“Anger Management” – RIco Nasty & Kenny Beats (ALBUM REVIEW)

This album left me intrigued, satisfied, and happy but somewhat dissatisfied at the same time.

Rico nasty is one of the most polarizing new rappers in the game right now. In my opinion she is one of the only good female rappers right now, while also representing the DMV, where not many rappers are getting attention, mostly because of it being stagnant from so many shy glizzy and atlanta copies. Rico nasty broke out with a couple of mixtapes, focused mostly on auto-crooned trap rap where she raps typical rapper-esc lines. She received a lot of attention on her follow up mixtape “Nasty” where she showed a more aggressive style of rapping. Kenny beats takes up most of the production on this album.

In my opinion, rico nasty has three types of rapping styles: screaming, nasty, and autotune. Screaming is self explanatory (tracks such as “rage”), autotune is just her autotune singing or rapping normally (“hockey”, “oreo”), and nasty, which is my favorite version of rico, is where she isn’t necessarily screaming, but it sounds like its coming from a relentless bulldog, if i had to describe it (tracks such as “trust issues” and “countin up”.

On this album, ricos “screaming” style of rapping is at her peak on the first half of this album. Songs such as “cold” and “cheat code” are relentless and without a couple of listens, its not too gentle on the ear, in a good way.. The highlights of songs such as “Big titties” and “hatin” is rico’s funny bars. The reason i mentioned those styles of rapping earlier is because on this latest album, rico trails of of the second half of the album and goes into a boom bap style, which only works on one of the tracks, which im amazed how she pulled it off. On “sell out” she raps about the themes of anger, and does so with skillful bars.

The problems i have with this album start with that since this album is so short, there isn’t much room for error. Unfortunately, the tracks “mood” and “again” are completely uninspired. Again to me just feels like a Sugartrap 2 b side, and on mood, there is no cohesion between this guy named splurge, where he just sounds like a fake version of ksupreme.

The reason i said i was slightly somewhat dissatisfied is because the singles leading up to the album where some of her best, and sounded similar to some of my favorite rico tracks off of nasty. This album isn’t how those tracks sounded like, which is fine, but i can’t deny i was hoping she would come through with those. Although this album is somewhat inconsistent, the peak tracks are some of ricos best, which is enough for me to give it a 7/10.

antlab – 7/10

theneedledrop 6/10

Pitchfork 7/10

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Billboard Music Awards LOSERS List!

Instead of going over who won in the BBMAs (#boring), lets go over who sucks and deserved to lose!

Top Billboard 200 Album: Thank god drake won he 100% deserved it with how much effort he put in. Scorpion > Astroworld. Drake also sold less too but okay.

Top Duo: How did bts win this if their not a duo lol. I thought dan and shay was the youtubers dan and phil for a minute.

Top Artist (LOSER): Even though drake deserved to lose, screw cardi b she is a waman i hait woaman who wrap.

Top New Artist (LOSER): Thank god lil baby (gunna) lost his stupid bulldog face and he sounds just like young thug.

Top R&B Album: How did X win this. 17 came out in 2017 what.

Billboard Chart Achievement Award (LOSER): I thought bradley cooper died or something.

Billboard Chart Achievement Award(LOSER): Did they fr actually spit on travis scott and x’s grave by giving drake the award when he hasn’t dropped anything eligible for this award.

Top Female Artist(LOSER): CARDI B AGAIN BABIE.

 

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TOP 10 BEST RAPPERS OF ALL TIME!

  1. Nav
    1. I love nav so much. Hes the first brown boy to get it poppin. He sounds so clique and formuleic and so fresh.
  2. Nas
    1. Nas (also known as Nasir, Lil nax s, and Nassim) is actually super terrible and illmatic is not one of the best rap albums of all time,
  3. Maroon 5
    1. Mansour 5 is such a good band. LOL! They really outdid themselves on their last 20 albums.
  4. Lil xan
    1. Lil xan is such a mood. It was such a bruh moment when he faked a pregnancy and a miscarriage for views.
  5. Gunna
    1. Gunna is one of the best rappers of 2019. He kinda maybe sorta sounds like young thug tho.
  6. Lil Baby
    1. Lil Baby is one of the best rappers of 2019. He kinda maybe sorta sounds like young thug tho.
  7. Lana Del Ray
    1. Wowzies. Melodrama is a great rap album. If only metro boomin would come in with more beats tho.
  8.  Every single rapper in dc
    1. This is a kinda quirky opinion, but, shy glizzy clones really give me eargazms
  9. Playboi Carti
    1. Ooh yeah my stummy hurt
  10. Ariana Grande
    1. Do i really have to explain why she is such a good rapper? I love his black lives matter commentary.

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Logic: “Supermarket” ALBUM REVIEW

Logic’s new “album” is an unlistenable, cringy, and fake attempt to create a pop rap-rock album.

First to address, the fact that it is just a soundtrack for the book, friends of mine that have read the book say that the soundtrack has nothing to do with the book.Now that that’s out of the way, how did logic have the AUDACITY to think that this album would have any good critical reception with what he output. Every single song on this album sounds like a machine wrote every aspect of the lyrics, hooks and beats. It feels like a chore listening to the bland pop beats, and the rock beats sound like someone just found out what a guitar sounds like, recorded it on their ipad, and scattered them across this album.

For the lyrics, i let them explain themselves:

“Holy sh*t, i am a creep”

“pretty young girl, doing pretty young things (10x)”

“im searching for something inside my soul. If i never find what i searching for. Would you still love me or let me go?”

There is no point to any of these songs. They don’t stimulate and emotions, vibes, or messages. If this album did not exist, the world would be a better place.

antlab: 0/10

Stay tuned for more of antlab’s music reviews.

 

Nav – Discography Review

Nav is one of the most blandest, unoriginal, boring rappers of the trap wave. His voice is unoriginal, and is somehow boring and degrading at the same time. There is no empathy or emotion in his voice, and he uses the same flow and delivery for every single song across 4 albums. His autotune just adds to the unbearability of his voice, as it is overused, and not in a technical way such as the likes of travis scott and future use it. It is overblown and sounds like if a robot were to rap. Nav’s lyrical talent goes below the most generic, tasteless, common ground lyrics in trap; as he somehow makes it worse. When raps he goes below the low expectation for lyrics, with topics such as not understanding consent, thinking that everyone hates him because he is not white/black, and people wanting to be just like him.

I believe that people only listen to nav if they’re not that into music and just need something occasionally to pass the time, but for people that really love music or have any respect for it in the slightest, then this is just a slap in the face to the process of being creative and having talent in the music game.

I really hope this industry plant soaks up too much lean from the soil and dies.

When will trap music finally peak and decline?

Trap and rap music has completely overtaken pop on the charts as the most popular genre by far since around 2017, but was already creeping its way into charts around 2015. To understand the question of how trap music got into the spotlight, lets see how pop became dethroned:
Mainstream pop music has always been somewhat formulaic, but people still gobbled it up in the mainstream, but even the biggest trends die down eventually. Mainstream pop music has become very oversaturated and bland after 2015 in my opinion, but many people argue it happened before or a little later.

When trap and rap took over, people every single year keep questioning “is this peak trap?” Everytime that someone argues that peak trap has happened, the genre either reinvents itself with a new sub genre, or a really good album. When drill music died (aka chief queef era) people thought that trap would die out, but along came the atlanta rap scene, which is still the most prevalent today. When the atlanta rap scene died a tiny bit (but not really), along came new ideas of the florida rap scene. Even today, new artists are reinventing the genre with newer sub genres such as emo rap and metal rap. The trap genre will constantly reinvent itself until it gets stale eventually.

When it comes to the question of “when will it peak and decline,” I think that trap will not peak any time soon, but will have a lifespan that is shorter than pop’s overall. This because trap music still isn’t as palatable as pop music. Most old people don’t listen to trap music, the themes usually dont click with many people (drugs, violence), and the use of language that isnt safe for kids; compared to pop where everything is squeaky clean and ready for everyone to listen to. The only thing is i think that if people continue to uplift artists with absolutely no talent, people will start to see whats up and they will get tired of quicker than expected.

There are (unfortunately) only a few great female rappers in the game right now!

Female rappers are generally looked down upon by a lot of hip hop fans, and lets take a look at why this is.

The biggest and most critical reason is that most female rappers feel like they have to have a bad attitude in order to be successful. After the success of cardi b and especially nicki minaj, a ton of copy cats such as asian doll and bhad bhabie pull the same stunt. For a lot of listeners, having this persona turns people off as a listener, and even for the people that do enjoy it, it gets super repetitive especially with the amount that cardi, nicki, and her copycats have been outputting lately. While I don’t think that female rappers shouldn’t be excluded from making dumb, fun music like everyone else does, but not many of them do it well, and every shtick runs dry eventually (kinda how lil pump wore off his appeal in the last album he had).

I think that female rappers could have a great role in the rap community if they chose to rap about their unique perspective instead of their bad attitude. Rappers like noname have already done this, where she applied her perspective of racism and how she was treated as a woman in chicago. This angle she provided us was unique and was like no other, and is widely considered one of the best female hip hop albums of the decade, unlike nicki minaj where it received mixed to bad ratings.

Happy international women’s day!

Lil Pump – “Harverd Dropout”: Critic Album Review

Unfortuatly, the once genre defining “soundcloud rapper” Lil Pump gets washed up by a bigger platform, expensive production, and low effort.

Lil pump burst on to the scene making meme rap song like “Lil Pump” until he dropped “D Rose”. This song propelled him to fame for his repetitive hooks taking up most of the whole track, bass-heavy, grimey production from the likes of ronnyj and bighead, amazing energy across his songs and also probably having the most dumb-downed lyrics of our generation. I know that a lot of people think that his last album was trash but i enjoyed it very much for the exact reasons i just said. Lil pump took almost all his appeal and threw it in the washing machine on his latest album.

I think that lil pump thinks he cant put out whatever music he wants and people would  pay attention because people either like or dislike him based of his meme status as an artist and being the ultimate middle finger to artists that devote a lot of time to crafting thier work and will probably not be as big as he is. In turn the music sounds lazy, forced, and unenergetic. Some of the songs sound lifeless, hooks boring, flows slower than usual, and no cohesion between his features.

Another thing that has downgraded is the lyricism, but ironically not actually a downgrade. His lyricism has improved in his vocabulary, but the magic of his catchy hooks are gone with longer verses about topics no one wants to hear or is down right wrong. Topics include being a drug addict, saying people would like to be and act like lil pump (no), and dropping out of school. He thinks that rapping about the things that people clique him about is good, but it just comes off as cringey and his super boring flows don’t help.

The beats are squeaky clean, vibrant but in a formulaic way, with most of the beats across this album having barely any variation. Some of the beats are even down right annoying, such as the song stripper name. This may not be a big problem for other rappers but for Lil pump, the beats and how he works them is mostly his selling point.

Yea, this album was super lazy and underwhelming and boring most of the way through.

Antlab: 4/10

Theneedledrop: 4/10

rick the lai: 5/10

Stay tuned for more of Antlab’s music reviewers reviews!

21 Savage – “I am > I was”: Critic Album Review

21 Savage’s latest album is an example of how an artist should grow and improve over time.

A lot of artists nowadays start off making new and interesting music, or a hit, and afterwards fall off hard or put no effort into their music because they’ve already made it (happens in the rap game all the time). But in my opinion, 21 savage is one of the trap rappers that have grown and improved over time. 21 savages first 3 projects in my opinion are not good music. I do acknowledge that he did bring a cold-blooded, murderous vibe to the rap scene, but the music is just extremely boring, tedious, and lazy. fast forward to the collab album with Offset and metro boomin, 21 savage finally finds his groove on catchy flows, haunting beats from metro boomin, and great cohesion with offset; without warning is my favorite 21 savage project to date. But today we are reviewing his latest album, i am > i was. Although i personally didn’t enjoy the direction that 21 savage took this album in compared to “without warning”, but the growth here in every aspect of the songs has improved and are mostly enjoyable. His rapping is more clear, beats more fleshed out, and features break up the obnoxiousness of 21 savage by himself that usually plagues his past projects. Overall its a decent project for me and I hope he doesn’t get deported.

Theneedledrop: 7/10

Pitchfork: 7/10

Antlab: Strong6 or Light7 / 10

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My Early XXL Freshman Predictions!

As most rap fans know, each year the XXL hip hop magazine releases a “XXl freshman cover” along with interviews, chypers, and freestyles. It is usually a landmark event for hip hop news, because it usualy shows who is starting to become popular and it exposes people to new rappers that they never knew. Here i will be trying to predict who will make the cover in june. Remember that this is who i think XXL will pick, which is known for picking the most popular to gain headlines, not who i think is the most talented!

 

Juice wrld – These first couple rappers are the most obvious and almost everyone has them on their list right now. Starting with juice wrld, the most obvious, with the smash 4x platinum hit “Lucid dreams” juice wrld represents a new wave of emo that isnt folk infused or cringy like x and lil peep.

Lil baby- A whole new wave of fake young thug rappers are arising, and the face of them being lil baby and gunna.

Gunna – See above

Sheck Wes – With the smash hit Mo bamba and generally positive reviews on his album mudboy, a big name for XXL and the people getting to see what this newcomer has to offer is not a bad trade.

Ybn cordae – XXl ususally has some “criterea” (not confirmed/consistant) and one of those crtierea is to include a lyrical rapper especially on the newer covers. Ybn has been making waves from out the YBN crew and fits that genre and in my opinion, has a lot of talent, although he turns some people off because of his lisp.

Rico Nasty – Another criteria for XXL is to include a female, and this is the best (and probably only) female rapper this year. The only other ones that are applicable are noname and cuban doll and noname probably wont accept it if they do reach out to her.

Blueface – Blueface is one of the most talked about rappers right now, not only because there hasnt been major news/drama in rap since last november, but because people think he is garbage and is blowing up for some reason, if he continues gaining traction and dosent fall off too hard before june, he will be invited to make the list. 

Jaden smith – The reason why i think jaden smith will make the cover is because i think that jaden’s team (his dad -will smith) has a HUGE budget and can afford to bribe xxl. That, and that if you met someone who loved syre, they LOVED syre, so he has some die hard fans, all while hes doing this at 19.

Killy – XXL hasnt had an asian rapper in a while and while most people are putting rich brian on the list, i think that his time has already passed and that brian has been relativly silent while killy has been making waves working with well known producers.

Comethazine – Comethazine is another one of the rappers that can be easily replaced on here, but he has some huge hits, especially on his lyrical lemonade videos, which “walk” has over 50million views. Every song he drops makes its way onto the soundcloud charts, and bawskee charted high on billboard, so i would choose him over most other rappers but i have a feeling that i may be wrong on this one though.

Stay tuned for more of AntLaB22’s Music Reviewer Reviews!