery and occasional shimmering moments make the album more worth it than not.
The Inspiration is the only album worth buying from the Snowman, and it’s worth it, just not too badly.
