Swimming Review

On Swimming, rapper Mac Miller delivers mature and deeply personal lyrics over top-notch retro-influenced beats. 

Mac Miller is one of the most artistically evolved musicians I have seen in our current era. Miller rose to prominence in the early 2010's. On mixtapes like K.I.D.S and albums like Blue Slide Park, Miller spits safe bro-y raps about picking up girls, smoking weed and partying. These themes served him well, putting him in hip-hop's limelight. However, Miller was not content to stagnate.

As Miller grew older and experienced more of the ups and downs of life, his records began to show his increased levels of maturity. Compare these lyrics from his first hit single to his lyrics from Swimming. 

"Donald Trump"- 2011
That's the way it goes when you party just like I do
Bitches on my dick that used to brush me off in high school
Take over the world when I'm on my Donald Trump shit
Look at all this money, ain't that some shit

"2009"- 2018
"Take my time to finish, mind my business
A life ain't a life 'til you live it
I was digging me a hole big enough to bury my soul
Weight of the world, I gotta carry my own
My own, with these songs I can carry you home
I'm right here when you're scared and alone"


This lyrical maturity is the album's biggest feature. The dark, emotive lyrics are undoubtedly influenced by Miller's substance abuse issues and tumultuous relationship with pop star Ariana Grande. Throughout Swimming, we see the trials and cracks in a long-term relationship that would fail shortly before this records release.

The beats on this album are funky. If you have read some of my other reviews, you know I am a sucker for funk bass so I really enjoy most of the album's production. The synthesizers that pepper the tracks sound retro, but are used in a way that makes them accentuate the track instead of sounding corny. 

"Ladders" is bouncy and light, perfectly poised to become a late-summer jam. Mac floats across this track, delivering rapid-fire lyrics that also sound effortless. Another favorite of mine is "2009". The tracks serene strings and delicate piano melody give Miller the perfect canvas to depict the struggles of moving on in life.

Conclusion: Mac Miller has always been an oddball in the rap world, but this alubum shows the beauty that can come from being strange. Listen.

Rolling Papers 2 Review

On Rolling Papers 2, Wiz Khalifa offers more of the same hazy stoner rap that made him famous. Wiz raps about three W's. Women, Weed and Wealth. He's been doing the same thing since 2009. Predictably, Rolling Papers 2 talks about money and marijuana for most of its runtime. 

"Mr. Willams" is a highlight of the album. THEMXXNLIGHT and Curren$y give the track an R&B vibe while their slick flow makes the track cohesive . Wiz's verse is typical of the album. "Bootsy Bellows" is another impressive cut. While the verses are standard, Wiz spits a catchy hook over a funky beat. The bass line, which is immaculate, pays homage to funk bass legend Bootsy Collins.

I was most impressed with "B OK" because Wiz opens emotionally on up the track. He raps about the personal pain he has felt throughout his career. The death of his sister and his tumultuous relationship with model Amber Rose are the focal points of the song.

Wiz Kalifa's stoner mentor Snoop Dogg makes an appearance on Rolling Papers 2. Unfortunately, Tha Doggfather is not at the top of his game. Snoop Dogg, who normally provides entertaining verses, falls flat. His verse on "Penthouse" adds another layer of mediocrity to an already mediocre song.

This might make the album better

At 90 minutes long, Rolling Papers 2 became a chore to sit through.Tracks were stylistically all over the place, from trap to R&B. The songs felt all over the place, like it's a playlist instead of a deliberate album. Maybe this album would better serve someone as the background to a late night smoke session. Nothing on the album is jarringly bad, but nothing is exciting.

Conclusion: Wiz is sticking to the formula that made him popular. This album is competent and confident but does not push any boundaries. If you like Wiz Kalifa's past music, here's a buffet. If you don't, skip it.

How 2 Do an Online Music Review

If you have ever wondered how to do a review, I have just the lesson for you. You just need a couple things.

• Notepad
• Pen
• Closed-back headphones 
• Music Source (I'm using my laptop)
• Refreshments (Lacroix, because it's trendy.)
• A place to work uninterrupted

Steps:

1. Don't read any other reviews.

•  Any time I read a review before listening to an album it colors my opinion.

2. Research. 

• Gain a general knowledge of the musician and the cultural context of the album.

3. First Listen

• Find a comfortable spot where you can listen uninterrupted.
• Write down all your reactions in a notebook.
• I generally listen for compelling lyrics and interesting sound as well as song structure.
• By the time you are finished, you will have an opinion on the record.
• (Optional) Drink Lacroix

You should have a couple pages that look like this 

4. Wait for a day

5. Listen Again

• With your notes in hand, listen again.
• Extrapolate on the ideas you wrote.
• Listen as many times as you need to.

6. Write

• Determine why you hold your opinion. What are the main things you liked and disliked about the album?
• Find your main like and dislikes and use those as the basis of your review.
• Thesis. Just like writing a paper for school, take the main idea of your review and put it in one sentence at the beginning of the review. 

7. Add pictures

That's all folks! Basically, you just need to listen to the music, think about what you like and write your opinion down in a convincing argument. 

TA1300 Review

Denzel Curry's Album TA13OO(Taboo) provides a rebellious critique of the "Soundcloud Rap" that has grown around Curry and remains entertaining throughout its whole runtime. 

Curry hails from South Flordia. Other rappers from South Florida, like Lil' Pump and XXXTenacion, have amassed a huge following after becoming popular on music streaming platform Soundcloud. However, Curry's career predates the "Soundcloud Rappers." While Curry and "Soundcloud Rappers" share many sonic characteristics like aggressive vocals and audio distortion, Curry does not see himself as part of that genre of music. On "Percs", he lampoons the facial tattoos, drug abuse and lyrical shallowness he perceives in "Soundcloud rap." 

I should rap about some lean and my diamond cuts
Get suburban white kids to want to hang with us
It's your friendly neighborhood, I don't give a fuck
Get it straight, I innovate, you ad-libs on a 808
Don't need a tattoo on my face cause Denzel is a different race
I don't even try to hate, I'm just saying what I ain't
People sleeping on me hard and I'm the hardest in the paint
Eight years in the game and I never rode a wave

Curry is not content to simply make fun of rappers he sees as shallow. TA1BOO contains moments of mature emotional depth and political commentary interwoven with aggressive braggadocio and aggressive production. This maturity is best seen on the title track "Taboo", where Curry discusses his relationship with a victim of sexual abuse. He ponders how he can best support someone he loves that has suffered such emotional trauma. 

TA1300 is a concept album, broken into three sides. Light, Grey, and Dark. While the tracks on the respective sides do generally correspond with the intended mood, Curry could have focused on making the concept more coherent. 

One of Curry's signature lyrical techniques is the rapid-fire deployment of wide-ranging references, ranging from pop culture to philosophy. He belies his age by referencing Nicleodian cartoons like The Fairly Odd Parents, Jimmy Neutron and Prince Zuko from Avatar. I find this charming, although I may only like it because of my own fond memories of those TV shows. 

(On are a serious note, if you have never watched Avatar: The Last Airbender, please do so immediately. It is an incredible show.) 

Best character development, all time. 

The track "Percs", which was released as one of the album's singles, demonstrates the album's satirical tone, grimy production and tight delivery all in one track. If you like "Percs", you will like the whole album. Listen Below. 

Conclusion: Curry has delivered one of the best albums of 2018. He aimed to take the rap game and flip it on its head. With an album that has only one weak song, he may have done it.  I am very excited to listen to this album again and again. Do me a favor, and listen.

Hive Mind Stream of Consciousness Review

Today I listened to Hive Mind, the latest project from Neo-Soul group The Internet. Instead of a traditional review, I wrote down all my thoughts in a stream of consciousness style, sorting them by track. Hopefully, this experiment will illuminate what I listen for in music and my thought process. Postive thoughts are in blue, negative thoughts are in red, and general observations are in black.

1. Come Together
This is a super funky track, and it just started.
I don't know what the chorus is saying.
There is a spacey feeling to this song.
Nice flute.
This would make great background music nothing cuts through the mix.
Nothing sticks out. Maybe this is like a musical palate cleanser, getting my ears ready for some funky soul music.

2. Roll (Burbank Funk)
This drum track is super syncopated. 
This bass line is amazing.
Finally, I can a voice that cuts through the music. 
These synth stabs add a ton of atmosphere.
All night. All night. All night.

3. Come Over
The simple, heavy drumbeat contrasts poorly with the seductive vocals
The phrasing on this guitar solo is amazing. 
This spoken word outro is odd. I'm not a fan.

4. La Di Da
I like the clavinet sound.
This track was so bland it didn't inspire any thoughts.  

5. Stay the Night
This acoustic intro is lush and beautiful.

Vocals are soft but sensual. Catchy hook, the harmony sounds great.

6. Bravo
Tight lyrics. Suave lamentations on lost love, but very bitter. 
Similar instrumentals to the rest of the album.

7. Mood
This drumbeat is really interesting.
The rest is not.

8.Next Time/ Humble Pie
The hook is wordy and complicated, but it is relatable to any listener.
Incredible melody.
This song is more downbeat than the rest of the album, very chill.
Standout song. 

9. It Gets Better
The tempo is picking up again.
Mellow but still very funky.
I can't tell if this interlude is rap or spoken word.
Either way, I like it.

10. Look What U Started
I feel like I've heard this song three times on this album already. 

11. Wanna Be
These instrumentals are starting to bleed together.
The "Wanna Be" and "want to be" are a good play on words.

12. Beat Goes On.

Fat sounding synth bass line, which is amazing. 
Dissonant notes add a lot of character.
Great synth arpeggios give the song flair
This is the best song on the album. 

13. Hold On
Bleh. Boring and long.

Conclusion: The instrumentals are tight and funky, but the album fails to hold my attention. With only a couple standout tracks, this album works better as background music. 

Loner Review

On her album Loner, Caroline Rose gives her listeners a thoughtful examination of female sexuality, punctuated by sick synth riffs. Each track blazes with originality and energy. Caroline's satirical lyrics find humor in serious issues like mental illness and misogyny.  

However, I think Caroline's thoughts on sexuality are the most compelling part of this album.

"Soul No.5" is Caroline's confident assertion of her own sexuality. She yells, "I like to keep a loser freak in the sheets." This declaration shows her casual, glib attitude toward a topic many people still find taboo.  

On "Smile", Caroline uses a cacophony of distorted voices to explore how annoying it is for women to be told to smile constantly.  "Bikini" deals with the commodification of the female body. 

"Getting To Me" and "Animal" both explore romantic relationships. "Getting To Me" expresses a desperate longing for romance.  "Animal" exudes physicality. Caroline explores the lust she feels for an ex. Anger toward her ex's new partner consumer her thoughts until she loses reason and becomes "like an Animal."  

The cover art is fantastic and belies the humor present on this album. Caroline creates a visually striking red and white color scheme, reminiscent of the sharp and focused color schemes of early White Stripes albums. This draws the eye to the album and holds the viewer's attention. The font choice and framing of the shot remind me of a Wes Anderson film. Caroline's casual attire, the red sweatsuit, gives the album a casual visual aspect, which matches with the frank tone Caroline addresses serious issues with. Of course, the most striking feature of the cover is Caroline's mouth filled with a pack of cigarettes. It's comical, but it also hints at the dark, mordant humor of the lyrics. 

Conclusion: It rocks and it has something to say. Listen.  

Scorpion Review

Drake is at the top of pop stardom. A single from his latest album, called “In My Feelings” just knocked another from the same album from the Number one spot. He now has the most number one singles of any rapper.

While Drake might be a superstar, the album that spawned these singles is not so stellar. I’ll break down my thoughts in this review.

SCORPION- Drake

The Good

• The Production
• Bangers 
• Drake’s X Factor

The Bad

• Filler Tacks
• Separation of Rap and R & B

The Ugly

• Drake’s struggle with paternity 

There’s a lot to like on Scorpion.

The production on this album, like every Drake release, is top notch. He as a star team of producers behind him and the beats here range from simple and snappy to deep melodic and moody.

Scorpion has bangers too. “In My Feelings” is the platonic form of a Drake hit. Cheesy yet charming bars about women over an earworm hook make this an ideal pop rack track. “Emotionless” and “Nice for What” are two other standout tracks. 

There’s also Drake’s X Factor. Drake possesses this melodramatic charm that has allowed him to rise of the top of the rap game and break all of the conventions of the genre while doing so. Most of Drake’s music is spent musings on the trials of women and fame, but he has the charisma to make the most ridiculous bars sound cool. Take the following from “God’s Plan.”

She said, 'Do you love me?' / I tell her only partly / I only love my bed and my mama / I'm sorry

I would laugh if anyone said this to me in real life, but Drake makes it sound smoother than Shaft.

My biggest complaint, by far, is the album's excessive length. It is easy to contrast this album's length with the brevity of another recent album I enjoyed, Kids See Ghosts. Every track on Ghosts seems to have a meaning or try to break some new ground. On Scorpion, half of the tracks seem to be throwaways. These songs also make the album unfocused; I struggled to find a theme that made the album a cohesive whole.

Drake’s other misstep was separating the album into two halves, one focused on rap and the other focused on R&B. Drake reached his level of popularity by being one of the first artists to combine the two genres by himself. Separating the two takes away one of his biggest strengths.

The ugliest aspect of this album is how Drake handled his new public fatherhood. Pusha T, another prominent artist, recently revealed to the world that Drake had a child, a fact Drake himself had not made public. Drake uses childish lyrics to address the issue

Thankful for the women that I know / Can't go fifty-fifty with no ho / Every month, I'm supposed to pay her bills / And get her what she want / I still got like seven years of doin' what I want

Let's not forget that Drake isn’t a kid, even if he’s handling his paternity crisis like one of the baby daddies from teen mom. Drake has been massively popular since 2009. A man that’s been at the top of music for that long should have a little more sense

Final Verdict: Recommended with some reservations. Listen to the bangers.

Kids See Ghosts Review

Kid Cudi and Kayne West released a new album.

If you went to high school anytime from 2008 through 2014, these words are enough to send tingles down your spine.

Kid Cudi was able to connect to a generation of moody teenagers with classic albums like Man on the Moon and Man on the Moon II. These albums featured songs that bared Cudi’s raw emotions and darkest insecurities plain for the world to see. Cudi’s openness packaged with the slick production and guidance of Kayne West ensured the staying power of their music. Unfortunately, after a period of mental illness, Cudi’s music descended into mediocrity and with culminated with the 2015 atrocity Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven.

Now I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Kids See Ghosts proves the duos were and remain a force for making emotionally driven art and music.

Here are my three favorite things about the album.

1. Brevity. At only seven tracks and 23 minutes long it is easily digestible in one sitting. Like an effectively edited essay, Kids See Ghosts trims the excess away and delivers its message in a lean and punchy format. Themes of alienation, loneliness, despair, and triumph shine through the music. The typical generic rap trappings of wealth, sex, and meaningless violence are not present to water down the album's focused vision.

2. Emotional Immediacy. The duo is open about their struggles in life and they leave no trauma unrevealed. Lines like, “And nothing hurts anymore / I feel kind of free” remind me of "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd.

3. Raw Sound. This album is dissonant, which works well with the subject matter. Kid Cudi’s trademark off-key singing emphasizes the aforementioned emotions. The rough edges are intentional. Kayne is a notorious perfectionist, so for better or worse, every sound on this album is meticulously placed.

However, this album has weaknesses.

Some songs are aimless. Songs like “Free” and “Feel the Love” lack clear structure and direction. While this is may not be a negative for some people, I found myself lost amongst verse and chorus, wondering when the song was going to end. Without defined rising action and climax these songs became disorienting.

The album falls into the common trap of romanticizing mental illness. Cudi and Kayne are open about struggling with depression and Bipolar Disorder, respectively. However, instead of portraying these illnesses as the debilitating disorders they actually are, the duo seems to use them to feed into the “tortured artist” trope. 

Conclusion: This album is as flawed as the two men who made it. Give it a listen anyway.

Wide Awake Review

Damn, I like this album.

The band first caught my ear with their 2016 album Human Performance. The singles "Berlin Got Blurry" and "Dust" were constantly on my Spotify rotation last summer. "Dust’s" fat, droning guitar sounds and chanted vocals provide a hypnotic listen. The spaghetti western guitar licks and witty lyricism of "Berlin Got Blurry" make it one of the most unique rock songs of the decade. I consider it an instant classic.

Parquet Courts occupy a unique lyrical space on this Wide Awake, dangling between seriousness and silliness, walking the tightrope between those emotional extremes.

The album tackles pertinent topics such as income disparity, violence and our polarized political climate without devolving into preachy sloganeering. The perfect example of the silly/serious duality comes off Total Football, which contains the political commentary, “Collectivism and autonomy are not mutually exclusive”. They also say “Fuck Tom Brady” on the same track. While the first lyric may be perceived as shallow, the second example shows that this band is truly at the height of their intellectual prowess.

The band’s punk roots shine as strong as ever in Wide Awake’s sound. "Almost Had to Start a Fight/ In And Out of Patience" starts out as an amateurish sounding punk song, but halfway though kicks into gear, developing a groove strong enough to spawn a mosh pit.  

"Mardi Gras Beads" reminds me of Mac DeMarco. I hope you forgive the overused comparison. The hazy vocals and reverb-drenched insurgents are reminiscent of the popular indie rocker. The style works well in this song. What really stands out to me on this track is the solo. While not technically dazzling, the phrasing is magnificent and the interplay between the rhythm instruments and the lead guitar effectively sum up the emotions of the song without the need for words.

The band reaches out from their punk and indie roots on this album. They have been listening to funk, and it especially shows on cuts like Wide Awake. The track is so groovy it blurs the lines between dance music and rock. I would be hard-pressed to even call it rock music. Like funk and disco music, the song lays primarily on the multilayered percussion section and the baseline. The baseline is funky enough to make Bootsy Collins blush.

Further drawing comparisons to classic Funk music a la James Brown is the simple and repetitive lyricism. The vocals act as another instrument in the mix, adding vocal timbre instead of telling a story or expressing complex emotional statements. This, of course, is not a criticism, the lyrics are masterfully executed and more complex lyrics might serve to ruin the songs spotless groove.

Conclusion: Damn, I really like this album.