You
know how when you’re downloading some files, like say a movie or an album in a
zip file, sometimes your connection stops like halfway? Well, if you’re
downloading Kanye’s Presents Cruel Summer
album, be happy if the connection stops halfway, ‘cause you just pretty much downloaded
the good half of the album, for real. With 12 tracks, Cruel Summer gets awfully cruel with its second half and not in a
good way; it’s barely resurrected by two songs. Cruel summer reminds me of Eminem’s Presents Re-up album, which started off as a mixtape and then
morphed into an album. The difference with Em’s Re-up is that it really morphed into an album. Cruel Summer still sounds like a disjointed mixtape. Nothing like the
kind of mixtape we’ve gotten used to lately like the ones dropped by Rick Ross,
which are more or less albums, but this maybe a good thing, depending on how
you see it, but lest we forget this is Kanye we’re talking about. He gave out
music (album worthy) for free almost every Friday two years ago, so this is kind
of pathetic.
Don’t get me wrong, Kanye will shit on
half the rappers out there, but like the way we don’t judge Eminem or Dre on
anything, but their standards, we can’t judge Kanye on anything, but his
standards (which are high). Single-wise, Cruel
Summer is untouchable when compared to other group albums. Joints like Clique, Mercy, New God Flow, The Morning, Cold and personal favourite The
One make them the best posse cuts of the year. That can’t be said of the
project album-wise when some artists shine more than others on a very large
scale than usual. 2 Chainz, Big Sean and Pusha T have the most air time along
with Kanye (Pusha T is undoubtedly the star of this album sans Kanye). Even
guests such as Jay-Z, Ghost-face Killah and Raekwon outshine the other G.O.O.D
music signees like Teyana Taylor and D’Banj. The latter of who appears on only
one song (you won’t even notice till they tell you it’s him) on a bridge for
that matter. Common appears on one song, but at least it’s on one of the best
songs. Mr. Hudson and new signees Q-Tip and Mos Def (now known as Yasiin Bey)
don’t even appear anywhere. One little highlight for me was Ma$e’s verse on Higher, despite being one of the album’s
weaker tracks, his verse (also considered weak by some critics, fuck it, it’s
Ma$e) is of quite interest to me.
The second half of the album is
resurrected by The One and the
closing track, a remix of Chief Keef’s I
Don’t Like which features Kanye, Big Sean and Jadakiss. The only solo song
(if we discount Cold, which has D.J
Khaled yelling his trademark over it) belongs to Kid Cudi, but Creepers reminds me too much of his
collaboration with D. Dot (as the group WZRD), Teleport Me (a much superior track).
Rating:
6.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment