Hip-Hop Album Roundup- Yo Gotti, Boldy James, and Bun B

I’ve been a tad overwhelmed with hip-hop and rap records within the last few weeks—so in hopefully not doing a direct disservice to any of these three albums, I thought it be wise to compile a hip-hop roundup of the reviews/thoughts I attempted to jot down about each of them.

With over a decade under his belt, Yo Gotti deserves any mainstream success that he is poised to earn with his 6^th LP, I Am, the first released in a partnership with his own Cocaine Muzik Group, and Epic Records.

I Am, while falling prey to many of the standard “big” hip-hop album pitfalls, can be surprisingly emotional at times, as well as incredibly hilarious—and it is within these moments that Gotti has created some memorable songs.

On “Sorry,” he delivers a straight-faced epitaph to a nameless, disloyal ho—“You prolly ain’t pregnant, ho…That prolly ain’t my baby, I need Maury.” And then later, what is probably my favorite lyric on the entire record: “I ain’t talking on the phone bitch, I’m straight texting. I ain’t going to the movies ho, we straight sexing.” “Bitch I’m sorry,” he declares, but much like the popular hashtag on Twitter, he's sorry not sorry.

There’s an overall cinematic feel to much of the arrangements throughout I Am, peaking with the strings on the album’s high point, “Cold Blood,” featuring rapper J Cole—it’s this song, as well as “Don’t Come Around,” and “I Know,” that have that emotional impact that many other large-scale rap records are missing.

I Am is not a lengthy album, but one of the main flaws is that the pacing tends to be a little uneven at times—even with the opening run of the first five tracks, it’s just slow moving. The final act balances the hyperactive single “King Shit,” the gentle track with a moral “Respect You Earn,” and then the “big” sounding trap music of “ION Want It” and “Act Right,” featuring upcoming rapper (and current Gotti tour mate) Y.G.

Unfortunately for Gotti and CMG, his talent may be overshadowed by things like someone being shot and killed at his concert in the Twin Cities the other week, and in wake of that, other cities on the tour calling off his show, telling him he "attracts the wrong kind of crowd."

For an album that ends with a track called “KY Jellybeans,” Bold James’s LP, My First Chemistry Set is surprisingly grim. And that’s why it’s for the most part, surprisingly listenable, and borderline great.

James, hailing from Detroit, receives production help from Mobb Deep affiliate Alchemist, who has crafted an album based around exciting beats—at times, incredibly claustrophobic and dark; at times not so much triumphant, but less intimidating.

The reason My First Chemistry Set works is because it’s so gritty, and an obvious nod to the street-tale hip-hop that came before it; rarely derivative though, James is a rising young talent. His delivery is definitely laid back in its cadence, but incredibly hard hitting.

Throughout the record, James drops some surprisingly clever lyrics—X-Men references can be found on “What’s The Word,” and at one point on the record, there’s talk of a thousand-word essay—something that I’m fairly confident a lot of other rappers wouldn’t mention.

There is one clunker that arrives early on—“Moochie.” “I nickname everything, nicknamed Moochie,” he waxes, referring to his old street nickname. The rest of the song goes on like he is annotating his own Rap Genius entry, and it’s a shtick that runs a little thin.

God Damn

Guess who’s back in the motherfucking house?

The king of the trill, bitch.

That’s how Bun B chooses to open his latest album, Trill O.G: The Epilogue.

By name and title alone, I should probably really like Bun B. A veteran of the rap game, The Epilogue is the fourth solo outing for B, serving as a bit of an odds and ends collection of material that didn’t make the cut from 2010’s Trill OG, which would explain the album’s overall imbalanced feeling.

The Epilogue succeeds in the track aptly titled “Triller,” as well as the throwback to an Outkast-style funk and rap hybrid on “Cake.” Wu-Tang Clan member Raekwon shows up not one, but two tracks, along with someone named Kobe—the first of which, “No Competition,” which is a song, believe it or not, about taking out your competition—both on the mic, and by rolling up and just straight up shooting someone.

This song works, however the second track, “Stop Playin,” is not as successful—getting tripped up on what holds much of The Epilogue back, and that’s the excessive use of incredibly generic sounding drum machines and synths.

Rap music as a whole has relied heavily, almost exclusively at times, on "da art of storytelling." In 1995, on Liquid Swords, in case you were confused about what the GZA was going to tell you about, at one point he yells out "LIFE OF A DRUG DEALER." 

On Yo Gotti's track, "I Know," featuring the surprisingly raw crooning of Rich Homie Quan, the refrain includes the line, "Them streets, they fuck with me strong." Each of these albums builds up somewhat of a façade of street connections: gunplay, drug slinging, etc. And while that is more than likely what sells records, and I'm sure there is a great amount of truth to some of it, an artist like Bun B seems a little too old for rehashing the same old street tales. He's over 40, and lectures twice a week at Rice University in a humanities course about hip-hop and religion. 

While all three of these records are, for the most part, drastically different from one another, and I haven’t spent the exact same amount of time with each of them, I’ve found that the one common thing that connects them all is that while they are good—they aren’t, like, groundbreaking in any sense of the word. They are listenable, and enjoyable—much more so than other hip-hop records I’ve listened to this year. But at the same time, there’s something lacking that ensures that it’s something I will keep revisiting—I mean I don’t see these really being things I’ll be listening to in 2014, let alone, like, within the next month. They are unfortunately all very temporary feeling, which shouldn’t detract from your level of interest in checking them out, or be viewed as that I am looking down on them.

Far from it. I’ve listened to My First Chemistry Set and I Am numerous times at work to get a feel for the structure of the album—as I do with most things that I write review of for this (or any other) site. Maybe it’s just that I’ve burned myself out on them by listening TOO many times too close together.

Or maybe that it’s just they aren’t connecting with me 100%; not everything I review does, and often, many of the records I’ve reviewed somewhat positively, or at least noted the good things more so than the bad things, are forgotten about shortly after I post my piece on them.

Oh, the life of a critic.