Review Summary: Waterrrrr you doing to your album?
I'll keep this one relatively brief simply because disappointment really hinders my ability to write effectively.
BLP Kosher is a rapper from Broward County who, up until this point, really excited me. Hearing the single "Special K" for the first time is something I wish I could do again because it was honestly one of the most surprising listens I've had in my time being a hip hop head. I had context of who the guy was before going in - white, Jewish, hair that looks like a cartoonish ear of corn - and the display of talent on the song was shockingly addictive and devoid of cringe. Sure, the mic quality definitely still screamed SoundCloud origins, but his bars were funny, his delivery was perfectly slick, and the beat on the track, while bassy, was catchy and grabbed my attention in a matter of seconds; in summary, I was looking forward to this album.
But literally what in the world HAPPENED to this ALBUM? WHAT WENT WRONG HERE???
The first half of the album, while decent, was a bit underwhelming. I knew something was wrong when I enjoyed "Special K" as a single and yet felt its presence was weak on this album, which may be because a lot of the other rap tracks have much better production. But even then, I found BLP Kosher's style to get repetitive by the time that song started playing, which isn't even halfway into the record. Just his whole flow and constant rapid fire wordplay wound up being really uneventful - I can only be surprised by his similes so many times before I start to expect it. And going back to the production, I find that some of these beats suffer from the same oversaturated, overly-mastered cluttered feeling that "Special K" had. It's not a huge deal, but for a debut album, you'd expect some better editing. One of my favorite tracks on this record, "Emo Jit," suffers from this immensely, so one can learn to ignore it and just appreciate the finer things in tracks like this one. I mean, "Catch the opps by surprise, Chris Hansen?" Come on, that's genius.
There's other standouts in this first half, too. "The Nac 3" is a really slick opening track that sets the tone for BLP Kosher's style really well - disrespectful bars, noisy trap beat, his iconic WATERRRRR adlib, the Detroit influence, the gang's all here. "Fools Gold" features probably the best beat on this entire project; the deserted sounding guitar melody is really awesome. BNYX killed this one, as did BLP Kosher himself, with a really catchy chorus and great verses to boot. The preceding track "2000's Baby" is solid as well, with a sliding vocal melody that sounds more lowkey but also leaning into more earworm territory. It's good stuff from these tracks, for sure.
I mean, listening to this album again really forced me to enjoy the good stuff while it lasted. Because the second half of this album is, hand to god, some of the worst pop-punk I've heard in a long time.
Just...I'm not even sure I want to talk about it. It's so unbelievably generic and yet also grating to listen to. BLP Kosher's vocals on this second half are lathered in autotune, and it's not good autotune, it's the really really bad autotune. There's a good and bad way to use it, and here, you can tell that it's being used to cover up a severe lack of singing talent. It's difficult to listen to most of the time. The closer, "Gravity," is the best example of this. The beat on this one is hardly there, just a bass and a basic synth lead for the most part. His vocals are in front of everything, and yet they sound like ass.
You know what else sounds like ass? The instrumentals in this segment. Some of them are more trap focused while some lean more into the pop-punk vibe that BLP Kosher was going for; either way, they're both terrible. The track "Another World" literally sounds like it'd be in a car commercial. And BLP Kosher's vocals on it...Jesus Christ...he goes into his falsetto around the halfway point and...just...blegghhh.
It's a damn shame that this second half was so unbearably bad that it dropped my rating down so far. Again, if a bit undercooked, the first half of this album isn't bad at all. If this album ended with the song "Quite Frankly" being the closer, it'd be a solid debut project. But as it stands, BLP Kosher took a perfectly good rap album and ruined it with a truly dreadful second half that should have never left the temple, and it bogs down the whole record so much that it's almost embarrassing. Guess you could say it's a "Bars MISSvah."
...
Sorry. I wasn't sure how to end this one.
3/10
FAV TRACKS: THE NAC 3, 2000'S BABY, FOOLS GOLD, EMO JIT, EXPENSIVE GAS
LEAST FAV TRACK: ANOTHER WORLD
thank you for reading (:
BLP Kosher
