official liveblog rap album review thread

Lame that he chopped Lost in the World in half.

So this is Kanye's first miss album-wise, amirite?

the worst songs on here are still better than "homecoming" and "big brother" and "i wonder" and "drunk and hot girls"

wait fatass raped australia?!

it certainly continues the steady downward trajectory

xps

Except Big Brother, I Wonder, and ESPECIALLY Drunk and Hot Girls are great.

word

even if this isn't going tobe anywhere near his best, i can't imagine this being half as terrible as 808s

can we just dump every new iteration of the neverending Graduation debate here: ***RANKING KANYE***

This is much, much worse than 808s.

is there anything better than 'golddigger' on this

pretend im not 'deej' asking this but a 'person who really likes golddigger'

aint messing with no broke broke!

not a fair question imo. "gold digger" is his best song.

i mean, neither college dropout or graduation have a song as good as "gold digger"!

So this is Kanye's first miss album-wise, amirite?

― altered boners (rennavate), Tuesday, 9 November 2010 22:55 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol, you not hear the previous two or blueprint 3?

How is BP3 Kanye's failure? BP3 is good, btw.

And I'll keep it in the RANK KANYE thread, but you know my opinion on his previous two.

BP3 is good, btw

smh

SB

not really doing the "graduation is the best kanye album" camp any good w/ that opinion

anyone got production credits for this?

def. feeling some of the production but yeah kanye doesn't seem to have enough of his normally 'snappy' raps to fill these long songs so it just kinda drags

i like this album a lot tbh

i skip "all the lights" though

i think that i like it a lot too -- gotta get into the final tracks tho

'hell of a life' is pretty crazy

like:

dark fantasy - hilarious beat imo
gorgeous - amazing rae verse + like this beat
all of the lights - epic
monster - 3:30-5.00
devil in a new dress - love this retro kanye sound but this isn't produced by him right?
runaway - i was expecting the album to be more along these lines
hell of a life - this beat is rawwwwwwwww

couldn't make it through the last 3 songs - painful

"all of the lights" sounds like a jumbled mess to me, I get that that's what he was going for but... yeah. also, don't like the chorus

it is a bit of a mess but still one of the best constructed songs of this album

i feel like everything people say about "all of the lights" is refracted through the lol guest list. like if it was just billed as f/ rihanna and maybe one or two of the more audible other people i don't know if people would be calling it "epic" or "jumbled," it's just kind of a weakass song.

i can't even hear any of the guests i think the horns are what make it sound "epic"

who else is on "All of the Lights"??

how to make a classic 'ye album = just get rhymefest and bink/just blaze/no i.d. together and to dress up like nerds, forget to invite 'ye to the sessions.

yeah, just blaze and rhymefest. what inspired dudes in 2010. maybe just could lay down some beats as good as "all the above".

i've downloaded the new dj khaled album

http://cache.dealbreaker.com/uploads/2010/06/animated-siren-gif-animated-siren-gif-animated-siren-gif-drudge-report.gif

drake/ross/wayne - "i'm on one"

i think this is one of the best beats of the year, but the song still leaves me cold. even the beat tho could be better than it is, there's some cool guitar sounding stuff lurking underneath that i wish were fleshed out a bit. anyway, i'll stand my ground that wayne's verse on this is an abomination, regardless of whether or not he was aiming for trying to sound super stoned. he sounds lazy & bored to me. the most interesting development on this song is further confirmation that ross has lapped wayne two times over as a rapper and that drake has really gone full asshole recently, it's like he's already entered his 'my beautiful dark twisted fantasy' phase while bypassing the years in between that. but honestly i think it's a good look for him, cuz i never really bought him as conflicted and contemplative. for the biggest rap single of the year, we could have had worse, i guess.

ross/wayne/plies/t-pain - "welcome to my hood"

we already know that this one is really boring. i still confuse this song with "all i do is win", which brings me to a theory that no one else could care about. "all i do is win" emerged during the nba playoffs as a near ubiquitous stadium song, and i think unfortunately that it's end up being khaled's most enduring single ever. the real heads know the deal pick is "holla at me", "we takin over" is the critics pick, but "all i do is win" is gonna be played ten years from now. as for "welcome to my hood", plies should be on every song on this album. wayne's flow on this is so lazy too, sheesh.

jeezy/ludacris - money

this is produced by lex luger, which i guess was a really predictable development for this album. he's kind of the new runners now that i think of it, tho w/ a bigger bag of tricks and a wider rolodex. it really sucks that jeezy is jumping on the luger train, he's a better fit on drumma boy & shawty redd beats. when luger songs are good they really hit, but when they're bad they're really bad. this song is like a trotting elephant or something. suffice to say that the jeezy/luda collab off whichever luda album that was is much better than this. truly i have nothing to say about this song, it's rap wallpaper. ha, the bridge (?) on this has khaled going all dj drama.

waka/ace hood - i'm thuggin

another luger one, but this is total 'flockaveli' territory. and just like flockaveli, there's a totally underwhelming & unnecessary guest. ace hood's new luger produced single is so similar to "hustle hard" that it's squarely "kinda lol mostly sad". the thing i said about this being flockaveli territory? that was before i realized that waka doesn't have a verse. the first thirty seconds of this is gonna be the best part of this album, isn't it?

fab/jada/mary j - it ain't over till it's over

heard this one the radio & thought it was really terrible, but the beat is actually a bit cooler than i originally realized. if anything it breaks up the epic banger monotony. fab & jada really phoned the verses on this. this could actually be a pretty solid mary j solo single in another universe, but the rappers treat this like a contractual obligation. just noticed that there's no nas on this tracklist. end of an era, really. "it ain't over till it's over" is such a perfect empty cliche for a khaled album. moving on.

chris brown/keyshia cole/ne-yo - legendary

produced by cool & dre, holy hell. anyway, i think this might be the first ever all r&b posse cut on a khaled album. this really has a melodramatic soundtrack feel to it... man, cool & dre are boring ass producers. nice to see someone giving them work though? quite hilariously, 95% of their 2011 production credits according to wikipedia is shit for the aborted the game album that's never ever coming out. ne-yo on the bridge for this... he really doesn't sound good trying to wail over this beat. this shit is really boring.

cee lo/the game/busta - sleep when i'm gone

produced by DANJA, but unfortunately he's in full "this is a dj khaled album" mode, all minor piano keys & big, loping drums. this is a bizarre pairing, but cee-lo sounds really good. the game brags very seriously about fucking basketball wives, which i guess is all he's got left at this point. yeah this cee-lo hook is really good. no fast rapping from busta but he does call himself god multiple times and drops a funny line about "wilin like it's hatians and jamaicans on labor day". VERY slim pickings here, obviously. another game verse... this is the only way he's gonna be in best buy this year. this is the best song on here after "i'm on one"

birdman/t-pain - can't stop

BIRDMAN SOLO... i was not looking forward to this one. oh btw we've entered the boi-1da portion of the album. this beat and the last one are indecipherable... these albums are so fascinating to me because everyone involved seems so obviously bored by having to be involved, and then you have these producers turning in these formulaic & generic stadium beats... i like to think that they trade emails behind the scenes laughing this stuff off. thankfully this isn't even three minutes long.

ace hood/meek mill/big sean/wale/vado - future

"THIS IS THE FUTURE", proclaims khaled. also he says "meek mills" which is poised to turn into the "joe buddens" of this decade. ace hood is so boring... the fact that he has two legit awesome singles imo is a minor miracle. i have no idea how khaled basically staked his whole a&r career on this clown. i know there are ppl that fuck heavy w/ meek mill but i have no feelings about this dude. he has a bit of a boosie thing to him but he seems so regular to me. ha, big sean name drops trick trick on this which is funny to me cuz i feel like trick trick is just waiting to snatch this fools chain. haha big sean just unwittingly copped based god's flow for a second here, which is the most interesting thing to happen on this joint. wale's turn... i guess i'm happy for this guy since he seems decent enough but i've never heard a verse from him where i felt like my life was bettered by having heard it. that's on some final debate in billy madison shit. vado... you can tell that a lot these guys have no idea how to flow on these loping ass beats, but vado's verse is kinda dope. "drop tops like release dates" qualifies as the new best punchline on this album.

akon/b.o.b. - my life

ha, this is like a mix of porch swing reggae & big wailing khaled inspirational choruses and big drums. just on account of including an acoustic guitar, this is the song on the album to most please meh. some of the songs on this album have weird ass structures... like ne-yo doing just a bridge, or akon doing everything on this song but the first verse. and this one has come and gone, had some potential tho.

kevin rudolf/tyga/mack maine/jae millz/cory gunz - a million lights

wow this roster is scaring the shit out of me... a cash money posse cut that doesn't involve wayne, drake or nicki. i'd love for complex to run an INVESTIGATIVE REPORT on where gudda gudda was when this was recorded. i'd like to think that he was at the grocery store or something idk. is "a million lights" more than "all of the lights"?? i guess not right. they should've called this "infinity lights" imo. the beat on this is kinda cool actually, it's at least in a different tempo. mack maine legit has one of the five best verse on this album. he just made a call back to wayne's "every girl" verse. jae millz... i wonder if meek mill is gonna see this dude at a party one day and lose his cool and beat the shit out of him for inadvertently being the root of why everyone gets his name wrong. cory gunz closing the door here... i kinda really hate this fucking guy. on account of being able to flow he lands in the top 10% percentile here. idk.

alright this album is already over. it was really too mediocre for me to even be able to make jokes, honestly. like i said tho, how this collective starpower and (relative) skill can come together for such a massive hurricane of blandness is really fascinating to me. inspirational rap stadium anthems suck tho.

i trust everyone understands why i didn't listen to the mega "welcome to my hood" remix

lmao @ all of that last one

i cannot bring myself to listen to this

haha i got so excited when i saw that this thread was revived, knew exactly what it meant, great job j0rdan

good call on not listening to the "Welcome To My Hood" remix -- i believe i once referred to it as 'Miami water torture'

yes that was a very enjoyable liveblog, props

thx guyz

"i'm the most slept on/& the most hated"

-the game