This is what artistic bankruptcy sounds like

Trippie Redd is a copycat, not a chameleon, a copycat. Didn’t we hear this album last year with Lil Uzi Vert’s Eternal Atake? Not only is Trip At Knight’s cybernetic soundscape a carbon copy of Uzi’s work but it’s it seems as though Trippie found one song he loved and cloned it 10 times. Plaguing this album are a series of cybernetic synth stabs that vary barely enough to notice a new song but not enough to be sure you ... read more

Quick one, and the last one for a little bit here. Your boy has finals and a website and podcast to run.

I thought Miley Cyrus was done, her past few efforts have been mediocre at best and tragic at worst. But in the most unpredictable switch up of 2020 Cyrus has come back with a rock album. It’s one with muddy guitars here, glamorous Synths there and broken relationships everywhere. Song after song Cyrus shows how fractured she and everyone she brings close is. Cynical, she pulls ... read more

Why switch it up when the same old style prints money? Year after year there’s hope Nav will switch up something, anything and year after year it never happens.

Robo voice? Check.

Same tired flows? Check.

Basic rhymes? Check.

Meandering bars? Check again.

Surprisingly great production? Check, check and check.

It’s actually amazing how consistently stale Nav is while riding the coattails of stellar beats.

Continuing a 2020 trend, Emergency Tsunami is solely produced by ... read more

This is what we call fire mid. I Really like the sentiment to this track, especially the line “this some shit I usually don’t do.” It’s just a testament to how often Ariana Grande would go out of her way for the partner she has so wholeheartedly fallen for. Grande’s voice is a little washed out and even while reading the lyrics along with the track he words are unintelligible. The classic 00’s R&B guitar, violin and crickets are a very nice touch though. ... read more

Okay I’m buried in midterms/work/the podcast so I’m gonna make this really short and sweet.

Benny the Butcher is a 90’s hip hop revivalist but he’s missing the most crucial part of the 90’s, the lyricism. He has the swagger, the drug dealing past and the boom bap to back him up but not the bars. While its known Benny used to be a prolific drug dealer in Buffalo it’s a note he harps on, on every track as if he hasn’t mentioned it in every song before. ... read more

It’s your boy's birthday so this’ll be a brisk one.

You can only drill for so long. Headie One has been making drill since 2014 and that’s 6 long years. Eventually an artist wants to spread their wings and EDNA is that space. EDNA is a drill album but only on the surface, beneath the first handful of songs is a wide ranging project that touches a plethora of sounds. It’s a testament to One’s versatility that he approaches different realms but it’s a double ... read more

Sometimes the sequel is better than the original. Savage Mode 2, produced by Metro Boomin, rapped by 21 Savage and narrated by Morgan Freeman is as great as it looks on paper. And much like Freeman explains in the intro the best combinations aren’t additive, they’re reductive, to one. 21 and Metro are symbiotic.

What was once skeletal is now horrific. 21 Savage has always been sinister but now he’s scary. Metro Boomin has framed 21 with a horror movie aesthetic, dark keys, ... read more

I was worried for Yellow Days. On his previous project the production was so stripped and slowed to make room for his unique yearning voice, it seemed like he’d built a reliance on it. ‘A Day in a Yellow Beat’ proves otherwise. Yellow Days latest album is a testament to maximalism, flooding each track with a plethora of instruments he’s terraformed a funk filled psychedelic world. There’s Saxophones, synths (watery and wondering), guitars, keyboards, basses, ... read more

This is probably the blandest song of Travis Scott’s career. The generic trap high hats, the dull 808s and the played out Astroworld theme park background sound is worryingly uninspired. His boring raps and the sanded down Young Thug feature are so remarkably dull that it makes me wonder the point of this song. If two thirds of the artists are gonna phone it in why make the song? M.I.A.’s part is interesting, she has a unique flow/delivery but it’s too small to save the track. ... read more

‘Top’, in it’s horrid 21 song, hour-long runtime is an album with two faces. The first face is melodic. Youngboy Never Broke Again, for all the bravado is a morose artist, his melodies are filled with lines of regret, drug addiction and paranoia but they’re stifled by everything around them. With slow, sorrowful acoustic guitars accompanied by trap high hats and 808’s the melodic face isn’t bad per se, it’s just painfully derivative. Songs like Drug ... read more

It’s seems as though there is some sort of 80’s synth/new wave revivalism going on in pop and David Guetta and Sia want in. Revivalism is a double edged sword, done right, it’s a tour around a sound we’re all familiar with but with new frills. Done wrong, it’s a trek down well tread paths. Unfortunately Guetta and Sia have embarked on the latter. While Let’s Love executes 80’s synth wave well it’s painfully iterative of songs 40 years before it. ... read more

It’s rare that you flip a classic and it comes out this good. Interpolating Busta Rhymes’ hook on ‘I Know What You Want’ for ‘I Got You’ is a shining success. And considering Trippie Redd is 1000x the singer Busta ever was, it should be, but it’s often hard to recapture classic lyrics. The warm strings, watery synths and understated high hats also give ‘I Got You’ a carefree, lovestuck feel that it’s inspiration never had. And although ... read more

I have to hand it to Lil Tecca he has an excellent ear for production. Over a dancehall beat with drum line snares and patient steel drums backed with anticipating 808’s Tecca raps about his come up and people’s switch ups. Lil Tecca’s success is largely garnered from being himself and although it hasn’t changed him it’s changed the perception of him to the people around him and it “got me really fucked up.” The hook is crisp and catchy, the verses are ... read more

What are we rapping about again?

After ten years in the game you’d think Big Sean’s rapping would be in pristine condition. He still has a grand mastery of flows but when it comes to putting together cogent verses, he’s remiss on Detroit 2. Sean has a lot of ideas and things to say but they’re only half baked. Lines about depression, disease and suicide live as two or three-line missives in scatterbrained bars. Verses are just a vessel to progress the song irreverent of ... read more

Nas has finally caught up with the times. Nastradamus was forever seen as a god MC plagued with pauper production. Clever similes, double entendres and meditative metaphors were buried under mediocre keys and muted boom bap. Finally, turning over the keys to Hit-boy Nas’s sound is modernized. With fat synths, soul samples and a splash of trap high hats there’s verve to Nas’s music again. His signature sound is more menacing, more morose and more malleable, Hit-Boy has freed ... read more

There’s a saying in the NBA that goes “talent trumps everything.” And that’s the case for Kaash Paige’s Teenage Fever. Teenage Fever isn’t cohesive, it’s songwriting is iffy and the features are all lacklustre (except K Camp’s) but Kaash Paige has talent that shines through it all. With a voice that borders on sweet and Swae Lee she crafts songs that offer an intriguing gender ambiguity. She’s a R&B singer that sings rap lyrics and ... read more

The Decline Continues

Over what sounds like a mellowed out version of Trophies (or a sanded down Frat Rules) Drake delivers a laid back verse packed with subliminals but there’s something missing. Coupled with a mediocre sung hook this entire song sounds like it’s building to another part that never shows up. The triumphant horns and the wavy aesthetic are ever-cyclical and even when Lil Durk jumps on to deliver a buttery verse the production never varies. The horns build, build ... read more

When Aminé dropped ONEPOINTFIVE, it looked like he took a turn for for the worst. All the colourful eccentricities of Good For you were sanded down to a trappy mainstream sound with horrendous singing. On Limbo Aminé has found a rich middle ground. Dialing back the trap high hats and buzzing 808’s, Aminé’s settled into a soulish sound dripping in Late Registration’s influence fit with sampled vocals, playful keys and lazy guitars. Along with the production ... read more

Just because Taylor Swift wrote pop songs doesn’t mean she’s not introspective. The pop star has been crafting tightly wound tracks under the guise of a pop princess but folklore has stripped that away. Triumphant horns and bouncy synths are reduced to single keys and faint guitars. What we’ve known Swift to be as, a boisterous superstar is shrunk down to a contemplative solo songstress in the woods. The songs of heartbreak, heartache and nostalgia are still there just laid ... read more

The pastiche prodigy comes home

Logic isn’t original and that’s okay... Or maybe it’s not, that really depends on you. No pressure’s production and lyrics are heavily borrowed from contemporaries along with people before him. It’s a sample laden project but does that detract from how elegant the IGOR’s pianos are? How smooth OutKast’s hook from ‘Me and You’ is? How haunting, yet cool it’s production is? How sticky Pimp C’s hook ... read more