This is gonna be heavily Hip Hop oriented, anyone who gives a damn about music has already heard this shit.
Beautiful album to debut with (yeah I know they had that EP whatever fuck you.) the feel of this album is something I would say has no equal. Watered down Death Grips is the way I'd explain it in it's most base terms, but I feel that insults fans of both Death Grips and RATKING.
Memorable songs: So it Goes, Canal, Protein
Worst: Puerto Rican Judo (the fuck?)
This is the harder side of rap done RIGHT. A lot of trap-style sounding beats, but the production works BEAUTIFULLY with Q's voice, and the lyrics and stories he tells are interesting. Sure, it's got a lot of the standard 'big 3' (money,cars,hoes), but in this album it feels 'relatable' to a degree.
Memorable Songs: Collard Greens, Man of the Year, Break the Bank, Hoover Street
Worst: Studio
Another Gangster Rap-type album. The difference with this one is this has the production fingerprint of hip hop alumni Madlib, most famously known as half of the duo known as Madvillian. I usually don't like Freddie by himself, but this album left me pleasantly surprised. It talks about the standard 'thug stuff', but the wordplay and storytelling is great, and it seems like Freddie is weaving this story of a man who did this to survive and does it because it's all he knows, and he regrets every second of it. It all comes to a great close with the title track at the end, with a ton of great features, a bunch of great rapping and just general overall awesomeness. Highly Reccomended.
Memorable Songs: Shitsville, Thuggin', Pinata, Deeper
Worst: Watts (if you can even count that? It's more an interlude), Scarface/Shame otherwise, but it's REALLY hard to pick even a bad song in this album.
No but seriously, I feel like I have to explain why this is probably (in my opinion) the biggest disappointment of the year. NeruvianDOOM is second but it's second by miles.
The Mighty have fucking FALLEN on this record. Holy fuck. The Roots made a GREAT concept album describing how bad scummy gangsta and 'thug' life can be in Undun, and that album is one of my favorite of ALL TIME. THIS album, however, is a fucking travesty. It opens with a like an interlude type thing, and it's legitimately good sounding, but I feel that except in rare cases (late registration's "wake up mr west", for example), this is a bad idea. #2. This album is fucking filler CENTRAL. Holy FUCK JESUS CHRIST. It literally goes filler,'song,filler,filler,'song',filler. It's awful. And the filler isn't even interesting filler, it's BAD FILLER. Dies Irae is literally the worst fucking thing I've ever heard. HALF THIS ALBUM IS FUCKING FILLER AAAAAAAAAAA.
Even when you GET to the songs, half of them are average to below average. Never is shit and boring. Understand is something that should have been at the end of the album, but otherwise it's an alright song. The Coming is shit. The dark is average. Tommorrow is garbage. The only songs I actually ENJOY are Black Rock, When the People Cheer, and The Unraveling, but fuck me waiting for those 3 songs in this album is tormenting, because everything else either sounds the same or is fucking ear-rape. For a Roots album, there's like no fucking Black Thought. That's like having G-Unit without 50 Cent. That makes no fucking sense. This album is also short as fuck. Undun is like 20 total minutes not counting the instrumentals, and this album is LESS THEN THAT. THE CONCEPT IN THE CONCEPT ALBUM DOESN'T EVEN TAKE FUCKING FLIGHT. FUCK THIS ALBUM. I'M DONE.
Memorable Tracks: The Unraveling, Black Rock, When The People Cheer
Worst: DIES IRAE. DIES.
IRAE.Honorable Mentions: Rtj2-RTJ, These Days... - Ab-Soul, Common- Nobody's Smiling, Busdriver- Perfect Hair, Flying Lotus - You're Dead!
The sleeper has awakened.
Only to sleep again.
ʇɥɐʇ ıs uoʇ pǝɐp ʍɥıɔɥ ɔɐu ǝʇǝɹuɐן ןıǝ' ɐup ʍıʇɥ sʇɹɐuƃǝ ɐǝous ǝʌǝu pǝɐʇɥ ɯɐʎ pıǝ
