Everybody

Keeping track of whether Logic's writing from his own or someone else's vantage can be a challenge, but one doesn't need to be that familiar with his work to realize that this contains some of his most personal rhymes.

Complete with unbridled lyricism, top-notch production and conceptual brilliance to tie it all together, Everybody is a hallmark release that further solidifies Logic solid standing in hip-hop.

‘Everybody’ is a great album and although it re-hashes the topic of race, it does make some very valid statements on the issue. It has great production throughout and interesting narrative devices – even if you haven’t listened to ‘The Incredible True Story’.

Hip Hop’s gatekeepers will say that timing and the repetitive nature of Logic’s lyrics hurts Everybody but for Logic’s younger core fan base, especially those going through struggles of their own, his latest work will be the catharsis to keep them from plunging off the deep end.

Essentially, what the album is lacking is a sense of positivity and fun - traits that permeated all of Logic's earlier releases - now suspiciously absent at the cost of a discussion-worthy issue that gets lost in a haze of constant re-iteration.

Logic’s Everybody is the latest in a string of recent rap releases that consider race and perception—Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN., J. Cole’s 4 Your Eyez Only, and Joey Bada$$’s All-Amerikkkan Bada$$ among them. But unlike those records, which are self-aware and mindful of their surroundings, this is nearly clueless and without subtlety.

“Amiable” is sort of the operant word for Everybody, which, like Joey Badass’ All-Amerikkan Bada$$, strives to create a trenchant pop-rap polemic for the Trump era, but unlike that record—or any other record ever, for that matter—frequently gets lost in minutes-long spoken-word segues in which Neil DeGrasse Tyson speaks as a benevolent god about the nature of self-worth. That stuff is about as bad as a thing in our vast cosmos can be.

Logic's new album puts the "mess" in "message."

There are some highlights on this project, but ultimately Logic is way too straightforward and brings minimal layers to each song.

In general, the album feels like a grab-bag of 'button issues', others' ideas, and content truly desperate to bear high-minded importance, but proves little more than Logic has clearly heard some Kendrick. More simply put, its tactic of sticking to simple broad-strokes – and constantly beating his listener over the head with them – reads like BuzzFeed: The Album.

It’s an inoffensive, populist take on socially conscious hip hop, defanged and declawed for maximum mainstream penetration.