The Sailor

After the first two singles and the snippets that started popping up to promote the album, I was overwhelmingly excited for The Sailor. I had never been a huge fan of Rich Brian, and saw him as a bit of a one-hit wonder after Dat Stick showed him to be more of a novelty rapper. This however, shows that he has genuine ambition and can act upon it fairly well. Obviously he's still got some stuff to work on, but it's a great start.

The production is much more grandiose than his previous efforts, and all the better for it. The album is very orchestral, and it adds a lot to the scale without distracting from Brian's lyrical intentions with each song. Some tracks don't have this, and often pack less punch as a result. I'd even go as far to say some sound like leftovers from his last project. That said, there are also many dynamic moments on here. Songs switch beats, flows and even genres pretty frequently, and it make cuts feel more like journeys.

I was also excited to hear Brian get more introspective on this project, as he had stated that being the driving motivation and improvement on this project. And despite some great moments of this, he's fairly inconsistent in delivering like this. Tracks like Yellow and Kids offer up some of his experiences . Then there are tracks like Confetti and 100 Degrees where he seems to revert back to his Amen self with only slightly better production. However, the great moments that are here show a promising future for Brian to expand on this and eventually get better at it.

I'm overall pleased with how The Sailor turned out, but if Brian's goal was to (in his own words) "Not make an album they forget about in a week", he didn't quite get there. But because he's so young and is gaining much more traction in the industry, I have no doubt that he'll improve even more on his next project and do so with a whole slew of people lining up to work with him.

Best Tracks: The Sailor, Yellow, Kids, Drive Safe, No Worries, Slow Down Turbo

Worst Track: 100 Degrees