Review Summary: A pie taken from the oven after 2 minutes and thrown at your face
Well strap into your time machine and cover the childrens’ ears lady and gents because I'm going to pan this album like it's 1848.
As with many bloated new hip/hop mixtapes, the album is inexplicably 28 tracks long. An album that no doubt was imagined to be an ambitious expanse of exciting hip-hop expression amounts to something akin to a breaking wheel; the listener is languidly rotated around while every so often a truncheon unceremoniously slaps them in the face.
My central complaint is the ham-fisted length/boredom tag team combination which never ceases to be omnipresent. I'll admit, the first few tracks were merely dull and tolerably painful. But after awhile I found out it possesses the slow burning psychic distress of Chinese-Water torture: the annoyance and anxiety steadily builds as one repetitive drip to the head after another tugs at deeper and more troubling emotions. Song after song of the same muted, uninspired delivery of trite rap tropes, line after line of buzzword pop culture references, cringe-worthy self aggrandizing, downright head scratching vocabulary; all which has the flow of an enlarged prostate. Each word is crawls out of his mouth with all the enthusiasm and virility of a half-dead carnival worker directing you to the bathroom. If you're going to be another face in the legion of disenchanted rap youths telling me about how high you get every day or how attractive your female companions are, at least make an effort to do it in a way that attempts to capture the listener. All of this sadly isn't uncommon, but at least your everyday trap rap greaseball gives you the courtesy of downing out all those confusing word things with booming gangster noises and stool loosening bass.
Unfortunately we're never afforded such a luxury as the beats are stripped-down stoner rap noises prominent enough to be grating, but leave ample room for the vocals to slap your face around a bit before hacking a cough on it. Every song was just a sickly branch of the same rotten trunk. I would skip forward and back between songs and for the life of me could not discern the difference. The exception being the instrumental or skit tracks, which was like dragging an overweight bear under the spotlight for a hot-plate dance. And when the novelty is thoroughly beaten senseless and the lights go down, you’re shocked to find that it's merely the intermission.
This album is so terrible that I decided to write a hopefully humorous piece to highlight its problems. But in looking up the track list to copy-paste, I was astounded to find that people actually liked this. Which makes me sad on some metaphysical level. But in analyzing this baffling opinion, I think I have struck upon the reason for the acclaim. People like this because it sounds like the Odd Future gang (albeit related like it’s inbred third cousin). It indeed borrows heavily from both prominent members, Earl Sweatshirt and Tyler the Creator. Earl is subtle and subdued using his deadpan delivery to showcase his vivid imagery and empower the rare emotional moments. Tyler’s clever self depreciation, comically disgusting/disturbing obtuse self portrayals and observations have made him the phenomena he is. So naturally, this album ends up sounding like a muted, try-hard self reflection which manages to encapsulate the worst elements of both artists while adding the slightest pinch of individual fecal seasoning. Not only is the entire thing derivative, every modicum of individuality is spread so microthin over the 6 hour run time, diced so finely into 28 tracks (which honestly could have been condensed into like 4), that you'd swear there was nothing substantial if electron microscopy wasn't around.
So why 1.5? I do mildly enjoy the one track produced by Madlib (according to this site at least and whose involvement I'd be quick to question), but only for that reason and not the composition as a whole. But really, I get caught in my own convoluted insults sometimes. This kid is young and showed some chops on his last album which was a bit more memorable (I liked Phantom). He took a chance on a long ass album, produced many of the tracks, and while I felt as though I was decaying for most of it, it’s a thorough palette of a young artist’s expression. Which is one of the main issues: I never felt like I was listening to a refined work more than a musical idea diary. Nothing felt complete or fleshed out enough to be worthwhile. There are certainly elements that resemble something I’d want to listen to, but a complete and polished memoir it is not. While in it's entirety, it was tiresome like the sun is hot, I think if he were to shift directions, this album showed glimpses of a potentially respectable MC. He's got talent and while I think he took a giant misstep into a wad of gum nestled over wet cement, he's got time on his side and ambition to match. I realize this is like the equivalent of getting points for putting your name on the SAT, but better to take it and score in the 2nd percentile than to resigning yourself to licking postage for a living. Right?
