4REAL 4REAL - YG: Review
YG
is a California rapper who has had a strange discography thus far. He came to prominence after some viral singles in the first half of the 2000's and dropped an interesting but flawed debut album in My Krazy Life. He took his time to follow this up appearing for a handful of features and taking a victory lap, then came back with a huge surprise on his critically acclaimed g-funk inspired sophomore record Still Brazy. But following the album up more quickly with a third effort found YG alienating his newfound fans with the underwhelming Stay Dangerous, an album with a much more commercial focus and has now once again quickly turned around for a new era with singles that find him working in between his two sides.
Review By Lavender:
YG has always been a back and forth for me. He has some of the best tracks, features and albums in pop rap this decade but he splits time with some of the worst, most generic and uninspired material. 2016's Still Brazy is a fantastic throwback west coast g-funk project with a handful of killer tracks that made it onto my songs of the year lists. FDT is probably the signature anti Donald Trump song of this era in music and it came from a borderline pop rapper, The album ties together influences new and old to create a fantastically unique and engaging sound that is so effortlessly fun but clearly skillful. This is why the albums follow-up Stay Dangerous is such a strange disappointment. YG took a nosedive into commercialism releasing some of the most generic and run of the mill trap tunes of 2018 with very little of his individuality and creativity mixed in. I had a feeling that this new era was starting so quickly because YG intended to deliver something great once again to fans that we're disappointed by Dangerous but the singles did not point much in that direction at all. Then after the tragic shooting death of frequent YG collaborator and close friend Nipsey Hussle earlier this year the album was delayed and I hoped that this would inspire a more conscious take on hip hop when we inevitably got 4REAL. And while YG dabbles a little in what makes him so unique on this album it is far too muddled in everything that has dragged down albums in his past.
The three singles that were released in the lead up to this project did not help inspire confidence in me that it would be good. Stop Snitchin came first and it is quite the taxing few minutes. The beat is pretty banging but the mind-numbingly repetitive hook is a slog and once I heard this thing within the tracklist of this album I was even more confused by its presence as it doesn't really serve any narrative of fit the albums themes. Go Loko followed this and may be one of the worst singles I have heard from anyone all year. It is a horrible boring song that makes everyone on it sound completely terrible and the poorly interpolated Spanish guitar is just adding onto the terrible mediocrity.
Finally the song that dropped my expectations to the absolute floor was Do Not Disturb released just before the album was dropped. I'm not sure what to critique first among the annoyingly sharp piano led beat or the long and completely stagnant Kamaiyah verse that opens up the song. YG comes next and despite some severe lyrical shortcomings manages to be decent. All of this was to set up for a laughable G-Eazy verse right at the end where he fails spectacularly at trying to sound as cool as YG does and gives off some of the albums cringiest lyrics. As a detour why do major label artists continue to recruit and pay G-Eazy to deliver horrible momentum killing verses on their songs. The guy is far from a consistent Billboard presence and as we saw last year when he depressingly dragged Eminem down to his level he just drops the quality of everyone around him.
So thankfully once the album was here in full it became pretty clear that these singles were in the minority of quality of songs here, but that doesn't mean they were the only bad tracks. I Was On The Block is a mess with an absolutely awful chorus that kills the track right away. The middle of the song is actually solid with a verse and flow I am pretty impressed with coming from YG and a surprisingly decent feature from Valee. But the song takes a nose dive when the chorus comes back around again after Boogie delivers one of the worst features all year with his impersonation of another terrible rapper Kodak Black. Play Too Much is an attempt at a lyrical story track and while the album pulls these off a few times this one is not it. The track has an infectious beat that I think is decent but YG can't stay anywhere near on beat as he stumbles through some very amateur flows that distract much more from the songs storytelling than I think YG and his team intended. Finally Do Ya Dance seems to aim at being a Twist My Fingaz sequel and while YG is good in the beginning and Ty Dolla $ign is great at the end everything in between suffers from straight up bad mixing and a beat that gets old fast.
One thing that the album does exceptionally well is get off to an excellent start right out of the gate and even though it doesn't hold the quality the first few songs here are excellent. The opening song Hard Bottoms & White Socks is a classic west coast old head type track with a sharp but lowkey instrumental that sees YG getting lyrical and contemplative in a way that was completely absent from Stay Dangerous and is a great tone-setter for the project. Bottle Service is a song that would have fit comfortably in on Still Brazy with a west coast beat, fast flows and hilarious female sampled vocals that take the place of a hook, the track is nothing amazing but it is a pretty solid tune.
In The Dark is a track that has some very rough lyrics but if you can not take them seriously and vibe with the song it will capture you. The song is kooky, silly and has a surprisingly catchy refrain that gets repeated over and over but stays pretty sharp and was one of the experiences I did not anticipate having on a YG album. Keisha Had A Baby is a heavily lyrical songs that relies on telling a tight story and does it pretty successfully. Rose Gold has some decent supporting vocals and the only real concern I have with it is that some of the themes seem strangely presumptuous about the songs title character and her obligations to the men in her life but that could just be reading too much into a few bars.
Heart 2 Heart and Her Story are just alright tracks both with some flaws. Heart once again features some decent Rose Gold vocals that are outshined by Arin Ray on a fantastic bridge. YG's life advice bars are decent but a little bit boring and Meek Mill steals the show with his socially conscious and perfectly on beat bars at the tail end of the song. Her Story is a song that only features Day Sulan but is so short that her solid verse and the good beat don't really get much of a chance to develop and the track feels like more of an interlude than a fully fleshed out idea.
The album ends with a passage that appears to be taken from a YG live show where he pays tribute to Nipsey Hussle. The story he tells is personal and real and quite emotionally compelling and wraps up the song in a way that I think is very fitting for the place YG must be in after one of his close friends dying so tragically and unexpectedly. The song is much more personal than political and ends the album off on a great note.
4REAL 4REAL is a step in the right direction after a huge disappointment and it will certainly help me be optimistic for what YG does next. But given that we have seen him perform so much better in a full length album format before I can't say I'm impressed with the tracks presented here. Far too much of the album is lost in trying to be contemporary or built on rotten foundations with bad mixing and even worse ideas at their core. Overall the good and the bad meet head on for 4REAL and the result is an album that I can't imagine thrilling anyone. 5/10
Review By Lavender:
YG has always been a back and forth for me. He has some of the best tracks, features and albums in pop rap this decade but he splits time with some of the worst, most generic and uninspired material. 2016's Still Brazy is a fantastic throwback west coast g-funk project with a handful of killer tracks that made it onto my songs of the year lists. FDT is probably the signature anti Donald Trump song of this era in music and it came from a borderline pop rapper, The album ties together influences new and old to create a fantastically unique and engaging sound that is so effortlessly fun but clearly skillful. This is why the albums follow-up Stay Dangerous is such a strange disappointment. YG took a nosedive into commercialism releasing some of the most generic and run of the mill trap tunes of 2018 with very little of his individuality and creativity mixed in. I had a feeling that this new era was starting so quickly because YG intended to deliver something great once again to fans that we're disappointed by Dangerous but the singles did not point much in that direction at all. Then after the tragic shooting death of frequent YG collaborator and close friend Nipsey Hussle earlier this year the album was delayed and I hoped that this would inspire a more conscious take on hip hop when we inevitably got 4REAL. And while YG dabbles a little in what makes him so unique on this album it is far too muddled in everything that has dragged down albums in his past.
The three singles that were released in the lead up to this project did not help inspire confidence in me that it would be good. Stop Snitchin came first and it is quite the taxing few minutes. The beat is pretty banging but the mind-numbingly repetitive hook is a slog and once I heard this thing within the tracklist of this album I was even more confused by its presence as it doesn't really serve any narrative of fit the albums themes. Go Loko followed this and may be one of the worst singles I have heard from anyone all year. It is a horrible boring song that makes everyone on it sound completely terrible and the poorly interpolated Spanish guitar is just adding onto the terrible mediocrity.
Finally the song that dropped my expectations to the absolute floor was Do Not Disturb released just before the album was dropped. I'm not sure what to critique first among the annoyingly sharp piano led beat or the long and completely stagnant Kamaiyah verse that opens up the song. YG comes next and despite some severe lyrical shortcomings manages to be decent. All of this was to set up for a laughable G-Eazy verse right at the end where he fails spectacularly at trying to sound as cool as YG does and gives off some of the albums cringiest lyrics. As a detour why do major label artists continue to recruit and pay G-Eazy to deliver horrible momentum killing verses on their songs. The guy is far from a consistent Billboard presence and as we saw last year when he depressingly dragged Eminem down to his level he just drops the quality of everyone around him.
So thankfully once the album was here in full it became pretty clear that these singles were in the minority of quality of songs here, but that doesn't mean they were the only bad tracks. I Was On The Block is a mess with an absolutely awful chorus that kills the track right away. The middle of the song is actually solid with a verse and flow I am pretty impressed with coming from YG and a surprisingly decent feature from Valee. But the song takes a nose dive when the chorus comes back around again after Boogie delivers one of the worst features all year with his impersonation of another terrible rapper Kodak Black. Play Too Much is an attempt at a lyrical story track and while the album pulls these off a few times this one is not it. The track has an infectious beat that I think is decent but YG can't stay anywhere near on beat as he stumbles through some very amateur flows that distract much more from the songs storytelling than I think YG and his team intended. Finally Do Ya Dance seems to aim at being a Twist My Fingaz sequel and while YG is good in the beginning and Ty Dolla $ign is great at the end everything in between suffers from straight up bad mixing and a beat that gets old fast.
One thing that the album does exceptionally well is get off to an excellent start right out of the gate and even though it doesn't hold the quality the first few songs here are excellent. The opening song Hard Bottoms & White Socks is a classic west coast old head type track with a sharp but lowkey instrumental that sees YG getting lyrical and contemplative in a way that was completely absent from Stay Dangerous and is a great tone-setter for the project. Bottle Service is a song that would have fit comfortably in on Still Brazy with a west coast beat, fast flows and hilarious female sampled vocals that take the place of a hook, the track is nothing amazing but it is a pretty solid tune.
In The Dark is a track that has some very rough lyrics but if you can not take them seriously and vibe with the song it will capture you. The song is kooky, silly and has a surprisingly catchy refrain that gets repeated over and over but stays pretty sharp and was one of the experiences I did not anticipate having on a YG album. Keisha Had A Baby is a heavily lyrical songs that relies on telling a tight story and does it pretty successfully. Rose Gold has some decent supporting vocals and the only real concern I have with it is that some of the themes seem strangely presumptuous about the songs title character and her obligations to the men in her life but that could just be reading too much into a few bars.
Heart 2 Heart and Her Story are just alright tracks both with some flaws. Heart once again features some decent Rose Gold vocals that are outshined by Arin Ray on a fantastic bridge. YG's life advice bars are decent but a little bit boring and Meek Mill steals the show with his socially conscious and perfectly on beat bars at the tail end of the song. Her Story is a song that only features Day Sulan but is so short that her solid verse and the good beat don't really get much of a chance to develop and the track feels like more of an interlude than a fully fleshed out idea.
The album ends with a passage that appears to be taken from a YG live show where he pays tribute to Nipsey Hussle. The story he tells is personal and real and quite emotionally compelling and wraps up the song in a way that I think is very fitting for the place YG must be in after one of his close friends dying so tragically and unexpectedly. The song is much more personal than political and ends the album off on a great note.
4REAL 4REAL is a step in the right direction after a huge disappointment and it will certainly help me be optimistic for what YG does next. But given that we have seen him perform so much better in a full length album format before I can't say I'm impressed with the tracks presented here. Far too much of the album is lost in trying to be contemporary or built on rotten foundations with bad mixing and even worse ideas at their core. Overall the good and the bad meet head on for 4REAL and the result is an album that I can't imagine thrilling anyone. 5/10
Best Track: Hard Bottoms & White Socks
For more pop rap check out my review of Schoolboy Q's Crash Talk here.
