Hip Hoss Album of the Week

[Hoss]

PREMISE

I felt encouraged to start this project just as a way to have something of a creative outlet and a weekly thing to dedicate a little bit of time to. I’ve listened to tons of albums in my life and continue to listen to more albums on a pretty much daily basis, with the majority of them being in the hip hop sphere. Essentially, I just want to share some albums that I like and give some thoughts on each of them as a means to just put my feelings about albums down in writing. Hopefully through this, I get go revisit some of my favorite albums and share some new discoveries as well, and perhaps it will resonate with some of you who also enjoy the music or are looking to expand your tastes a little. Don't expect any elaborate deep-dive analysis for the most part, the write-ups will likely be pretty brief unless I end up going off on some tangents or something. There's not much else to say beyond that, that's kind of the gist of it.

First entry will come later today or tomorrow.

 

[Hoss]

Blank Face LP - ScHoolboy Q (2016)



I became a full-blown, diehard rap fan in 2009 when I heard Kanye’s “808s & Heartbreak”, which is ironic because that wasn't much of a *rap* album. Nonetheless, this album was the genesis of me really becoming a hip hop fan and appreciating the genre at a more than superficial level. Throughout my time in high school, a big new era of rappers emerged, including the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Drake, J. Cole, ASAP Rocky, Mac Miller and many others who, to this day, hold a great deal of sentimental value for me.

Among that generation of rappers was ScHoolboy Q - part of the TDE roster which also included fellow West Coast rappers Kendrick, Jay Rock and Ab-Soul. All four were on my radar from early in their careers and, fortunately for me, I got to experience all of their breakthrough albums in real time.

ScHoolboy Q's album “Oxymoron” came out when I was a senior in high school. So many amazing albums came out in 2013-2014, but few of them got more listens from me than “Oxymoron”. It was abrasive, braggadocious, featured some top notch production and spawned several of Q's biggest hits to this day.

Fast forward to 2016, I'm out of high school and my focus on music has shifted a little bit. I'm still a huge hip hop fan, but the SoundCloud era has begun and I'm really tapped into the next rising generation of artists, many of whom admittedly fit into the “mumble rap” category. It is what it is. Anyways, ScHoolboy Q comes out with “Blank Face LP” which is definitely on my radar but falls a little out of the scope of what kind of music I was really interested in at that time. I listened to the album and would play a few of the songs from time to time, but it wasn't for another couple of years after the album came out that I really gave it a proper listen and was able to digest the totality of it.

This album was definitely a more artistic venture for Q compared to “Oxymoron”. Something which isn't really surprising, as a lot of rappers’ first mainstream albums don't tend to be their most mature. There are definitely songs and moments on the aforementioned album where Q delves into some serious subject matter, but a lot of it is, as I said, pretty boastful and fits pretty neatly into the gangster rap category.

On “Blank Face LP”, particularly in the first third or so of the album, Q really paints a portrait of how dire things can be when you surrender yourself to the dark side of drug dealing and gang banging. These themes clearly are not being “glamorized” on this album in a way that you could argue they had been in Q's earlier work. Instead, he’s describing his real life perspective in gory detail, in a way that reads as cautionary. I really love the use of deep, foreboding bass and scathing guitar riffs on the early part of this album to create a darkly ethereal soundscape for Q's famously disjointed flows. As the album progresses, the production pivots towards more familiar sounds. West Coast beats with G-Funk and jazzy undertones woven in. The mood lightens up some throughout the middle part of the album, even becoming strangely jovial at times, which I must admit hurt my immersion. There are songs like “Big Body”, “Overtime” and “WHateva U Want” that I think simply did not need to be on the album. This is a pretty common symptom for TDE albums... no matter how good they are, there are always a couple songs that are clearly only included for mainstream appeal. Nonetheless, the album finishes out strong with some tracks on the back end that pretty well match the vibe established at the beginning. “Tookie Knows II” is an ideal punctuation for the album, as Q teams up with his childhood friends T.F. and Traffic on a menacing track that portrays the entropy of being a gang member in Southern California. Spoiler alert: it sounds dodgy.

Favorite tracks: “Groovy Tony/Eddie Kane”, “Know Ya Wrong”, “Ride Out”, “Str8 Ballin”, “JoHn Muir”

Rating: 7.5/10

 

[Hoss]

Body High - Lucki Eck$ (2014)



In late 2014, after I graduated high school, I decided to uproot my life a bit and move to West Virginia, where my family is originally from. I didn't really have any plan, I just thought it might be kinda cool after growing up in Texas my whole life. I moved in with my aunt, got a job working in fast food and basically didn't do shit else for the duration of my time living up there. I'd hang out with my cousins, spend all my money on weed, play some sports, watch TV and freestyle to pass time. In retrospect, I find many parts of that move regrettable. But, that's how she goes sometimes.

In 2015, as I was living in West Virginia, I started using DatPiff to get a lot of my music. DatPiff used to be a really popular source for free songs and mixtapes (which are meant to be free for what it's worth). For me, at that time, the concept of having a Spotify or Apple Music subscription was not something that had even really crossed my mind. Bear in mind that up to this point, I was still in a phase of mostly just downloading mp3s directly to my phone to listen to. Anyways, once I got into using DatPiff to source a lot of my music, I discovered many new artists. I'm sure a lot of the artists whose songs I downloaded on DatPiff never got their careers off the ground at all, because I was diving pretty deep into the crates for some shit. Some of the artists I discovered during this time would go on to be huge stars, such as Travis Scott and Kodak Black. One of the artists that I discovered at this time was Lucki Eck$, who had recently released the mixtape “Body High”, and he landed kind of in the middle.

Lucki Eck$ came onto the scene out of Chicago and made a splash for his uncanny musical style relative to a lot of the hip hop being made at the time. Lucki, especially in his early career, was one of the first of what I would call a “xan rapper”. He was sort of doing things that would become really popular in the SoundCloud mumble rap era, a couple of years before it became trendy. In that way, I would say he is somewhat of a pioneer to that whole wave of music. However, I should stress that “Body High” does not fit into the conventional mumble rap mold.

On this album, Lucki raps lethargically over atmospheric beats that sometimes border on sounding like dreamwave, which effectively puts you in the headspace of someone who is in the throes of a Xanax dependency. His bars are callous, as he describes numerous situations where his dealings with the drug causes damage to those around him with little detectable remorse. The content of his rhymes is made more harsh by the fact that Lucki was a high schooler when he made this mixtape. While I can't cosign a lot of the activities portrayed and I would strongly discourage anyone from recreational Xanax use, this mixtape was undeniably innovative and an impressive body of work for an 18-year-old no matter how you slice it. In a way, I view it as an insidious spiritual counterpart to “Acid Rap”, the sophomore mixtape of Lucki's fellow Chicagoan Chance the Rapper, which was released the year prior. It may also be worth mentioning that Lucki drops multiple wrestling-related bars on the mixtape, such as:

“Man I probably just lost it, a cross face killer
Damn and I knew it, that bitch Chris Benoit'd me”

“Get guap out your dash stash, problem solver Christian Cage”

“Hope she all off the ropes like watching Rey Mysterio wrestling”

Lucki remains a fairly prominent underground rapper to this day with something of a cult following. However, as the SoundCloud era really kicked into gear, there was definitely a shift in his music that, I feel, led him away from lyricism and more towards the metrical mumble delivery that is less about the content and more about the cadence. I have no problem with that kind of music. I'm actually a big fan of a lot of rappers that would be considered mumble rappers. Maybe that's why Lucki adapting more to that style caused him to fade into the background for me, as I actually find him one of the less compelling artists in that sphere. Despite Lucki moving in an artistic direction that doesn't quite jibe with my tastes, “Body High” remains a nifty piece of music that will likely always hold up as his Magnum Opus in my eyes.

Favorite tracks: “Witchcraft”, “Finesse”, “Reflections”, “Xan Cage”, “Count On Me 3”

Rating: 7.25/10

And while we're here, a couple of bonus tracks from Lucki that have come out since this mixtape -

Spoiler

 

[Hoss]

Liquid Swords - GZA (1995)



Wu-Tang Clan were among the first “before my time” rappers that I really got into after becoming a rap fan, and were probably my favorite for a long time. One thing I noticed very quickly was how influential the group were, being referenced constantly by rappers who came after them and seeing the origins of the sample-heavy production style pioneered by the group's de facto leader, RZA, which inspired many future pillars of the industry such as Kanye West, Just Blaze and The Alchemist - not to mention all the artists that those guys inspired.

After checking out the Wu-Tang albums “Enter The Wu-Tang” and “Wu-Tang Forever”, I looked for a list online of the best solo projects by Wu-Tang members. If you know Wu-Tang, you probably know the albums that appeared on that list and you probably won't be surprised to know that “Liquid Swords” by GZA was near the top of the list. And it would be this very album which, to this day, is my favorite Wu-Tang Clan album, and that's counting group and solo projects. And I should make the distinction that GZA isn't my favorite artist in the group. I would probably put Ghostface Killah, Method Man and perhaps even Inspectah Deck above him based on their overall careers, but I don't think any member of Wu-Tang has put together an album that is as impeccable as “Liquid Swords”.

One thing that made Wu-Tang stand out was their jocular approach to confronting the harsh realities of hustling on the streets. They would describe their experiences in shocking detail, while delivering punchlines over some of the most searing production ever heard. On “Liquid Swords”, GZA and his Clan affiliates bring that familiar candor, but with a more sage slant - cutting out the jokes and delivering prophecy and pearls of wisdom in their place.

The album is built around a chilly ambiance, meant to be a “winter album”, which is easily picked up on from the start of the album, and really solidified on the stony “Living In The World Today”. RZA crafts an atmosphere on this album, interweaving his forbidding beats with choice samples from the martial arts film “Shogun Assassin”. Though the film samples do not necessarily create a narrative for which the album follows, they are the perfect complement to GZA's continuous stream of bars about chess, morality and swordsmanship. If there were a Hall of Fame for hip hop beats, I think there are several songs on this album that would make the cut. Most notably “4th Chamber”, which I don’t hesitate to include among my top 10 beats of all-time. The album is lyrically super dense and supported by superb production. The one thing this album could have used to make it even more well-rounded would have been some catchier hooks. That's where “Cold World” comes in clutch with a really infectious hook that you could easily imagine on the radio.

But the truth of the matter is that GZA never aspired to be the superstar that some Wu-Tang members became. He wasn't crafting this album with hopes of getting mainstream airplay. This album is a pure exhibition in elite MC-ing. It’s GZA demonstrating his rapping abilities, conveying his viewpoint on the world and indulging in his niche interests. All things considered, I think this album qualifies as mandatory listening for any hip hop fan who wants to experience the best of what 90s hip hop has to offer.

Favorite tracks: “Liquid Swords”, “Shadowboxin'”, “Duel of the Iron Mic”, “4th Chamber”, “Cold World”

Rating: 9/10

 

[Bad News Booty]

Yeah Liquid Swords js a gd masterpiece and one of my favorite Wu member albums period. It’s more of a complete album start to finish than a lot of the others.

 

[Hoss]

Dark Times - Vince Staples (2024)



I have been a fan of Long Beach’s own Vince Staples for just about a decade now. He first appeared on my radar through his features on songs by Odd Future and Mac Miller. I was immediately drawn to him thanks to his affiliation with these other artists who were extremely heavy in my rotation back in 2014. He fit the vibe perfectly, as another young, unorthodox artist prone to dropping controversial bars with a wry wit. Vince's delivery certainly stood out and his feature verse on “Hive” by Earl Sweatshirt did a lot to put him on the map, and the verse often pops up in my social media algorithm these days with people going as far as to call it generational. It really is an epic verse and certainly one that stands the test of time.

He then went on to drop the album “Summertime ‘06” which was an instant hit for me personally, and spawned what is probably his most recognizable song to date - “Norf Norf”. Hearing this album, and going back to hear his earlier mixtapes, including the Mac Miller-produced “Stolen Youth”, solidified him as one of my favorite rappers on his generation. To see the way his career has blossomed in the ensuing decade, all the way up to him receiving his own Netflix show this last year has been really crazy.

Over the years, however, my love for Vince has kind of fluctuated. At times, I would listen to him incessantly. At others, I was likely to skip his songs if they were to appear on my Spotify shuffle. The fact of the matter is, I kinda have a limited tolerance for his signature monotone delivery. It is one of the things he's most known for, and something that has no doubt scored him many fans, including myself. But, at a certain point, when you pair the flat delivery of his lyrics with his sometimes meandering production, it just doesn't make for much fun to listen to. A little goes a long way, I guess you could say. And this is why it took me nearly a month to get around to listening to this album, even though I do absolutely consider myself a fan of Vince.

Truthfully, even though I did enjoy his last couple of projects (“Ramona Park Broke My Heart” and “Vince Staples”), those albums mostly just came and went for me for the reasons I stated above. A handful of the songs from those projects have stayed fairly consistent in my rotation but I certainly didn't desire to revisit the albums as a whole. Therefore, I figured this album wouldn't be a whole lot different. I'd probably listen to it and think it was really solid, but then move on. But then, Spotify started throwing some of the songs into my mix and as I heard a few of them, they really connected with me, and I suddenly felt a fresh excitement to check out the album. In doing so, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

For the first time in a while, I felt consistently engaged throughout the album. The theme of the album, like most Vince albums, boils down to loss. Loss of life, love and innocence. Topics that Vince is incredibly adept at tackling, drawing on his own life to deal out an illuminating perspective on these difficult subjects. Sonically speaking, this album wasn’t a huge departure from the prior two albums I mentioned above, but I did find there to be a different energy present on this album which really compelled me.

The beats on a few of the songs are definitely on the more uptempo side and he came with some better-than-normal hooks, which definitely tends to be a weak point in his music for me. There was no song on this album which felt tedious, droning, or redundant. Perhaps validating my opinion a little bit is a line he drops on my personal favorite track, “Étouffée” - a track with a New Orleans-esque bounce beat that is unique among Vince's discography - in which he says:

“Fans said they want 2015 Vince
Dropped “Big Fish”, cuh been weak since”

Of course, I don't totally agree with the sentiment but it shows me that the opinion exists out there that his most recent offerings haven't been his most sensational. Maybe that's a bad opinion, but it's an opinion that I at least half agree with. However, I'm pleased to say that I definitely find “Dark Times” to be Vince's best album in years, and one that I have happily returned to several times already since first checking it out. I'd certainly suggest any rap fan out there give it a spin and see if Vince's droll lyricism and desolate subject matter tickle your fancy.

Favorite tracks: “Étouffée”, “Shame on the Devil”, “Black&Blue”, “Freeman”, “Children's Song”

Rating: 8.25/10