The fourth studio album for Westside Gunn coincides with the long-awaited first album with Shady Records, released over three and a half years after signing the contract with Eminem's label. The album boasts the production of Daringer & Beat Butcha, The Alchemist, Conductor Williams and Just Blaze, as well as several guests including rappers Griselda Benny, Conway, Boldy James and Armani Caesar, Black Thought, Jadakiss, Busta Rhymes, Slick Rick, Stove God Cooks, Flee Lord, Estee Nack, ElCamino and Smoke DZA.
AA Rashid presents the tape with a long intro on a great rhythm, boom bap jazzy midtempo, with a dark elegant piano scale looped tightly in the background, made by the duo Daringer and Beat Butcha, the main producers of the disc. The first choice, "The Butcher and the Blade", is the classic Griselda cut, produced by Daringer & Beat Butcha, rapping provided by Westside Gunn, Benny the Butcher and Conway the Machine: splendid jazzy midtempo boom bap, eccentric piano, dark and frantic tight looped in the background, intro by Gunn, faster than usual syncopated delivery, flowing, then comes one of the elements that ditches several tracks of this record and, overall, the whole project. The rapper offers a squeaky, out of tune and very annoying hook, which kills a good track; follows Conway, with a good verse, he delivers syncopated, slow and smooth, a little commercial, maintains the inclinations of the flow he provided on his single with Method Man; closes Benny, with an untouchable flow.
The third track features Black Thought: boom bap jazzy with essential midtempo drum and dark and gloomy, decent samples, a bit dystopian rhythm for the third opera of the aforementioned production duo; Buffalo's MC's syncopated and smooth delivery, while the Roots rapper overshadows him with superior energy and flawless style. "All Praises" should be an easy banger, there are Boldy James and Jadakiss on a rhythm provided by Alchemist: light lean midtempo production, simple boom bap with very distant, almost imperceptible drum machine, and decent samples, not very good. The joint is immediately ruined by an annoying and out of tune long hook, badly sung by WSG, which doesn't deliver any verses, limiting himself to the execution of this horrible hook, as if he were a random Diddy. The guests follow, who manage to save the track, Boldy delivers in a monotonous and very subdued way, last verse to Jada, with a good smoothness flow. "Big Basha's" is the rapper's first and only solo cut in the whole record, who has repeatedly expressed his will to retire and stop rapping: he devotes about a minute on this beat by Daringer & Beat Butcha, a sound that it looks like that of the rapper's pendants mixed with other jazzy sounds, simple sad and dark samples, boom bap midtempo, smooth delivery.
Midway through the album, "Liz Loves Luger" arrives, which may be a tribute to Miss Elizabeth – how can it be better than that "Supreme Blientele" cut? — or it could be a tribute to Lex Luger – how can it be better than that "Fourth Rope" cut? — and, instead, it's one of the worst tracks ever to come out of a Griselda record: the rapper completely trashed another splendid Alchemist rhythm, light jazzy boom bap, light drum, Armani's sang soul / rnb hook, acceptable. It looks like any decent R&B filler cut, but then Westside Gunn comes along and ruins the whole track with a graphic sexual verse that stops between bad and horrible. It's one of his worst verses in his career, damn, there's stuff here that makes you regret "Dance Floor Love".
After this absurd cut, I no longer have expectations for "Ocean Prime", which I think may suffer from the same problems as "All Praises": soundscape courtesy of Daringer & Beat Butcha, light jazzy boom bap, with tight midtempo drum and good sample looped in the background, Gunn delivers a smooth, energetic slow syncopated delivery, and his adlibs are squeaky; follows Busta Rhymes with his raw, dirty, heavy, hardcore flow, rips the cut with energy, even if he's unfit with the rhythm; closes Slick Rick, with an effortlessly smoothness slow delivery, dope, he easily eats the track. "Lessie" boasts another great, jazzy beat with perfect drum and great samples including a dope piano in the background, another creation by Daringer & Beat Butcha: Westside Gunn delivers with smooth and good style, in a cut that shows all difficulties and weaknesses of the project. Even Keisha Plum, usually smooth, she struggles, here cumbersome in her attempt to execute a poetic verse that sounds forced and meaningless.
After about 25 minutes, we arrive at "Frank Murphy": it's a sensational case of a missed banger, perhaps the most sensational within this album. Posse cut of over eight minutes, with Stove God Cooks, Flee Lord, Estee Nack, ElCamino and Smoke DZA. They're some of the best up-and-coming rappers from the underground spitting dirty bars, but the tune is completely ruined by indecent beat, easily one of the worst beats ever on a Griselda record. The beatmaker, Conductor Williams, makes a completely wrong attempt to providing an alternative rhythm: he attempts an experiment that's close to those of Roc Marciano. But Roc Marciano is Roc Marciano, I mean, he's the main exponent of the new wave of mafia rap on jazzy rhythms with minimal and midtempo drums, if you have listened to this album, Roc Marciano is behind all this, who over the years has allowed himself to experiment with different sounds in his production with success. Instead, the rhythm this guy provides is incredibly bad, he's the most annoying beat of the whole tape by far, it's something else. Jazzy boom bap, no drum, dark and with a very annoyingly distorted sample in the background: these guys have to spit bars on this beat for over EIGHT minutes, that's absurd.
It opens Cooks, one of the best rookie of the year, he straightens the distortion with an excellent velvet flow, but doesn't save the track, in the other seven minutes the others have to get by on their own; Estee Nack self-launches with an interlude before his extra-verse, fluid and smooth delivery, syncopated and slow, the beat risks annihilating his lines in every moment with that damn distortion, but the MC proves tenacious and resists, contrasting that distortion with infinite adlibs and even the "machine gun" typical of Griselda; Elcamino follows, he too has to launch himself with a short interlude, can you understand that? They're all affiliated with Griselda here, he more than anyone, and finds himself on this mess, where, obviously, he cannot do a lot, being used to going well on simple and melodic rhythms, with a sustained drum, which isn't over this production.
He decides to go straight ahead, without looking anyone in the face, delivering his verse without turning, smooth, hardcore, clear, perhaps offering the best performance of the track; the fourth rapper is Flee Lord, cleverly starts his tag at the end of the last bars of Elcamino, then attacks immediately without interludes, to shorten the agony, smooth, clear, clean, despite the rhythm, also helped by many adlibs; interlude also for Smoke DZA, last guest, then slow and smooth delivery, also with several adlibs, but, as for Nack, his bars too are partially annihilated by this horrible, awful rhythm. It closes Westside with his adlibs, on the sixth verse, slowly, in a diametrically opposite way to Flee Lord, he seems to want to dilate the beat more, as if eight minutes weren't enough, then long outro. This is an incredible cut, it has one of the best rosters on a hip-hop track this season, but it's ruined by the same guy who did "Euro Step" also known as the worst beat on "Pray for Paris", this looks like the sequel.
The last two cuts, fortunately, are better than the previous one. Daringer & Beat Butcha release their seventh and final rhythm for "Goodnight": jazzy production with regular and lean drum machine, good tense and somber samples, including a few tightly looped dark piano keys in the background, good energetic slow delivery by Westside Gunn, yet another hook sung out of tune, annoying; then Slick Rick kills this cut too with his smooth, slow, effortless, almost spoken, masterpiece flow. A Griselda posse concludes the opera: boom bap jazzy, homage to "Who Shot Ya?" by Biggie for the intro, fantastic and splendid production of Just Blaze, energetic jazzy boom bap, perfect, drum midtempo, dark and gloomy samples, dystopian rhythm, among the best, if not the best, of Gunn's fourth project. WSG's slow-flowing syncopated delivery, great electric guitar riff, follows Armani Caesar with effortless, almost lazy flow; Conway kills the cut with a frighteningly flawless flow, masterpiece; Benny is almost superior, performing with a spectacular and unstoppable flow.
The album lasts 40 minutes, divided into eleven joints: it's one of the most anti-mainstream pop rap albums of recent years, the rapper sings most of the time and does it badly, always out of tune. He no longer wants to rapping, he feels he's Diddy and tries to emulate him in every way, with evidently mediocre results: about ten weeks before his retirement, he decides to make sure he's in as few songs as possible, leaving a lot of space for the others and letting practically all the guests overtake him from a lyrical point of view. So many pieces sound dull and uninspired, the record is dragged only by the guests, it's kind of a great showcase for his friends: Conway and Benny do a great job, most of the guests are solid, despite having to dodge these irregular and unfriendly productions, Armani Caesar still doesn't fully convince, while Keisha Plum disappoints. An honorable mention goes to Slick Rick, who still sounds sublime after four decades, making the project shine.
However, the album is underwhelming, deeply erratic and commercial, in a negative sense: Gunn is running out of ideas and he's tired, his singing sounds worse than ever, and ruins several tracks, not assisted by production as never before: the MC ruins the two rhythms of Alchemist for no real reason and at least half a production by Daringer & Beat Butcha, who pulled off an honest job for this record, albeit not at their best here. The choices in production are questionable, never perfect as in the past, so much so that Just Blaze makes the best beat. At the same time, the whole effort is a joke directed to Shady Records: look at the cover, the rapper allows himself to let his daughter draw it, and it's still the best cover on an album released by Shady Records.
Something must have happened with Eminem: originally, it was scheduled for release on August 28, 2020, "Westside Gunn Day" in Buffalo, but its release is delayed following the death of DJ Shay. The album comes out on October 2nd, and you can see immediately that something is wrong: comparisons with his previous album, "Pray for Paris", are obligatory. It almost feels like that record was supposed to be his debut album with Shady Records, he has excellent production, an excellent guest roster, and pretty much everything works. It manages to combine the relationship between mainstream and underground very well, and it's a great project, practically the exact opposite of this effort. It doesn't seem to be a coincidence that the album came out two months after the announced retire of the Buffalo artist from the rap game. The skeleton in the closet are revealed only a month and a half after the release of this LP, when Westside Gunn announces that he had parted ways with Shady Records: this is, in fact, also the last record with the label. Also involved are Interscope Records, Roc Nation (over the years, Gunn has also signed with Jay-Z) and his Griselda Records: despite the presence of these labels, the album struggles to rank in the Billboard charts.
Highlights: "Ishkabibble's", "Ocean Prime", "Goodnight", "98 Sabers".
Rating: 7/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment