Remember when Lil Yacthy was known as “that dude with the
red hair”, it’s wild that Trippie Redd has supplanted him off that position. It’s been around 2 years since Lil Yachty
first blew into the scene, seeming like an heir to the “killed hip hop” stamp
put upon a new rapper every calendar year. Not much has changed since then, yet
certainly time has passed. Here we are in the year of our lord 2018 where Lil
Yacthy, seeming to recapture that spark of youthful & creative energy found
in the original Lil Boat mixtape, drops his latest project “Lil Boat 2”. While
the original mixtape didn’t break any new ground, it had a sort of youthful air
about it with its video game inspired (sometimes not even inspired more like
ripped straight out of) instrumentals and the newness of Yacthy’s Meatwad-esque
voice. In place of that solid
instrumentation found in the original, here it is swapped for a more current
palette from talented producers like Pierre Bourne, Southside, DJ Durrell and
others which while not bad can certainly feel stale in the current rap atmosphere.
This staleness honestly feels much worse because of the lack of energy displayed
by Yacthy throughout the project, not one verse stands out and every guest
verse outshines his on every single track. A generic project shouldn’t necessarily
be bad, but I wouldn’t even consider this project generic I would rather call
it so damn stale it’s rotten. 2/5
Solid rookie Yung Bans comes through with a new 6 (!) track project
capitalizing on his steadily rising buzz. There’s not much left for me to say
about Yung Bans that I didn’t already say in my previous Yung Bans Appreciation
Post™
(with playlist!). Everything here is par for the course what you would expect
from an average Soundcloud rapper project, decent production, catchy hooks and
a couple guest features from a few nobodies (and Lil Yacthy). This project
feels like Yung Bans had a few throwaways he decided to release just to keep
his name buzzing until he decides to release his mainstream debut. While not all
that impressive id still keeps an eye on what Bans plans to do next. 3/5
You either love him or you stan him, Internet weenie
sensation XXX Tentacion is back with his newest project “?”. Last years “17”
was one of my favorite projects of the year because of its short length and
cohesive track list, and for some reason X decides to go the complete opposite with
around 18 tracks featuring a myriad of styles and no real cohesion. But alas we
are in the year 2018, year of the streaming numbers, things like “cohesion” and
a “track by track” flow are stupid things of the past and these artists need
these damn plaques, how else can they quantify their own clout? There’s a
little bit of everything here and it really showcases X’s versatility, there’s depressive
sing-songy X, Punk-rap (eww) aggressive screaming X, rappity-rap X, and even a
Spanish X (which I like to call “Equis”). There are certainly a few gems here depending
on your taste, more than enough for one to consider this a pretty good project.
The only problem is that is all scatter brained and feels more like a playlist
than an actual project. But hey it’s got a scene stealing Matt OX feature and could
we really ask for any more? 3.5/5
The king of NY, and his patented brand of trolling have finally
given the world a debut project and I can safely say its not bad. Mr. Nine
displays a certain energy that while certainly not unmatched, comes off as quite
peculiar and definitely stick to the brain. While enjoyable there is really not
much to say about this tape if you’ve heard his most popular tracks, Keke,
Kooda, Gummo, Wombo (I made one of those up, guess) then you’ve pretty much
heard this tape in it’s entirety. And while that sounds like a diss, it’s not 6ix9ine’s
music works best in short bursts, and for the time being it’s quite entertaining.
3.5/5
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