The Grate:
Ahh! See what I did there? God, I'm clever.
But puns aside, this mixtape is legitimately great. Easily one of the best mixtapes I've heard all year. Actually, scratch that. Innanetape is one of the best albums of any genre released in 2013. Maybe in two months, when I'm compiling my top albums of the year list, I'll feel differently. But for now, I'm sticking to my statement.
Vic Mensa is a Chicago rapper who has gotten a lot of extra hype since Chance the Rapper (whose Acid Rap featured Mensa) has become the talk of the town. And honestly, Mensa might be just as good as Chance, which is saying so much considering Acid Rap has gotten a lot of early love for album of the year.
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| Like, I really miss this show |
Just like Chance, Mensa is insanely creative. The Windy City rappers are like Walter White and Jesse Pinkman and their music is their blue meth (I'm sorry, I just really miss Breaking Bad).
Take the song "Lovely Day." First, this song is the closest thing to Outkast that I've heard since, well, Outkast left me. Seriously, if we can't have Big Boi and Andre 3000 work together anymore, "Lovely Day" is a pretty good compromise.
The song starts off with two beautiful verses with a catchy hook shoved in between before putting together the most amazing outro in a while. There are horns. There are some synths. There's even a sample of James Blake's "The Wilhelm Scream." On another James Blake note, I'm pretty sure the cover for Innanetape was influenced by Blake's self-titled album. Yet another reason to love Mensa.
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| Chance on the cover of Complex |
And speaking of Chance, he makes an appearance on the song "Tweakin." Starting with some electronic drum hits, the beat quickly gets covered with some disoriented sounds that on first listen can be confusing, but quickly grow on the listener.
And Chance makes this friendly rivalry competitive as he raps, "I think the Illuminati is real / And your body's the peel and your soul is the fruit / And their goal is to steal and control all the juice."
Mensa can certainly have some fun, but he also doesn't shy away from more down-to-earth songs, as shown on "Holy Holy," which is about the very producer of this song, Killa Cam's passing. Mensa asks some seriously introspective questions like, "What would my obituary be? / How would they color me in the media?" before remembering Cam.
Ab-Soul makes a heart shattering feature, too, as he reflects over his girlfriend Alori's suicide. "I kept my Metro PCS with all our text messages / As evidence that I was thinking holy matrimony," he raps.
Innanetape is yet another sign of how much creative talent is coming out of Chicago. The worst part about this tape being so goddamn good is that I'm going to have to put so much more thought into my top albums of the year come December. But that's a pretty good problem to have.
The Not So Gouda:
That's right, I've made not one, but two brilliant puns. Stack Those Puns, am I right?
I really wanted to write a review on Innanetape like I did with King Remembered in Time back in April. But when a mixtape trends on Twitter, like Meek Mill's latest, I kind of have an obligation to cover it.
Next, I had to figure out just how I felt about Dreamchasers 3. I've never really liked Mill all that much. To be honest, I still don't. But he's one of the hottest rappers in the game and there's a reason for that.
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| Remember, the masses used to like Soulja Boy. |
But, time and time again, we're reminded that the masses don't always know what's best. Meek Mill's another proof for that.
Now, here on Stack That Cheese, we've been able to have some fun. We've been able to recognize that good rap doesn't necessarily have to have meaningful lyrics or clever wordplay. There's also an art to hype beats that pump up a crowd.
But Meek Mill just doesn't do anything for me. For a rapper that's being talked about so much, Meek Mill is actually pretty generic.
Take the song "Dope Dealer." On paper it seems like it should be good. It features Ricky Ross the boss and Nicki Minaj, so this is a Top 40 type lineup. But it just fails to impress me. An artist of Mill's caliber should be able to afford greater production. But "Dope Dealer" just sounds like it could be on just about any "Bad" mixtape.
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| Ahh! Real Rick Ross! |
And the lyrics do the same thing. At one point, Mill is just rhyming Chanel bag with Chanel swag and Chanel tag. Pretty complex stuff, clearly. And Rick Ross has a line in which he says, "Philly brothers, sometimes call me 'Ahh!'" What?
I mean there are some pretty decent songs on Dreamchasers 3. "Lil Nigga Snupe" reflects on the passing of Mill's friend Lil Snupe. The beat's pretty tame, with a drum kit and calming synth. And Mill even has some good lines, like "I'll give all this money to get lil cuz back / Before my nigga go starving like where my grub at."
And "Heaven or Hell" samples Luniz's "I Got 5 on It." I mostly just really love the hook sung by Guordan Banks. Banks has this Colin Munroe-like voice and it's pretty catchy.
But even those tracks still are composed of some simplistic lines and beats that fail to really stand out. Hell, "Heaven or Hell" is basically just "I Got 5 on It." And that's probably the best beat on the whole tape.
Dreamchasers 3 is yet another mixtape from Meek Mill that really fails to grab my attention. But he's managed to get quite a following from this style of his, so I'm probably going to end up listening to most of what he releases.
The Limburger:
I'm a little ashamed of this. 1) I couldn't come up with a pun for re-dic-yu-lus. How can I call myself a pun expert when I can't even make one simple pun? 2) I just broke an ACRN blogging rule. If you haven't noticed, I usually link to my pictures. But I could do this for this mixtape cover.
As you can see I've decided to cover a certain part of the girl with Lil B's face. There's a reason for that. And now that my mom has officially started reading my blog (I'm single, ladies), I need to at least make this stuff kind of decent.
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| Self-five again for STC's first gif! |
But at least I found a really bad mixtape and made it even dumber with a little help from Lil B. High-five, me!
I actually liked It Happens II for about fifteen seconds. It was on the track "Back Bend (Bounce)," which has a pretty fun beat. I was like, "Hmm, this could be good if this VP guy delivers lyrically." But surprise, surprise, he didn't.
VP starts rapping in a storm of horribleness, shout/mumbling, "All the girls do it like this / Pop some pussy on some dicks." And actually, the more I hear this beat, I'm pretty sure this is from something else. Making this song completely useless.
But VP does manage to get some good beats. Whether or not these are his is hard to tell considering there's absolutely no information about him on datpiff. But at the very least, it shows he has some good taste in beats.
Like "Repeat." It has a piano-based beat with some soothing bass. But VP ruins it with his unique quality of being completely impossible to understand. In the second verse, I swear he says "shibuhdibuhding." Really.
But something tells me that it wouldn't make any difference even if I could understand him. He's far from a lyrical mastermind. Hell, Meek Mill runs circles around him. But, if he works on his flow and lyrics, he could manage to make a half-decent mixtape someday. Too bad those are huge ifs.
-X-Prime, dropping the mic for now
@XavierVeccia
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