2 Chainz is still a punch-line rapper at heart, but B.O.A.T.S. II adds some Bootsy Collins charisma and ambitious ringleader style to his discography. Pick the sequel over the original and get ready for some stinky, dank, and fun me time.
B.O.A.T.S II ups the production values like a true sequel should. Whereas his last album felt at times like a mixtape in expensive packaging, the beats here are full and gleaming with the fruits of success
There is certainly a lot of dumb going on across #METIME‘s hour, but its seamless transition from absurdity to a more pathos-oriented final third creates a dimension that acknowledges 2 Chainz doesn’t have to be a jester to entertain us. He just enjoys the ride.
B.O.A.T.S. II is an album that feels happy just to exist, a rejection of the modern idea that album releases are serious events and all the tracks that sound like they were fun to make get relegated to bonus cuts or mixtapes.
‘BOATS II…’ is your standard 2013 Southern hip-hop record, complete with ticking beats (‘Extra’), Auto-Tune (‘So We Can Live’) and eye-rollingly explicit lyrics (‘Where U Been?’).
This time around, his formula—catchy hooks, spit-take worthy one-liners and danceable, Top-40 production—suffers from either overexposure or a lack of innovation.
By the end of Me Time, the down-to-Earth, around-the-block-and-back 2 Chainz bores.
An improvement on most fronts from his debut, with much better production and songwriting; but there are some hilariously bad duds that bring the entire mood down unfortunately.
Feds Watching and U Da Realest are the bangers, but Black Unicorn and Outroduction are some of the best tracks of his career.
I've been disappointed by both the 2 Chainz projects that I had listened to before this so I wasn't expecting this one to be good. It was an upgrade on BOATS 1 but it still wasn't good. It baffles me how 2 Chainz can spit so good i nearly every feature I've heard of his and then not come close to his peak once on an album.
The quality drops off in the second half of the album, but it still has good songs with good bars
1 | Fork 3:47 | 90 |
2 | 36 1:28 | 80 |
3 | Feds Watching 4:10 feat. Pharrell Williams | 80 |
4 | Where U Been? 3:50 feat. Cap.1 | 70 |
5 | I Do It 6:13 | 80 |
6 | Used 2 3:45 | 60 |
7 | Netflix 3:55 feat. Fergie | 40 |
8 | Extra 4:47 feat. Rich Homie Quan | 60 |
9 | U Da Realest 4:41 | 56 |
10 | Beautiful Pain 4:50 | 70 |
11 | So We Can Live 6:46 feat. T-Pain | 70 |
12 | Mainstream Ratchet 3:58 | 80 |
13 | Black Unicorn 4:45 feat. Chrisette Michele, Sunni Patterson | 80 |
14 | Outroduction 5:00 | 80 |