rae sremmurd - sremmlife (6 jan 2015)

Idk why it’s so controversial itt that swae is a more natural breakout star: he’s better looking (seems weird to say that but it’s true and matters); he does the sing-rap post drake thing (sorry for crudeness of that description) and he seems more chilll and confident, whereas jim is more drugged out /manic and channels the bratty element of their sound more. This isn’t to say swae is better per se just better adapted to the current rap ecosystem. I love Jxmmi on their second lp especially, he sounds super hungry

he also sings the hook on every one of their hits and wrote one of the biggest songs of last year

co-wrote Formation too. He's been the chosen one since the beginning

do ppl not like "hurt to look"? like i would agree with the assessment above that it will probably not be a hit but i really like it much more than the other recent releases

to be fair I'll give it another chance, just not my thing maybe

i wanted to like "hurt to look" but it only has one melodic idea. i can vibe w/ it because it's very vibey but i rate it well below "sativa" as far as swae R&B goes

"Powerglide" was a big grower

love it

it's lit

yeah it's a really good song, ready to get sick of it during the NBA playoffs tho

maybe they'll play "Hurts to Look" during montages of the Celtics on offense instead.

'Slime green paint, peanut butter inside' - Powerglide definitely one of my pop songs of the year

Swae's "Guatemala" is a pretty forgettable "Unforgettable" rip. But still loving the flood of new material from these guys. Triple-album rollouts are fun

maybe they'll play "Hurts to Look" during montages of the Celtics on offense instead.

― evol j, Tuesday, April 10, 2018 2:46 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i laughed

'Powerglide' is the fastest five and a half minutes in pop.

it seems i have yet another objectively wrong opinion about rae sremmurd since i prefer "guatemala" to "powerglide"

'Guatemala' is terrific too.

Was underwhelmed by some of the tracks as they came out, but, as a group, this is really working for me.

i like “close” way more than “guatemala”

"close" is niiiiiiiiiicce

Based on its radio play so far "Guatemala" seems like it might be a hit, so I guess Swae knew what he was doing going back to that well

I'm a little peeved SR3MM doesn't have a release date yet but if that means that they just keep releasing two new song a week indefinitely I'm totally fine with it

swae
cation

feel like swaecation might be more interesting than good but "offshore" is amazing

emotional diddy music

“offshore” rules so much

I haven't made it to the Jxmtro section yet

A friend called Swaecation the 2018 Amplified and I'm inclined to agree. It's not bad, but a little one note compared to what I was hoping for.

oh shit, didn't realise this was out!!

feel like swaecation might be more interesting than good

feel like this is prob true, the songs themselves are kinda formless, but it’s a pretty mood to sink into. can’t tell if that’s why i suddenly think “hurt to look” sounds fantastic even though i felt relatively cool about it when it came out

I keep reading 'Swaecation' as 'Swaetcorn'

Jxmtro is the only side that meets expectations

They really spread themselves thin here. The first Sremmlife albums packed each song with melodic ideas, but Swaecation especially is almost stingy with them

even grading on the "it's a triple album what did you expect" curve this is really a disappointment :(

idk my current evaluation is it came out a few hours ago and i gotta spend more time with it

On my first playthrough and Swaecation sounds incredible despite its lack of hooks and stand-up lines. The panflutes and guitar tones!

The "chinny chin chin" line in Powerglide really spoils an otherwise great track

I like the sound of Swaecation but that sequence bores me, mostly.

This whole album feels a lot less... focused than their previous two? And I’m not just talking about the 27 tracks. It’s more... something about how they let their guests steal the spotlight on these songs, something that rarely happened before, even when they had great guests.

That being said, I really like all the group album tracks. And a few of the solo tracks. The 3-4 final Jxmtroduction tracks are good.

Swaecation makes me think of Charli XCX's Pop 2

SR3MM proper is the most disappointing disc for me. "Up In My Cocina" is a dull opener, especially by this group's standards, and "Bedtime Stories" is the last thing I want to hear on a Rae Sremmurd album.

Swaecation is hard to criticize because it feels like a hug and it's so sweet and genuine and I love that. But it runs the same basic idea or two into the ground, and I have a hard time believing these are the best possible songs Swae Lee is capable of. It almost feels more like a Future mixtape to me, a myopic snapshot of where an artist's muse is at a very specific moment in their career, rather than a landmark portrait that captures the full scope of his talents.

There's enough good scattered throughout all of these sides that I feel greedy saying I wanted more, but I wanted more. "Touchscreen Navigation" is perfect, though, and "Hurt To Look" is classic

Interesting. I don' think SR3MM's songs are at their best either (I like "Up in my Cocina" more than you do), but it's the one I listen to most while I feel a real dip in my enthusiasm when I get to Swaecation

My expectations were highest for Swaecation, because I wanted it to be a real Swae Lee solo debut and not just the bonus disc it essentially is. I don't think it cashes in on his talent or his buzz the way it could have, but once I balance for all of that I can at least appreciate that it mostly does what it sets out to do.

SR3MM though is just really unfocused and uneven and almost perfunctory at times. It feels like the disc the group shorted as they divided their attention across projects

I feel like Black Beatles was the sound of them arriving and this is the sound of them discovering that they now have to figure out where to go next. There's just less passion to it all. Like they're trying new stuff because they guess they have to and not out of genuine curiosity. There's a great yacht rock album somewhere inside Swaecation but it hasn't really left the shore. (Thugger does, obvs.)

Well I was expecting this album to be a bit patchy and disappointing compared to the last two. Especially after mixed feelings on Migos's bumper album and the fact I've already heard about a fifth of the album already.

I was wrong. It's a thrill-ride and great fun to listen to on shuffle. I've not really had time to check the whole thing out yet but there are already some proper pump your fist moments.

per hits magazine, failed to outperform the leon bridges album released the same week, even w/ streaming numbers added

they’ve never sold albums

That’s true. It strikes me as weird though. The singles aren’t exactly moving like hot cakes either this time around. Why aren’t the kids gravitating towards them? My initial lukewarmness had more to do with sky high expectations than with the actual quality of this album.

i thought they might buck that tendency post-"black beatles" and "unforgettable" but that is true enough

"powerglide" has actually been holding pretty strong, i think its peak position has been deflated by the crazy distortion of the streaming economy rn--drake to an extent, but mostly by cardi's album and especially post malone's album placing every song on the hot 100. if you look at spotify's weekly chart this week it's the 8th most streamed song on spotify not by drake, cardi or post malone... it's just that that means it's only the 26th most streamed song overall. (i think this is true for a lot of songs... "plug walk", "sad" etc.) "guatemala" and "close" were both on the hot 100 too prior to this deluge, i think things might even out in that regard as we get some distance from the carti/post malone albums

i like "guatemala" a lot

me too!

"powerglide" has more room to grow for sure but for now its hot 100 peak seems about right for how much exposure it seems to be getting, more "throw some mo" or "this could be us" than "no type". it is still a streaming-dominated hit and artists that are comfortably/consistently in the spotify top 50 are not really the ones being short-changed in the streaming economy lol. like yeah, big 'event albums' do shake things up a little but it's not tremendously different from when taylor swift would release an album and have every single track clogging up the top 20 on itunes for a week back when itunes was the thing -- basically a blip in the long run.