Last week in hip hop has been one of if not the most exciting weeks all year. With 4 brand new albums from the likes of Tyler, The Creator, Freddie Gibbs, Westside Gunn and Lil Uzi Vert. Some of the biggest names in hip hop working today, and some of the most acclaimed. Listening to all of them as they came out was the highlight of our week and kept us on our toes for each release.
Starting the week off with the recently announced and anticipated follow up to Call Me If You Get Lost, Chromakopia by Tyler, The Creator dropped, and I will say it didn’t disappoint. This is the only album we’ve been able to give a couple of listens to, and can say that it is up to Tyler’s quality as of the last couple of years.
Giving us bangers like Thought I was Dead, to beautiful Flower Boy sounding tracks on “Take Your Mask Off” it really was amazing. Featuring some of his best production ever, and his best rapping, Tyler really does seem to develop his skills with each album and is showing no sign of slowing down. Above all else that was so apparent is the honesty and vulnerability Tyler showed on this album unlike we’ve ever seen him do before. Anyway I’ll save my last words for my actual review of the album.
Next was Eternal Atake 2, but Lil Uzi Vert, now I am by no means the biggest Lil Uzi Vert fan, but I can appreciate how he is somewhat of a boundary pusher when it comes to the rap game. Although I can’t say I really enjoyed the album, and in my opinion it just sounded like more of the same from uzi, and for his fans they’ll probably love it but it’s really not my thing.
From Westside Gunn we got 2 projects, Still Praying a full length album with DJ Drama, and an EP 11. Both of which did not disappoint in the slightest. While I can’t say I’m super familiar with Westside Gunn as an artist (something I’ve been meaning to change!) I do admire his talent as a rapper and lyricist, and love his voice which really brings his whole style together.
This album shows no exception to the quality of his last albums, with some amazing bars and some beautiful and even elegant production. Whilst it wasn’t anything completely different it was still very good, some stand out tracks for me on a first listen were “Duran Duran” and “Dr. Britt Baker”, and the Griselda posse cut “Still Praying”, although I will retouch that in my official review.
The EP 11 was equally as good, with 5 tracks, all of which were part rapping and what sounded like phone voice notes, the EP is dedicated to his brother Big Dump, who was killed in April of this year, whilst I’m not too familiar with the story behind the EP and can comment on the actual material of it, which sees Gunn rapping somewhat more hauntingly and serious than he would, not that he isn’t a serious rapper, but there’s a bit of a weight on the EP as a whole. However it deserves a few more listens to really understand and get the full impact of the project.
Lastly was Freddie Gibbs full length album, You Only Die 1nce. I’ve been keeping track of Freddie Gibbs albums for a while now, and all I can really say is that he deserves so much more attention than he’s getting. Not calling him underground by any means however for the amazing tracks he’s been putting out for over a decade he deserves so much more. This album was no exception and he has been on such a good run in the 20’s decade so far.
With the halloween release date, the album has Freddie Krueger all over the album which I found really entertaining and worked really well, with somewhat of a spooky element to the album it was a very interesting mix with Freddie, and it worked very well. His rapping is still as amazing as on Pinata and as with all these albums I should write a full review once I’ve gotten a little more familiar with the individual tracks on the album. Although as of the moment some highlight tracks were “Cosmo Freestyle” and “Rabbit Island”, although really there weren’t any dull tracks on the whole thing.
That was the weekly rap up, overall it couldn’t have been any better, and was one of the most interesting weeks in rap all year!
