Look, Max Just Wrote 30+ Album Reviews in a Row, Let Him Follow Up With XXL's Freshman Class of 2012 If He Wants (Part VII)

Seven years into this series, I’m running out of ways to introduce the newest entry, so allow me to briefly dip into my past to straight-up infringe upon my own copyright:

“Ever since I made the horrible decision to maintain a 7-Up-esque series following the rappers chosen for [the XXL Freshman Class] in 2012, keeping tabs on each of the ten artists and their respective careers since gracing the magazine’s cover, I’ve found myself struggling to both (a) still care, in most cases, and (b) find music representative of the growth one would assume each man (and one woman) had undertaken in order to organically prolong their professional lifespans.”

What follows below are my thoughts on songs each representative artist released from January 1, 2018 through December 1, 2018 only. I realize I’ve already published one of these articles this year, but if you’ll remember, that one focused solely on their 2017 output, and I had also threatened to present you two with another entry before the year was over.

Consider that threat fulfilled.

And if this post really upsets you that much, insofar as you don’t understand the point of what I’m trying to do here and merely look at this as Max wasting his time with artists who aren’t worth following, may I refer you to the title of today’s post, and we’ll see you next time.

MACHINE GUN KELLY (formerly MGK, formerly MACHINE GUN KELLY, formerly MGK, formerly MACHINE GUN KELLY)

What I wrote before: “...The dude likely has about three more years in the rap game before Hollywood takes over fully, but at least he’ll go out trying to create entertaining crappy rap music…”

Song I listened to this time around: "Rap Devil”

The rapper-slash-actor born Coulson Baker was the first to respond to Eminem’s numerous scattershot disses on Kamikaze, and he comes out swinging, for better or for worse. One one hand, his flow feels as though it can’t support the weight of a full-on rap beef (the Ronny J and Nils beat on “Rap Devil”, ha ha get it because Marshall has a song called “Rap God” LOL, is weak as well, but that part isn’t really MGK’s fault). On the other, far more entertaining hand, Machine Gun Kelly’s bars are well-written, put forth some cogent points, and are also fucking hilarious at times. Why isn’t the hip hop community complaining about how a white rapper blackballed another white rapper, with the industry seemingly feeling just peachy about it? I still contend that to be the pettiest move Marshall has ever made, especially as he fought back when The Source was fucking with him: Eminem’s been around long enough to become Benzino, apparently. Kelly is the most focused I’ve ever heard him be, obviously because he was both pissed off and amused that he had gotten under Em’s skin, but “Rap Devil”, while much more engaging and much less mechanical than the eventual response “Killshot” (which, to be fair, is technically a better dis record), is an anomaly in the man’s catalog, so it isn’t fair to put it up against the other songs from the man that I’ve listened to for this series. So MGK receives an “incomplete” for this semester.

DANNY BROWN

What I wrote before: “...[Brown] is talented and has a clutch of great tracks under his belt already, but he’s dangerously close to running out the clock on the goodwill he’s received thus far...”

Song I listened to this time around: alt-J - "Deadcrush (Alchemist x Trooko Version)” (featuring Danny Brown)

I couldn’t locate any actual music officially released by the Motor City’s Danny Brown from this past year (those tracks he played during his live Twitch streams hardly count), so I looked toward a genre most rap artists used to be deathly afraid of: indie rock. British band alt-J released a remix project, Reduxer, earlier in 2018, and they handed their single “Deadcrush” to the team of The Alchemist and Trooko, who in turn brought in Daniel to spit a couple of verses. He’s certainly no stranger to music soundscapes that skew really fucking far away from our chosen genre: I think feeling comfortable genuinely makes Brown uncomfortable. He doesn’t have to do all that much on “Deadcrush” except not fumble the ball, so to his credit he sounds just fine, even if I found the remix itself to sound kind of boring. Danny Brown is still my favorite artist from this list (one would have thought that would have been enough of a reason for me to finally listen to Old in its entirety, and I have not, but I’m working on it), and everyone deserves a vacation of sorts, but I’m really hoping the man releases something next year that’s more true to his own vision, as opposed to simply appearing as a hired gun, because this was kind of testing my patience.

KID INK

What I wrote before: “...this poor man’s poor man’s Chris Brown still brings nothing to the table...”

Song I listened to this time around: “No Budget” (featuring Rich the Kid)

This will likely end up being the biggest waste of my time today, and I haven’t even gotten to Iggy Azalea yet. “No Budget” squanders a decent Bongo and Murda Beatz instrumental, which sounded like the score of a scene in a sci-fi flick where the lead is creeping down a dark hallway, barely lit with just neon signs, toward almost certain doom, with inane, mumbling lyrics both sung and rapped at the listener by Kid Ink (and guest Rich the Kid, who doesn’t matter for the purposes of this critique), which all run together as though one tattoo would be burned from his skin for every audible word break in his bars. I get it, your Diet Chris Brown lifestyle is likely much more expensive than mine, and with an infant running around the house, you simply can’t afford to not appeal to the widest audience possible. But “No Budget” is bad, folks, and so is its star attraction, who should also feel bad about being so bad.

FUTURE

What I wrote before: “...he’s…definitely mastered the art of making himself sound good over whatever beat is presented to him, even if his actual words are problematic...”

Song I listened to this time around: "Oxy” (featuring Lil Wayne)

This ode to Oxycontin is socially irresponsible, but it wouldn’t be a true Future song if there wasn’t some form of drug use glorification, am I right? For the sake of today’s post we’ll be ignoring the fact that Lil Wayne fucking floats on “Oxy” (I’m still not a fan of his, but god damn), instead paying sole attention to Nayvadius, who resurrects that weird, halting, high-pitched “flow” that he also used on “King’s Dead” (from the Black Panther soundtrack), which some of you two may like, but I found to be annoying as shit. Future continues to be the most consistently successful member of 2012’s Freshman Class, and I guess I understand why (aligning himself with the genre’s power players and occasionally dropping a hot song can go a long way), but I don’t like it one bit: his slurred flow and choice of vapid instrumentals (usually) should have grown tired and cliché by now, but hey, what do I know? I’m just a guy writing words that appear on your computer or phone screen who happens to know what the fuck he’s talking about when it comes to this shit.

ROSCOE DASH

What I wrote before: “…if you’re [this] interchangeable within our chosen genre… you’re pretty much done...”

Song I listened to this time around: "Chanel (Remix)” (with Rae Sremmurd and Pharrell)

I looked at this dude’s Soundcloud page and this was the only track I could see that he uploaded this past year, and it’s a “remix” to Rae Sremmurd’s 30 Roc and Mike Will Made It-produced “Chanel” that merely tacks his own performance on top the beginning of the song, with the rest of it, including the Pharrell cameo where he raps in falsetto before claiming that he “could get God on the line” (which, admittedly, is a cold-ass line), playing in its entirety. The success of “Chanel” itself is entirely dependent on your tolerance for Slxm Jxmmi and Swae Lee’s vocals: for what it’s worth, I think the song is okay, but the instrumental is killer, as it makes you want to steal a car and crash into a brick wall in slow-motion. Da$h, however, has trouble adapting: under the guise of a more current pseudonym, Scoe, Da$h sing-raps some generic shit about stealing your girl and having more material possessions than you, which just doesn’t ring true anymore, if they ever did in the first place. Perhaps it’s just the poor nature of this “remix”, but he sounds off-beat and awkward, as though even he knew he didn’t have authorization to be there and was doing everything he could to not touch anything. There is little wonder why Roscoe Da$h is (allegedly) a Lyft driver now. Out of everyone I’ll write about today, Da$h is my pick for the artist most likely to not have an entry for me to review in 2019. Alas.

HOPSIN

What I wrote before: “...[Hopsin is] certainly capable of writing decent verses, but not every rapper is special, and sometimes it takes a little bit longer for people to see that...”

Song I listened to this time around: "Don’t Need You” (Jarren Benton featuring Hopsin)

Other than being receptive to a shout-out from Eminem on Kamikaze, Hopsin has been relatively quiet this year, so I had to turn to a feature credit to keep his part of the story alive this time around. He opens Jarren Benton’s “Don’t Need You”, which I understand was a big deal because Benton was once signed to Hopsin’s label Funk Volume, but they had a falling-out around the time Hopsin disbanded the company and moved elsewhere. (That’s an oversimplification, but you get it.) This paragraph isn’t about Benton, though, so let’s just say he’s obviously been influenced by Slim Shady and move on. Hop always comes across to me as a guy who believes himself to be the smartest in the room, a brashness which is par for the course within our chosen genre, but he’s never managed to come close to reaching those self-imposed expectations for me. At least he’s just talking shit on here and not releasing whatever the fuck pop radio-friendly faux deep shit I wrote about last time. He does sound alright on here, but “alright” isn’t something most artists strive to be.

MACKLEMORE

What I wrote before: “...he could outright walk away from the rap game entirely at this point and have the exact same level of impact on our chosen genre...”

Song I listened to this time around: "How To Play The Flute” (featuring King Draino)

Nayvadius is the most consistently successful rapper in this Freshman Class, but Macklemore is its most awarded, thanks to that run he had with producer Ryan Lewis back in 2011-2012 with “Can’t Hold Us”, “Thrift Shop”, and “Same Love”. He apparently didn’t release anything new in 2018, but he did drop a video for his 2017 track “How To Play The Flute”, so I’ll take it. And I found this far more appealing than I thought I would: the self-serious social consciousness Ben “Macklemore” Haggerty pulls from for songs such as  “Same Love” and “White Privilege II” is eschewed for the goofy horseshit he displayed on “Thrift Shop”, as “How To Play The Flute” plays as his attempt to be silly behind the mic, albeit the type of “silly” that naturally comes from artists who have already reached the heights of their career and now just don't give a shit how you react to their work. This… wasn’t bad, even though I’d be hard-pressed to remember what this song even was in the future.

DON TRIP

What I wrote before: “...it’s probably not a good sign that I keep finding Don Trip to be upstaged by other contributors on his tracks, but at least the man keeps trying...”

Song I listened to this time around: "2 Magazines”

I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I’ve been following Don Trip’s career, or his joint venture with Starlito, Step Brothers, because I respect you two much more than that. So to catch up with Trip in 2018, why not go with the very first track off of his album Christopher, released this year and titled after his own actual first name, right? “2 Magazines” is as good a reintroduction to the man as any, and it… wasn’t bad! The hook was kind of stupid, but Trip’s lone verse is pretty funny, as he claims to be “fresh out of fucks to give” while considering “poverty [to be his] arch nemesis” with an engaging flow that’s a stark contrast to everything else I’ve listened to while writing about Don Trip in the past, which, admittedly, I can’t fucking remember right now. “2 Magazines” is boasts-n-bullshit presented as the opening speech at a motivational seminar, and it’s rather entertaining, if I may say. Good on you, Donald Tripplehorn. See, every year in this ridiculous series is an opportunity to turn it all around.

IGGY AZALEA

What I wrote before: “...she’s forgotten how to sound engaging, or at the very least not as fucking boring. But maybe she never had those skills to begin with…”

Song I listened to this time around: “Survive the Summer”

Because I didn’t need to hear a “C.R.E.A.M.” sample bastardized, I chose the Iggy Azalea’s “Survive the Summer” for today’s post instead. I applaud Amethyst for managing to actually release new music in 2018, but, as per usual, she still doesn’t quite understand that she has never been the draw on her biggest hits (“Fancy” obviously goes to Charli XCX, a point I’ve made every fucking year since it was released, but I’m sure an argument could be made to give “Black Widow” to Rita Ora, although Stateside audiences would shrug, not knowing who Ora is even though that dumbass song was popular over here). Her efforts at spitting are commendable, so much so that this sentence will be the only time I refer to cultural appropriation today, as that isn’t the vibe I got from her performance today (for once). But while her cockiness requires no tweaking, she could benefit from the use of a co-writer, as her bars are generic boasts-n-bullshit that never feel truly earned. I understand she recently secured a new record deal, so I suppose we’ll be hearing more from Azalea in the future. Yippee?

FRENCH MONTANA

What I wrote before: “...even if he never says anything of substance…he’s at least aware of his own limitations. With the right collaborators, he’s one of the most engaging artists in the game...”

Song I listened to this time around: "Nervous”

Frenchy did release a new song this year with a feature from Drake, but I feel like I’ve already covered that specific trope in the man’s catalog already, so instead let’s run with “Nervous”, a newer Harry Fraud production with a pulsating instrumental and a more antagonistic Montana than hip hop radio may be familiar with. The music is most certainly better than the artist here: Fraud presents a beat that could double as the score for one intense bank heist, but Frenchy wastes time talking about pushing weight, which, to be fair, he calls his crew the Coke Boys, so this wasn’t much of a reach. Montana could stands to step outside of his Puff Daddy-enabled comfort zone from time to time: he isn’t great on “Nervous”, not even a little bit (his gimmick of repeating words at the end of each bar is aggravating), but the music elevates him to such a degree that you’ll likely find yourself digging the song, no lie.

-Max