XXXTentacion Revenge: An Album A Day

An Album a Day is posted 5 days a week, Monday - Friday

    So maybe I’m just old but it seems like rappers are really running out of names. Like we’ve always Lil’ somebody or Big somebody and stuff like that but now we have Kyle. Like his rap name is just his actual first name, and his first name isn’t even something like Madonna or Prince. On the opposite side we have XXXTentacion, a rapper who looks like somebody had his gamer tag first so he added random characters until he found a version that was available. This is a weird dude, he’s kind of like Tech N9ne or Hopsin in that he’s into a lot of dark imagery and will incorporate rock elements, but he’s just weird.

    First off let’s talk about his verse for the XXL magazine freshman class cypher. I personally really like his freestyle here where he goes completely acapella yet still manages to be in time with the beat and does his best speed rap Kendrick Lamar impersonation. His mix of spoken word and speed rapping along with the somewhat disturbing lyrics he comes up with had me half expecting him to succeed in summoning Satan in the middle of the cypher. This freestyle convinced me that the kid had talent, but I’m not sure how his style would work in mainstream rap music.

    So I went and checked out his latest mixtape I could find on Google Play which was Revenge, this mixtape features his breakthrough hit Look At Me as well as a mix of other tracks he’s released on his soundcloud and on other mixtapes. Let me say, Look At Me is terrible, it’s the same generic crap brag rap song that every mumble rapper puts out these days except with edgy try hard lines about killing people. This kid may be the first rapper who actually has a rap sheet who comes off as a phony any time he tries to be a gangsta.

    The next track I Don’t Wanna Do This Anymore sounds like a Lo-Fi Drake track and is just kind of boring. The next three tracks are actually really interesting and cool to me though, they feel like a mix of Kanye West’s 808 and Heartbreak album, black metal production and towards the end of King, even some metal instrumentation. The first of these three tracks, Looking For A Star sounds like something straight off of 808 and Heartbreak with slighter less polished production. The thick robot filter on X works really well with the backing beat.

    The next two tracks feature the lo-fi, recorded with a potato sound that I’ve only heard before on black metal. On the first of these two track, Valentine, the lo fi sound is mixed with the Kanye styled auto tune and singing of the previous track. The mix of these two extremes along with the lyrics that seem to be torn between good and evil, literally between heaven and hell works well at expressing the anguish X feels over his actions even though he can’t decide if he wants to change or not. This ties well into the next track, King which came from the same mixtape that Valentine did.

    This track strips down to nothing but X and an acoustic guitar with the same lo fi production of Valentine. This song seems to be a continuation lyrically of Valentine as it features X moaning that he just wants to go back to before. He doesn’t want to deal with his actions or the suffering which he has experienced. His suffering builds up into the climax of him screaming at the listener over the top of a heavy metal beat before seemingly accepting his role as the villain.

    The next track Slipknot isn’t bad, but it’s fairly standard rap fare, nothing too interesting here. The last two tracks go back to the level of horrible that the opener is, being somewhere between incoherent noise and generic brag rap. Really the only thing on this mixtape worth listening to are the three middle tracks, mostly because of how interesting they are.

    Ultimately this is a pretty crappy mixtape, and I’m really disappointed in X because I was expecting a lot better after hearing his freestyle. Even the songs I like on this mixtape aren’t so much good as they are interesting to me. I feel like this dude would do much better as an emo rocker or metal head than as a rapper, but regardless this mixtape is pretty terrible.

Album on Google Play
Album on ITunes
Album on Amazon

Fall Out Boy Champion: An Album a Day

An Album a Day is posted 5 days a week, Monday-Friday

    So Fall Out Boy released a new single. This is the second single for their album to be released later this year, M A N I A. This will be their first new album since 2015’s American Beauty/American Psycho and reportedly is going to draw heavily on EDM influences. The first single Young and Menace featured the three years behind current trends sound of dubstep mixed with contemporary pop influences. So with the background out of the way, let’s see how Champion tackles EDM.

    To start, this song does at least appear to have guitars somewhere in the mix and does bring in a little bit of Fall Out Boy’s older sound. The issue this track has right off the bat for me is that the production doesn’t sound like Fall Out Boy; it’s crisp with that dull echoey feel that all pop music has these days. On top of this, even with the guitar in the background the opening of this song wouldn’t sound out of place as the hook on a Future or Drake track, with such a drowsy and low delivery. Also their heavy use of purple in all the marketing keeps making me think Patrick Stump was sipping lean before some of these vocal takes.

    Throughout the majority of the song Stump’s vocals are strong as ever, just like on Young and Menace, but there are a few drowsy segments that kill all of the momentum of this track. And while this track attempts to use the huge sounding drum sounds from their last album to add power, even the drums sound tired. I don’t want to be overly negative, because I hate people who throw a fit every time a band changes their sound, but there are changes that work and changes that don’t and this change does not work at all.

    Fall Out Boy’s change from pop punk mixed with emo to a more commercial arena rock sound on their last two records worked because it expanded the sound of the band and made them sound like a bigger version of themselves. This shift to a EDM influenced pop sound does the exact opposite, making it sound more and more like Patrick Stump’s solo career ghost written by Pete Wentz. Seriously, on both of the singles from Mania how many musical elements can you pick out? On Young and Menace I hear a lot of synths, a snare drum, a very slight piano once in awhile and I think a guitar buried under everything else on the drop. On Champion, there’s a guitar line, a few synths and drums; that's it.

    I find the same issue here I found with Heavy by Linkin Park when I first heard it; where is the rest of the band? Fall Out Boy feature two guitarists, a bass player and a drummer along with a vocalist; at least when Linkin Park fill an entire song with pro tools and keyboard they have the excuse of having a DJ and a keyboard player in the band. Continuing with the comparison to Linkin Park, I actually think this is worse than One More light because Linkin Park at least went all in on a pop sound and had some songs that worked as pop music. Conversely, Fall Out Boy's half pop half rock sound just makes these tracks sound confused and I personally don’t think Young and Menace or Champion work even as pop songs.

    Overall, I’m worried that Mania could be to Fall Out Boy what One More Light has been to Linkin Park. The little bit of hope I have left is that they have not fully committed to the EDM pop sound just yet, as elements of their rock sound keep bleeding through. This means that there’s a chance that a few tracks on Mania will be legitimate rock songs. We will all have our answers soon enough as the album drops in September.

Single on Google Play

Single on Itunes

Single on Amazon