Cheat Codes

Cheat Codes while not always making highlights, Black Thought and Danger Mouse made something quite great.

I have to give massive props to Danger Mouse on this thing. The production is easily the best part of the album with some truly fantastic production, especially towards the start of the album with "Sometimes", "The Darkest Part", and "Violas and Lupitas" being some of the highlights when it comes to a sonic aspect. Black Thought also does pretty well on this project, I will admit that I am not super familiar with his work other than that he was in a group with Questlove, but he does pretty well here, although I do think he is the weaker of the 2 unfortunately. But when they shine, they go to the fucking stars, with songs like "Aquamarine" being one of the better hip-hop songs I have heard in a while, with purely angelic production and amazing energy from Black Thought's verses, it is definitely the best on the project. What is also great about this album is the feature list. "Belize" having a posthumous MF DOOM feature, in which he actually completely steals the show with a fantastic feature. RIP DOOM BTW. Then there is the song "Because" which has great features from Joey Bada$$ and surprisingly Russ who I feel carries his own, which I wasn't expecting in the slightest. There are many other songs on here that are pretty good as well, and for the most part, I think everything works on this album, hence my high score, that being said, that score also comes with some caveats.

The mixing on here is pretty damn poor. Now I feel as if a lot of it was for aesthetic but it still rubbed me the wrong way sometimes. There are also times where both Danger Mouse and Black Thought aren't in their purest form. "Close to Famous" for example has the same poor mixing problem mentioned, but also Danger Mouse's production while still quality, lacked a fullness a lot of the other songs had, and Black Thought really couldn't hold a flame lyrically to what he did on some other songs. A lot of the songs here are good, but that is also a problem, a lot of them don't necessarily go above or beyond that, I mean of course a collaboration between these two was going to be good, but I feel as if it is pretty safe in terms of a collab.

That being said, Cheat Codes is a great project with some fantastic features and solid chemistry between Black Thought and Danger Mouse, I can give it a solid recommendation if you interested in this style of hip-hop.

Best Songs: Aquamarine, Belize, The Darkest Part, Because, No Gold Teeth, Strangers, Sometimes, etc

Worst Songs: Close to Famous