Tone Oliver and Tone Deafs

The Good:

Tone Oliver - Live and Let Die

I barely went into Tone Oliver a few weeks ago when I reviewed Mann's The Expansion Tape, a mixtape that I didn't like all that much. To make matters even crazier, Oliver is actually operating with Mann's #PeaceLife movement. And yet, despite working closely with a rapper I wasn't so hot on, Oliver manages to be quite good.

If you remember, my biggest gripe with Mann was his lyrics, or lack thereof. Mann had a pretty good mixtape in just about every other way, though. Especially in terms of production.

Oliver is a much better lyricist and raps over beats similar to those off The Expansion Tape. This makes Tone basically just a good version of Mann. But I'm not complaining.

As I mentioned, beats are very important to the likes of Oliver and Mann. Oliver shows this straight from the get-go. "Dream Last Night," the first non-intro song on Live and Let Die, is a soulful piano-backed song. As soon as the beat hits, so does Oliver, rapping, "I look in the mirror and see a miracle / As my mind travels to new worlds, Americo / There I go again on the the merry-go-round." Paired with Oliver's slick flow, these lyrics come to life.

The title track is another quality beat, sampling Red Hot Chili Pepper's "Under the Bridge." I don't know about you, but there's something about rap sampling the Peppers that just gets my heart racing ("Otherside" by Macklemore, anyone?), so I love this beat as soon as the guitar starts strumming. The song also features a fantastic verse from enimaL, as he spits clever lines like, "And they need their money like ASAP / So it's safe

RHCP make everything better.

to say I have a 'Fucking Problem.'"

Oliver can take on more than just a chill beat. "Drive" features some banging drums and "Fish Tank" gets rowdy towards the end.

Plus, the song "Love is Back" from Mann's mixtape is on Live and Let Die, too. While I don't like hearing a song on two different tapes, this song is quickly becoming a favorite of mine.

Tone Oliver proves just how far working on lyrics can take you. Sure, beats are fun, but lyrics are ultimately what tie everything together.

The Bad:

Chris Brown - X Files

Okay, so this is only a six-track mixtape and I usually try to stick to full-lengths, but I just had to cover it. This is a big release and it deserves attention. Plus, how many times can I bust out some violent Chris Brown jokes? Hopefully they hit you in your funny bone.

What's black and read all over? The newspaper the morning after another Chris Brown attack!

buh-duh-chh

How many Chris Browns does it take to screw in a light bulb? None, because Chris Brown would prefer the room to be blacked out!

buh-duh-chh

Why does Chris Brown always leave early for meetings? So he can beat traffic!

buh-duh-chh

Thank you! Thank you! I'm here all week!

Now onto X Files. It's not very good. I guess you knew that at this point. Considering, you know, it's in the bad category.

The problem with X Files is that Chris Brown tries to sound like modern R&B (think Weeknd or Miguel), but waters it down with his pop charm.

C. Breezy looks kind of sinister with
Big Red behind him. Just saying.

Look no further than "Sweet Caroline." He takes pages straight out of The Weeknd's book. Like the falsetto as a climax of the song. Or the heavy vocal synthesizers for emphasis. But it still sounds like "Doublemint Gum," "Forever" Chris Brown. The Weeknd's sound works because it's dark all the way through. Chris Brown just can't pull that off. Luckily, Busta Rhymes comes in for a guest verse and makes the song somewhat tolerable, but it's still far from good.

"Waiting" has more of a Miguel feel, with the hot guitar licks and the overall rock-meets-R&B feel. But there's still that corny pop Chris Brown lurking underneath. And lyrics like, "Baby, look what you do to me / Girl, I've gone crazy / And you just got me waiting" don't help in the slightest.

There are a couple extra features from big names like Ludacris and Kid Ink, but the verses they provide just seem mailed in. Especially when Luda starts his verse with "I wanna li-li-li-lick you from your head to your toes." Sound familiar?

It has to be nice for Chris to know he's not the only one running out of material. At least he's not blatantly ripping bars from past verses. But X Files isn't too much above that.

Honestly, the best part is probably Kid Ink's verse on "Main Chick" when he raps, "KO shawty when I hit her with a punch...line." Whether that irony was intentional or not, I don't care. I still love it. Thank you, Kid Ink. Thank you so goddamn much.

The Re-dic-yu-lus:

Low Debiase - Boss Life City

One of my favorite things about Datpiff is that artists can provide their own description of their mixtape. Low Debiase doesn't do anything worse than any other rappers when it comes to descriptions, but I just felt like sharing it.

"It's finally HERE "Boss Life City" By Low DeBiase .Including Exclusive Boss Freestyles such as Bossed Up Hustla, Keep It G , Make A Flip Off The Rift & Many More"

Yes! It's finally here! I've been waiting forever for this mixtape named after a made up city! And there's even exclusive boss freestyles. I don't know how they're exclusive or even what they are, but I'm still so stoked for this! #BossLife

Maybe that's a little harsh on this little boss, but it doesn't seem so hard anymore once you start listening to the mixtape.

"Grinding" features a generic trap beat with a lot of hype rapping. Plus, Debiase proves he can spell by making a hook with only the letters of the song's title.

In fact, most of the songs follow this pattern. Low Debiase is just so generic. I've heard his flow hundreds of times. His beats, too. And don't get me started on all the "skurr"s. Even his topic seem like they're literally jacked from another rapper. Like the song "100," which is almost exactly like a song I covered last week.

Plus, these "exclusive boss freestyles" he promised aren't even exclusive. Or special. Or a sign of his never-ending love for me. They're exactly the same as the rest of his music. There's only one legitimate freestyle on the whole album and that only lasts a minute and a half (close to a minute after the intro) and is basically a shittier version of all his other songs.

You know what, Low Debiase? You're not a boss. You're not even an employee. You're just a big, fat phony!

-X-Prime, dropping the mic for now

@XavierVeccia

Just A Normal Day

Hey, Cheeseheads. How was your day? Mine was pretty normal. Because today was a normal day. Like, incredibly normal. Yep, nothing special happens in the middle of February, that's for sure. It's just a normal day. A normal Thursday with a normal Stack That Cheese post with no surprises.

The Good:

Problem & Iamsu! - Million Dollar Afro

I've gone over before how I often look at the covers and titles of mixtapes when trying to decide what mixtapes to look at. This, of course, applies to Million Dollar Afro. I've always greatly enjoyed afros. In fact, in fifth grade, I used to put a massive amount of mousse in my hair and I tried to shape my hair in the form of an afro. Needless to say, it was extremely unsuccessful. So now I just obsess over them, instead. And that led me to Problem & Iamsu!

If you've heard of Problem & Iamsu!, it's most likely because you're either a fan of theirs or you heard them on a Wiz Khalifa track. The duo from California is a frequent collaborator of Khalifa and was even featured on Cabin Fever 2 (the song, "Bout Me," is also featured on Million Dollar Afro). And after seeing Iamsu!'s afro, it's not hard to tell why. It's a pretty great afro. (Also, both smoke a vast amount of weed. That helps, too.) Just check it out in the title track's smokey music video.

The duo focuses on stoner music. As I've gone over in the past, stoner music is very hit and miss. Curren$y manages to make good stoner music, but Wiz has been struggling to do so as of late. And Million Dollar Afro is just as hit-and-miss.

"100 Grand" is one of those hits. For one, it has one of the harder beats on the album, compiled of hard bass lines, claps and synths that get the head bobbing. It's even nicer when Problem & Iamsu! and the features of Kool John and Juvenille go in on it. Problem and Kool John have the hottest verses as Problem spits, "Wood on the dashboard / All about the cash, board / Make the money fast forward / Make your bitch give me that like her ass forward" and Kool John raps, "We're fucking with my cash, man you're fucking with your life / I ain't saying I'm a theif, but a nigga fuck your wife."

T-Pain called. He wants his
auto-tune back. And some work.

The title track, shortened as "MDA," is one of the misses. All the potential is there, with an exciting beat that gets the listener pumped up and some nice verses from Iamsu! But the song features over-saturated Auto-Tune. If it was limited to just the chorus, or if it was 2010, it wouldn't be as bad. But the Auto-Tune manages to make its way into the verses and that's just too much auto-tune in 2013.

Million Dollar Afro is far from perfect and features a few straight-up stupid songs that are hard to listen to, but the mixtape is saved by the hits like "Knock It Off" and "Hunnits."

The Bad:

Krondon - Everything's Nothing

The bad category is always the hardest to decide. It's not like the re-dic-yu-lus because it's not pointing out the blatantly bad, and it's not like the good because it's not giving praise. Sometimes, it's just adequate--not good and not horrible. This is one of those times.

Krondon's Everything's Nothing is alright. That's really the perfect way to describe it. He does some things right--he focuses on real topics and the beats are for the most part pretty good--but he also does some things very poorly.

Take the song "I'm Moving" for example. Krondon's probably at his best in some aspects of the song. For one, it has a catchy, somber/sweet chorus of, "I'm moving all my work today." And the song is about moving all of the supplies you have in order to make more money to support those around you. It's a topic heard many times before, but quality nonetheless.

Should've read more of this guy.

But all of this is rendered pointless because Krondon just doesn't deliver in other aspects. Krondon's main challenge is rhyming, surprisingly. Of course he can rhyme, but he mostly sticks to simplistic singular syllable rhyme schemes that seem forced. "Diamonds are forever / And this rhymer's kind of clever / Watch him turn crack rocks into cheddar" is actually one of his better lines, but the delivery around it isn't smooth at all.

Imagine if Kendrick Lamar wasn't so complex in Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City. What if he didn't have a song where he was rapping from the perspective of a teenager? Or if he dropped the comic relief provided by his parents' phone calls? Or if he didn't take the role of those who left his life in "Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst?" What would Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City be then? It's not just good enough to have an interesting backstory and some good beats. In fact, it might be harder. Because that means you have to truly deliver in order to tell your story as best as it can be told.

Guys like Problem & Iamsu! have it easier. They just rap about weed and have a good time. As long as you have good beats and your rhymes are good, you're set. But Krondon has to do more because he has more to say. He just doesn't do enough on Everything's Nothing.

The Re-dic-yu-lus:

G FELLA - St. Valentine's Day Massacre

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! You thought I forgot, didn't you? My confusing intro and title threw you off, didn't it? I would never forget about you, Cheeseheads. I may not have gotten you guys chocolate or flowers or a fancy candle-lit dinner, but I did get you a horrible mixtape. I know you all so well, don't I?

Sadly, St. Valentine's Day Massacre isn't a very good Valentine's Day mixtape. There's no love-making R. Kelly, Barry White-type songs. It's actually quite violent. You probably should have guessed that from the word "massacre" in the title, but if you didn't, now you know.

So, to make up for giving you a violent mixtape instead of a sexy one, I'll give you some cards. Stack That Cheese cares.

You know this mixtape is going to be bad as soon as the chorus in the first song, "Massacre," begins. "No more excuses, no more chances / No more frenemies, no more cancers," raps G FELLA quite violently. Excuse me? Frenemies? I've never heard anyone say "frenemies" more angrily than G FELLA does. And then he starts the first verse by saying, "Go down on you harder than a dinosaur bite." To be fair, dinosaur bites do go down pretty damn hard.

You know what's harder than dinosaur bites, though? Listening to G FELLA's song "City Boy." (That transition doe.) Think of the most famous song that has the phrase "city boy" in it. If you guessed "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey, you're right! Your prize is another awesome Valentine's Day card right after this paragraph! (And if you didn't guess correctly, well, you'll still see the card, but only because I'm nice.) Now imagine it poorly sampled and you'll have "City Boy."

"City Boy" is about how G FELLA apparently grew up in a small town where "everybody knows everybody." How he portrays it, though, is just crazy. "Ice makes your wrist numb / Gold digger chicks come / Neighborhood chicks come / Beat them gold diggers up," he says. He then goes on to talk about how the cops didn't mess with him and his crew and just basically lists the people who lived there, before ending the song by shouting, "That's the city! That's the city I live in!" He clearly lived in quite the city.

I honestly don't know what to say about G FELLA's St. Valentine's Day Massacre. It's honestly horrible and isn't even as laughable as some of the other re-dic-yu-lus mixtapes of Stack That Cheese past. With that being said, it still made my Valentine's Day more enjoyable, and I hope it made yours better, too, Cheeseheads.

-- Xavier Veccia, dropping the mic for now.

@xprime_time