Chance the Rapper's Coloring Book is one of the strongest rap albums released this year, an uplifting mix of spiritual and grounded that even an atheist can catch the Spirit to.
When Chicagoan Chance the Rapper delivered his verse on "Ultralight Beam," the opening song from Kanye West's The Life of Pablo, there was a lot going on—sly homage was being paid to West; rappers were being put on notice ("This is my part/Nobody else speak"); and, most importantly, Chance was encapsulating his past, asserting his present, and telegraphing his future. He was finally positioning himself as a rapper to be reckoned with from a mainstream podium, but he was also delving deep into Christian ideology, with allusions to Noah's Ark and Lot's wife, with his "foot on the Devil's neck 'til it drifted
That verse rolled out the red carpet for Kanye's long-awaited album, but it doubled as an announcement of Chance's new Coloring Book (then given the working title Chance 3), which may very well be the most eagerly-anticipated hip-hop project this year that doesn't come attached to an actual record label. West billed his album as "a gospel album with a whole lot of cursing on it," but The Life of Pablo wasn't that; it was a rap album with some gospel overtures. Coloring Book, however, fits the billing, packing in so much gospel verve that it sounds like Hezekiah Walker & the Love Fellowship Crusade Choir are going to drop into half the tracks and recite 1 Timothy 4:12 in chorale. Instead, we get Kirk Franklin promising to lead us into the Promised Land, alongside appearances by demonstrated materialistic heathens like 2 Chainz, Lil Wayne, Young Thug, and Future—and the result is an uplifting mix that even an atheist can catch the Spirit to.
In execution, untitled unmastered. is the complete inverse of Kanye West's recent The Life of Pablo—it's a small and quiet statement from an artist No other rapper has taken up so much real estate in the past 12 months while releasing so little music and sharing as little about themselves as Kendrick. TPAB—a Grammy-winning ride of densely knotted rhymes, tangled ideas, and deep sounds— positioned Kendrick Lamar as a reluctant messiah figure, and its dialogues with self and manifestations of God resisted quickand-easy unpacking. Now, he’s released a handful-and-a-half of song sketches in a project that's neither album nor mixtape (or even EP or LP), and seem to have even less a chance of radio play than TPAB did upon its arrival. But it feels like an extension of that album's world— an asterisk, perhaps, or an extended coda
There's little doubt that just about all of these songs are from TPAB sessions—"untitled 03," subtitled with a date of "05.28.2013," had already been performed four months before Butterfly's release, during the the long goodbye of "The Colbert Report”. It's classic Kendrick—a reductiveyet-sprawling feverchill of observations on race and the music industry that mixes stereotype with history and wisdom. It's insightful and uncomfortable, if not outright offensive: One of the most enchanting things about this project is Asians are linked to hearing how Kendrick manipulates his own voice before the Eastern philosophy, studio modulations kick in. His vocal tics and morphs have Native Americans to long been technologically-aided affairs, but on "untitled 02" the land, Blacks to he's full of elastic long tails—partially gleeful Lil Wayne, lust, whites to greed. wholly sanctifying choir sinner. He's crying for his bosses— It's also the both Top Dawg and God—while lamenting urban addiction collection's most and dysfunction, and contemplating mortality. "World is fully-formed song; going brazy/ Where did we go wrong?/ It's a tidal wave/ It's perhaps the only one a thunderdome," he sing-raps, sounding half-possessed, that emerges as a half-saved. For the second half of the song, he includes the finished thought firestarter verse he performed in January on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon." But the scorching iteration of that live performance is nowhere here—he's laid-back and matter-of-fact, but his threat just as heavy: "I can put a rapper on life support/ Guarantee that's something none of you want."
Drake’s Views, the highly anticipated fourth album was released on iTunes and Apple Music last Friday. The internet went crazy upon its release and with that being said, let’s see what all the hype is about. The upbeat track gets you ready for that is “Hype,” to which it rides the style. It doesn’t quite compare to sample help from Mary J. Blige’s spring and Drake begins to fast his life has become since those there were to be a “Marvin’s Room that follow up, lyrically, off the PARTYNEXTDOOR. This is the
Views goes through the seasons, starting in winter, as the wind sweeps you from the start of “Keep the Family Close,” with the 6 God spilling emotion infused lyrics that captures your soul, along with the strings and percussion. Production from 40 and Boi-1da on “9” takes you to an arcade area, getting lost in lights. Drake has a few samples on the album, as “U with Me?” is the first with DMX’s “What These B****** Want?” as well as, “How’s It Going Down” plays throughout the rest of the track and it’s a flawless production. We’re brought back to an 80’s slow jam in, “Feel No Ways.”
the change of warmer weather warmer waves of Drake’s rapping the following track, with the “Mary’s Joint.” It’s clear we are in reminiscence on his fame and how “Weston Road Flows” days. If PT II,” “Redemption” would be latest track “With You” featuring first feature we see and is felt
Bringing in the summer with “Controlla” and the heavily Caribbean influenced track, with “Tear Off Mi Garment” by Beanie Man sample, although, it couldn’t get any hotter with “One Dance feat. Wizkid & Kyla” with its Afropop infectious beat either. “Grammys” featuring Future, sounds like another filler with the beat being repetitive after awhile. “Childs Play” is just that; Drake bouncing from one verse to another while having fun. “Pop Style,” had Kanye’s and Jay Z’s verses snipped on the album version, but still a decent track nonetheless. “Too Good” featuring Rihanna is their fourth collaboration together and the pair’s chemistry along with the island waves is another summer hit.
The rap iconoclast returns with his best album since Barter 6, daring and chameleonic, filled with hooks about identity, love, and that undefinable future swag. Young Thug becomes the first artist to notch three top 5 debuts on Top Rap Albums (chart dated Sept. 17) in 2016 with his latest release, Jeffery, selling 18,000 copies in the week ending Sept. 1 (according to Nielsen Music). (Earlier this year, Kevin Gates notched a pair of top 5 starts with Islah and Murder for Hire II.) Jeffery follows I’m Up (No. 6 debut on the Feb. 27 chart; 15,000 sold first week) and Slime Season 3 (No. 3, April 16; 22,000 sold). Young Thug named the songs of the album after all his idols. Modeling alongside Frank Ocean for Calvin Klein in July, he was as plainspoken about fluidity as he’s ever been. “In my world, of course, it don’t matter: You could be a gangster with a dress or you could be a gangster with baggy pants,” he said in his campaign video. “I feel like there’s no such thing as gender.” It’s this freedom, this refusal to define or label himself, and this progressive spirit that makes everything he does so daring and so mystifying. When industry mogul Lyor Cohen argued with Thug about being more accessible to listeners and more purposeful in thought and action on CNBC’s “Follow the Leader,” his response was simple: “I don’t want everybody just to know, like, ‘Oh, we know.’” The remove is everything to him. When he says or does something, he’s usually daring you to figure out why.
For nearly 42 minutes, Jeffery explores spacing, lines, form, texture, and beauty—all of which are exhibited in the mixtape’s mesmerizing artwork. The Atlanta rapper seemed to breathe life into the ideas first articulated at the Calvin Klein shoot with the cover, posed in a ruffling dress styled by Alessandro Trincone. While some people’s brains shut down at simply the sight of a man in a dress, the cover exhibits some of Thug’s strongest artistic traits: His eye for composition and stylishness, and his knack for testing limits and hurdling norms. Jeffery embodies these attributes in essence and detail. It’s rangy and stunning, an exciting new curve in the fascinating Young Thug arc.
The Life of Pablo is, accordingly, the first Kanye West album that's just an album: No major statements, no reinventions, no zeitgeist wheelie-popping. It's probably his first full-length that won't activate a new sleeper cell of 17-year-old would-be rappers and artists. He's changed the genre's DNA with every album, to the point where each has inspired a generation of direct offspring, and now everywhere he looks, he sees mirrors. "See, I invented Kanye, it wasn't any Kanyes, and now I look and look around and there's so many Kanyes," he raps wryly on "I Love Kanye." The message seems clear: He's through creating new Kanyes, at least for now. He's content to just stand among them, both those of his own creation and their various devotees.
Finally, after a protracted and often chaotic roll-out, the new Kanye West album is here. The Life of Pablo is the first Kanye West album that's just an album: No major statements, no reinventions, no zeitgeist wheelie-popping. But a madcap sense of humor animates all his best work, and the new record has a freewheeling energy that is infectious and unique to his
Major Key is DJ Khaled’s ninth studio album in 10 years, and it’s undoubtedly his best. Depending where you stand on the Khaled spectrum, that may mean nothing or everything. Some numbers, pitched directly at the ignorant, misogynist, and unwoke—“Pick Those Hoes Apart,” “Fuck Up the Club,” “Work for It”—are exactly the kind of disposable songs that have littered Khaled's past albums. They’re serviceable, but not necessary or novel. But Khaled ends on an on-brand note. If you can see Mavado’s “Progress” for the tacked-on bonus cut that it is, the album closes with “Forgive Me Father,” featuring Wiz Khalifa, Wale, and Meghan Trainor. Here, Khaled is audacious enough to try to recapture the crossover power of Wiz’s “See You Again,” allowing Trainor to over-riff with singing-the-National-Anthem-during-theWorld-Series desperation, which is the only kind of thing that actually works for a song this saccharine and cloying. Khaled’s only voiced presence on this song is to calmly declare “another one,” and it's hard to disagree with him. Like all of his albums, Major Key is a mixed bag, fitting for a maestro who traffics in a blend of chestthumping and humility that’s both as comical as it is prophetic.
No one could have predicted the trajectory of DJ Khaled except Khaled himself. Well before he ascended to Snapchat stardom in his soy milkand-cocoa-butter'd glory, he was a local Miami radio DJ pushing brand-worthy catchphrases (“Listennn…”; “We the best!”) and promoting unity and self-belief with a persistence that was as endearing as it was annoying. His bombastic statements seemed to be a nod to his reggae soundclash bonafides, but it was actually a ‘hoodoriented manifestation gospel. Khaled wasn’t just beating his chest, he was willing his success to existence—comparing himself to his apparent betters such as Quincy Jones and Russell Simmons; later he placed himself alongside icons like Jay Z and Kanye West in a way that suggested good-natured delusions of grandeur. It started as cute and laughable, but it quickly became clear that Khaled was justifying his place in the big leagues with a succession of hits—to the point that, when he claimed that “All I Do Is Win,” it was hard to disagree with him.