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

Let's Get Ig'nant

Wazzup, Cheeseheads? You wanna know wazzup with me? I've been sick all week, totally unmotivated and not looking forward to finals week one bit. But I don't want your sympathy. No, no, no. What I want is to just mess around. I just want to have fun. And the best way to have fun is to go ig'nant to some ig'nant rappers. So with this post, you will not find one good rapper, just rappers who make me feel ig'nant. (If you're counting at home, that's already four uses of "ig'nant" used in this post. I'm not saying this post has to turn into a drinking game, but if it does, that would be pretty freaking awesome.)

The Good (a.k.a. The Best of the Ign'ant):

Kid Ink - Rocketshipshawty

Kid Ink is still relatively underground, but he's started amassing a pretty decent following. I've had quite a few people tell me to start listening to him. I'm still not a huge fan of his, but when I'm in an ig'nant mood, he's not half-bad.

Let's start with "Badass." It's the second track in the album and, with the title of "Badass," it better be pretty ig'nant. And it lives up to the hype! There seems to be a growing trend among rappers to sing their own hooks without even trying to sound good. They don't take voice lessons or carry around a pitch pipe or anything like that. They just sing in their regular voice. And even though this sounds horrible even as I write this, I kinda like it. And "Badass" is the perfect example of the trend, as Ink sings about how he "sees just what you're doing with your bad-ass on."

Then there's "Ghost," which is by far the creepiest song on the mixtape. It has a haunting female voice in the background of some funky synths that is just way too scary, especially when Ink basically whispers some of his lyrics. Plus, the opening line "I think I'm 'bout to go ghost / Casper on these niggas" brings up both the memories of Casper and Danny Phantom, and that's pretty sweet.

But Ink saves his most ig'nant for the bonus track, a remix of his biggest single, "Hell & Back." If you've only heard one Kid Ink song, it was probably this one. The remix is fundamentally the same, with the same beat and chorus. The biggest difference is new verses. The first from Kid Ink, featuring this awesome line: "We ain't going nowhere like wine stains." The second verse is from the king of ig'nant himself, Machine Gun Kelly. Many know him from that "Wild Boy" song, and fellow Ohio University students remember him from this. I want to quote MGK, but I feel the only way to take in his ig'nant-ness is by listening to his whole verse.

The Bad (a.k.a. Maybe A Little Too Ig'nant):

Tyga - 187

Way back when, all the way in the year 2008, a young artist burst onto the scene with a song featuring his cousin Travie McCoy (at that point, he was still Travis) of Gym Class Heroes. That song was "Coconut Juice" and that rapper was none other than Tyga. This was when Tyga was "clean," meaning he didn't swear and probably didn't produce porn. He also made songs like this:

Now Tyga is one of the scariest rappers in the game. Despite being skinny as a twig, no one would dare mess with him. But that doesn't make him a good rapper. And 187 just proves once again how bad of a rapper he is.

187 was meant to coincide with Tyga's single with Rick Ross, which is really a ridiculous thing to do. And the mixtape clearly takes a hit because of it. Most of the songs are just reused beats with Tyga's take on it.

"Swimming Pools" is one of those songs. The beat is of course stolen from Kendrick Lamar's song of the same title. What bothers me here is that not only does he steal the beat, but he also steals the original rapper's flow. And when you're taking someone like Kendrick Lamar's flow, which is probably one of the most unique flows of the new millennium, then you're probably going to sound horrible while doing it. And he does.

But he doesn't stop at just stealing one beat per track. On "Clique/Fuckin' Problem," Tyga raps over the track from Cruel Summer and then the ASAP Rocky song. Why not just separate them into two different songs? On the "Clique" half of the song, he opens up by rapping, "Ain't nobody fucking with my clique / I'm T-Raw, young nigga, I'm the shit," but he says "clique" in such a way that it sounds like another word starting with "cli" and ending with a "t." He also brags about making "a milli off a porno flic." Then it just randomly transitions into "Fuckin' Problem." And just like last week, I'm going to have to complain about someone stealing ASAP Rocky's deep voice effect! This is the problem with stealing other's flows. It just ends up looking stupid. And Tyga does well at looking stupid.

The Re-dic-yu-lus (a.k.a. Way Too Fucking Ig'nant):

Papoose - Most Hated Alive

I've spent all day trying to figure out how I knew Papoose. I knew that there was some place where I've seen that name, but I couldn't figure it out. Luckily, we have Wikipedia in this day and age. And thanks to Wikipedia, I figured it out: Busta Rhymes' remix of "Touch It."

You wanna see an ig'nant video? That right up there is an ig'nant video. Also, it's quite fitting that the one thing I've heard from Papoose is in a song in which he says "re-dic-yu-lus" and now he is re-dic-lus.

I really had to look no further than the title track to realize it. Once again, it's a cover of "Clique." I mean, it's a good song and all, but not good enough for every rapper and their grandmother to use it on their mixtape. At least Papoose brings his own flow, but that doesn't help much. My favorite line has to be, "If you ain't a pussy than why you so moist?"

I can't even overlook a feature from Kendrick Lamar on the song "Lyrical Gangsta." It is a fantastic verse, but it's over an awkward-feeling electronic-heavy beat. And it's quickly forgotten once Papoose chimes in. He's just so in-your-face when it comes to rapping. You feel like you have to turn the volume down every time he comes on. And that's just a bit too ig'nant for me.

Well, there were 16 uses of "ig'nant" in this post. Hopefully, there's at least one person out there reading this on Thirsty Thursday and getting way too hammered. That's all I want in life.

-- Xavier Veccia, dropping the mic for now.

@xprime_time