The Good:
Every morning when I wake up, I stomp over to my mirror in a drowsy state of mind and glare at my reflection, shouting, "You're better than the beats! You're better than the beats, goddammit!"
And until today, I thought I was. I would normally look past the beats and focus on the lyrics instead (unless I was feeling ig'nant). But YG broke me.
I should have known it from the intro: the Universal Pictures theme song with DJ Mustard (that's right, DJ Mustard) yelling over it. At the time, I just assumed YG was conceited, saying he was like the feature presentation or something cliche like that. But after listening to just a couple songs, I realized I was right! And so was he! YG was tipping us off to his own brilliance. This really was the feature presentation. So I grabbed a bowl of popcorn, sat back and let YG present it to me.
The best part of Just Re'd Up is the beats. There's several songs that just make you want to ride around in the classiest of suburbs with the bass turned up just to let everyone that lives there that you are one hood-ass motherfucker.
Let's start at "This Yick" featuring West Coast rapper Dom Kennedy and Joe Moses. The bass is just plain overwhelming and the rest of the beat sounds like it's straight out of a horror movie. Sure, the chorus is, "Girl, I know you want this dick," and YG has lines as bad as "Pussy gets mashed up, smashed up, mashed like potatoes," but the beat is just too dirty to look past. Plus, Kennedy's verse gives the song some lyrical integrity.
The very next song is called "Make it Clap." And once again, the song is of poor lyrical quality. The chorus is simplistic and repetitive and just about every line in the song has something to do with making a bitch clap her ass. But how the hell can I look past the beat? DJ Mustard's masterpiece includes heavy drums, claps, bass and what sounds like a recorder or another wind instrument.
There's even some good baby-making music on this mixtape. "Love Jones" featuring Tydolla$ign is definitely the best. YG's rhyme actually works better with an R&B-style slow song, where being dirty and completely sex-oriented sounds much better. Even a line like "I'm trying to give you two things / Some dick and satisfaction" seems almost sweet as baby-making music.
Honestly, DJ Mustard deserves some award for making YG listenable. YG has re-dic-yu-lus quality lyrics, but Mustard just makes you forget about that and focus on his beats instead. He stole the show and definitely deserves an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor or something like that for making Just Re'd Up into a feature presentation.
The Bad: The Pretty Good:
I know, I know. I'm breaking all the rules of the blog. I'm despicable. A horrible human being. The absolute worst. But I had to. I had already downloaded Electric Highway when I heard Just Re'd Up and I couldn't turn back. So I just decided to call this "pretty good" and get rid of "the bad." But hey, it's a new year! New Stack That Cheese! New logo! And now, new format (for one week)!
Rockie Fresh is the newest signee to Maybach Music, and Electric Highway is his way of coming out. As a new member of Maybach, good production is all but guaranteed, which is what really stood out when I first pegged this as "the good" of the week. But after hearing Just Re'd Up, I knew I couldn't really use good production as an argument for Fresh's new mixtape.
But that doesn't mean Electric Highway is bad. It's quite good, actually. "Superman OG" is one of the better examples of production, using the sound of lighters and maracas, along with some heavy bass, to create an entertaining beat.
"Roll Up Right Now" is another quality song with a great feature from Curren$y. Curren$y is of course greeted with a nice, old-timey beat filled with some bass guitar and piano that's very Curren$y friendly. Curren$y even admits it when he raps, "Old school, though / So ahead of my time."
"The Lights," for whatever reason, is my favorite song off the mixtape, though. It features some simple electronic synths and a chorus of a female vocalist singing, "The lights will lead you there / There's no better light than this, I swear." And Fresh is rapping under some pretty heady autotune. The whole song just has a modern feel and it's very alluring.
While Rockie Fresh may not have been able to grab the top spot this week, Electric Highway is still a good release. He proves to fit right in with Maybach Music.
The Re-dic-yu-lus:
You know how nearly every rapper makes sure to mention time and time again how much they love God? And you know how nearly every rap song does the exact opposite of proving that? I of course say "nearly" because Slym B is out to prove how much he loves Jesus.
Especially on the song "In Love With Jesus." "Man, I said it / I said it / I'm in love with Jesus," Slym B raps in the chorus. This kind of love for Jesus isn't new to rap, but it's not too often when a rapper dedicates a song to Him, let alone a whole mixtape. But that's what Slym B does. The only thing more surprising than this is the way in which he goes about professing his love for the big man. He raps over beats in a manner that seems more likely to fit in a 2 Chainz song than in a church.
"Ooh, that devil mad," Slym B raps in "In Love With Jesus," acting as if he's calling the devil out like he's a rival rapper, much less a fallen angel. And he does this with all the swagger of Kevin Federline.
He also brags about God the same way that most rappers would brag about pussy or weed. Take the song "Unstable," where Slym B proves he wasn't allowed to be in choir by horribly singing the chorus. But he doesn't stop there. He also brags about his faith and tries to sway the listener to become a believer through lines like, "You too comfortable in your sin, huh."
Now before I go any further and make it seem like Slym B got into this category by preaching his faith, let's explain why this mixtape is so horrible.
It's not the content that Slym is rapping about, but how he's rapping about it. He's got all the cockiness of someone from Young Money, and the ghetto-ass beats of some of the most ignorant rappers in the game, but he's rapping about Christianity. Now, I may not be too rooted in the Christian hip-hop movement, but something tells me that's the wrong way to go about it.
Because when you're listening to artists like Soulja Boy or Chief Keef, you're not just there for the beats. You're also there because you want to listen to songs about bitches and weed. I can't imagine there are many people listening to those artists thinking to themselves, "I really like these beats, but gosh darnit, these boys are just too sinful for me." But that's the target audience for Slym B.
Christian rapping can be done right, just not like this. Look at Lecrae or the 116 Clique. They manage to preach their faith without sounding ignorant about it. But Slym B takes the opposite route and instead just comes out of his mixtape sounding unintelligent and ridiculous. Hence, his inclusion in the re-dic-yu-lus section.
-- Xavier Veccia, dropping the mic for now.
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