This Week In Song #7

This week in song is going to be an album review. Cause I've fallen back into listening to one particular thing for days upon days. The last time I wrote a real album review was last year for Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (My top album of 2010, 5/5, highly innovative, epic new sounding beats, amazing guests, rapping on point. Just everything perfect.). People say that mainstream modern rap and hip-hop is bad, unworthy, and will never live up to the 90s and early 2000s rap. To an extent they could be right. Rap in the 90s was new, fresh, and the in thing. Now it seems that everyone and their mothers are doing raps, rhymes, and the like in all genres of music. And when an artist does release a hip-hop album it's cliche, generic sounding, and just all around bad. People also have different tastes in their listening of rap music. The lyrics and delivery in a song could be sub-par or even just terrible, but a great beat can make the song great. It's also true for the flip-side, the most lyrically minded technical rapper can have the shittiest beat and it ruin the song. It all depends on musical tastes in the end when you listen to this genre. Sure people say that Eminem, Rick Ross, Lil Wanye and the like are the top tier of mainstream rap. Sure album sales and popularity-wise. But when it comes to lyrics, guests, and beats, it doesn't get better than production and rapping by Kanye West and Jay-Z. Kanye has always had the knack for sliding the "sex, cars, hoes" aspect of rap into his songs so that it doesn't make it seem like it's the focal point. All while keeping the almost "conscious" and controversial side of his lyrics intact. Not to mention his production, always amazing. IMO the innovator of sampling songs to put over beats, he can always find a way to make a beat sound smooth and awesome. Jay-Z has been a juggernaut in this genre since the mid-90s. He worked during Notorious BIG/Tupac era, and he is one of the rappers, that kept the genre "alive" in the early 2000s when it was hard to find ANYTHING worthwhile. Jay has the "east coast swag" as you could call it. His production is always good, and his rapping is so fine tuned it's amazing to listen to him on tracks. One of those people who has truly perfected their craft. 

Now after this long winded intro, that possibly sounded like I was dick-riding Kanye and Jay haha, we can get to why I love this album. Simple answer, this is like MBDTF Part 2. Well that's the review. Just kidding. Right out of the gate with "No Church In The Wild", it's a one, two, three punch of a slowed down beat and solid Kanye/Jay verses with a powerful chorus sung by Frank Ocean. I'll say this now so I son't have to repeat it throughout all this, but I love all the beats on this album. So if you don't see mention it for a particular song, don't fret, I still enjoyed it. Right into what I call the "All of the Lights" of Watch the Throne. A grandiose song, filled with big sounds and a big voice in Beyonce. It took me like 10 listens to get into this song, but it finally came around to me. Now is where, for me, the meat of the album starts. Great rapping, great lyrics, great beats and just a great 15 minutes of listening when we hit "Niggas in Paris", "Otis", "Gotta Have It", "New Day", and "That's My Bitch". The beat for "Gotta Have It" may still be my favorite beat on this album. We also get a glimpse of real soulful beats and lyrics (which we'll still encounter later) with "New Day." This area of the album is what you'll listen A LOT to when you first get it. At least that's what I did. Now we onto the end section of the album. The lyrics in all these songs are real. You can hear and feel the pain and emotion in the lyrics. Whether it's with a souped up "Welcome to the Jungle" beat with Swizz Beatz in the background or it's amazingly sung chorus in "Murder to Excellence", you're going to find an emotional edge. The lyrics are real too, it's not fake, it's from the heart, real experiences, and things they went through in life. I love it when rappers keep quality and technique with realness. "Welcome to the Jungle", "Who Gon Stop Me", "Murder to Excellence", "Made in America", and "Why I Love You" is this third level of this album and the prefect way to end it. Now I could go on and keep praising this album with it's bonus tracks, but i'll stop it here, with the main album. I will say though that "Illest Motherfucker Alive" and "Primetime" are amazing tracks and I'm glad they made it to even the bonus tracks of the deluxe edition. All in all this is a damn good album. As if you couldn't tell from the constant praise throughout. If I have to say one more thing though I'll say this. When I'm listening to album, whether it's the 1st or 50th time, when it doesn't feel like I'm wasting time, or checking track times, and just enjoying the music, then it's going to be an album I adore. First listen through, I was pissed when it ended, I wanted more. I love this album and it'll probably end up album of the year for me. Get this, you can hate (or whatever) modern rap and hip-hop all you want. But this is another one of the albums done right.

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I've also included the album art for this by Riccardo Tisci. Loved all the album art and styles Kanye put out with MBDTF and I'm glad he has this artistic sight. I like all these pictures and have even contemplated getting a tattoo of the angel in the last picture (My personal favorite). If you enjoy art, you may enjoy these that were included with the album.